Archive for the 'Miss Sunbeam' Category

I open my front door, aching and nauseated, and smile to find Sunbeam working at the kitchen sink. I have walked in on her daily mission of mercy — emptying the girls’ lunch boxes and cleaning the Tupperware before I get one whiff and spend the night barfing.

I grin, and she knows the sonogram was okay, and then I show her the picture — a silhouette, Little One in profile. A nose, little lips, belly, two perfect little arms and legs.

“Do you know? Is it a boy or girl?”

Why is does everyone keep freaking asking me that?

“Cutest little crossed ankles you ever saw,” I say. “C’mon.” She follows me to the living room where I open a drawer and dig among the placemats. I take out a shiny white cardboard package.

PINK OR BLUE?? — It screams in fonts of the requisite colors.

“OHMAGAWD!” she says.

“I KNOW!!” I say. She follows me to the family room. Mare is there, putting the finishing touches on her homework before bed.

“What’s that?” Mare asks.

“It’s a test to find out whether the baby is a boy or girl. It’s science. Want to help?”

“Make sure there are no males present,” Sunbeam reads from the instructions. “Wash area to be tested carefully with enclosed alcohol wipe.” We open the package and Sunbeam smears the wipe around my middle finger — which was already stabbed twice today for the blood for the AFP test. (My middle finger hasn’t been this exercised since I first learned how to drive in downtown Boston.)

“To avoid male contamination from the surface, lay out a clean paper towel to set the test strip on.” She dutifully rips off a paper towel and sets it out.

“Hey, gang,” Cute Husband says from the door. “What’s –”

“AAIEEEEEEEE!!!!!” Three girly screams and a door slammed in his face.

“Good job, Mare,” I say, as she barricades the door against her father. Who just wants to sit on the couch with a beer and watch the tube.

“What did I do?” he asks meekly from the other side.

“You’ll contamimate the test!” Mare shouts.

“ContaMINate,” I correct.

“CONTAMIMATE!!” she says.

“Okay,” Sunbeam says with great authority. (Have I mentioned she is considering a career in medicine? I think she will be fabulous, don’t you?) “I think you use this thing to stab yourself,” — she hands me a little plastic tool that looks oddly like the thing I used to put Mare’s princess castle together — “.. and then you bleed on the card.”

She points to the picture for reference.

“Stab,” she repeats, “bleed.”

Okedoke. Stab …

Sumbitch that hurt.

… bleed?

I squeeze. One little pinprick of blood comes out, and I drop it over the test card, right into the middle of one of the little circles. I’m pleased. We look at the blood, the card, my sad aching little finger.

“It’s not enough,” Sunbeam says.

“Well, it’s going to have to do,” I say.

“No, look, right here, it’s not enough.” Another picture in the little pamphlet: depicting a little drop of blood in the middle of a circle. It looks eerily like the one I just made. Over it, the words: NOT ENOUGH.

“That’s why they gave you two of these.” She hands me another finger-stabber-thingy and nods expectantly at the other hand. I swallow.

Holy shit this is my fourth stab of the day.

“OW!” Another little red pinprick.

“Okay, look, we need to get the blood down there,” Sunbeam says. She starts kneading my arms. I’m holding my finger over that freaking circle trying my very best to bleed adequately. Then she starts with the karate chops. Up and down my arms. Little drops of blood are going every where. Some are even getting on the card, but it’s turning out to be monstrously difficult to bleed on target.

She’s chopping one arm, I’m squeezing the finger on the other, and Mare is standing, staring in horror.

“I got it, I got it,” Sunbeam says.

Blood. Everywhere. It’s all over the play room. It’s on the table, the floor. We pick up the card. It’s dripping.

“I think that’s good,” she says.

“Yeah, yeah,” I agree. That’s when I drop the card. The carefully-uncontaminated-judiciously-bled-on-freaking-card.

It lands, face down, on the floor.

What’s the rule on bloody cardboard? Ten seconds, what?

“Still good, still good,” I say, scooping it up.

“Congratulations, we are pleased to inform you you are having a cat,” Sunbeam says.

Whatever. We cram it into the envelope. If they need any help identifying me, they can use the bloody thumbprint on the package.

I do wonder, though, what the mailman will think.

I received this product for free to review on this website. The test is produced byConsumer Genetics and is very simple and logical. 7 weeks after conception (or about 10 weeks from LMP) the baby is emitting DNA material that goes into the mother’s blood stream. A sample of the blood is tested for male DNA. If there is some, then it’s a boy. If there isn’t, it’s a girl. That’s why it’s important not to contaminate your little bloody card.

The test was pretty easy to do, and the company was very responsive to my e-mailed inquiries. The downside, of course, is the price tag. $244, according to their website. Given that most prenatal providers now are happy to identify sex by sonogram, it’s basically a lot of money to pay for impatience.

However, if you have the money to spend, and don’t mind a little blood, it’s fun. It’s also amazingly fast. I sent the sample late last week and received an e-mail result as I was typing this post.

Not that I’m going to tell you what it was.