Before I go getting myself in trouble, I was hoping to consult about pronouns. Sydney and I aren’t going to find out the sex of the child before the birth, so it’s difficult edging around gendered pronouns when we talk about our babe. In our work, I’ve opted for male pronouns when I write and Sydney follows the standard in his field, which is to use only female pronouns. I figure that between the two of us we have it covered 🙂 But I don’t want to mislead anyone who might overhear me say “When he arrives . . .” I am not willing to say “they” when I am only expecting one (as far as I know), I don’t want to call our child “it” like the little alien it currently looks like, and I also put my foot down when it comes to using some sort of pet name instead (“When our little love-bump arrives . . .”). Do I need to find an alternative to “he,” and if so, any suggestions?
Erin
Alan Schmierer
How about “the baby”? Or “das Pennerchen”?
-L
how about rutabaga? or little kumquat?
–heidi
How about “Tumnus.”
Sorry – I’ve already got a pet name stuck in my head, from my recent experience with a hummingbird. This baby is my little honeybird…
I think your mom wins, though I like Tumnus… it sounds like tummy too, so its clever.
Yes, though that still leaves me with the pronoun problem. I mean, there’s a reason we have pronouns, right? It’s because we don’t want to have to say “Honeybird feels good today. Honeybird didn’t give me much of a chance to sleep. Honeybird is cute . . .” etc. Being able to mix it up would be nice 🙂
Erin
Oh, I thought by alternative, you meant something less cheesy than lovebump, but not a pronoun.
In that case… I’d rotate pronouns. Or you could call it “thing” — as in “ack, thing is kicking”
–heidi