IT'S A GUY THING (OR IS IT?) MOM-TO-BE HAS HAD A BIG BELLUFUL OF STRANGERS' GUESSES.

Byline: JILLIAN O'CONNOR

Is it a boy or a girl? Does it matter?

Yes, because people just can't stand it when you won't find out the sex of your baby.

Family, friends and total strangers have decided it's their duty to inform me -- now in my eighth month of pregnancy -- that I ``have to'' get the answer; it's compulsory.

Which, of course, is not true, since there are no ultrasound laws on the books such as, ``I'm sorry, but we won't be able to tell you if the fetus's heart function looks adequate if we can't also advise you to paint the room pink with lots and lots of bunnies'' or ``You can't pre-register at the hospital unless we know whether you'll be needing a baseball cap or a humongous bow.''

It seems I have failed my child already by neglecting to stockpile blue pajamas with happy-faced trucks that say ``Vroom vroom'' or fuchsia onesies dotted with kitty-cats.

Call me old-fashioned, but I've never been the type to shake my gifts under the Christmas tree. In this age of instant gratification, opting to keep a fetus's gender unknown is one of the last great mysteries in life.

Some like to say my husband and I simply can't do this, since we won't know how to decorate the baby's room -- a funny thought indeed, since as of yet, there is in fact no baby's room. She/he (``Pat?'') will be shacking up with us until we find a bigger place, so I'm hoping the infant likes dark-green Roman blinds with white walls.

Judging from people's reactions, though, you'd think that humans hadn't been having babies for hundreds of thousands of years without pre-selected blue/pink color schemes. After all, what did newborns used to wear?

Ducks, apparently. Nothing but ducks.

I am a fan of aquatic birds, and a nice yellow is just fine, too, but no one informed me that manufacturers were in on this sonogram scheme, as well, making it a Carter's-issued mandate that babies without pre-assigned gender roles have nothing to fall back on but jaundiced-waterfowl designs.

Is the gender-neutral infant being punished? Most tots can pull off tiny-ducky prints just fine, but how many humans of any age look their best in garish shades of mustard?

< One aunt thinks it's a shame that the baby won't be in the pink/blue club because people won't be able to tell if it's a boy or a girl. But unless you want to date my newborn, I say all is well.

Babies are beautiful whether they're male or female, and, let's face it, they don't look a whole lot different in the face till junior high, at least.

There's no real point in assigning a gender identity before the newborn can even choose between the Teletubbies. And, after all, I'm not a big fan of puffy pink lace paradises full of ruffles, or a boy's den covered in steam shovels and aggressive-looking blue puppy-dogs.

So, to show I'm a splitter, I have registered for a few light-blue Pooh bodysuits. And now one relative is convinced I have a secret, that I know. And I do.

I know that it's completely insane that girls can't wear a nice shade of blue, especially when the alternative is Golden Arches yellow. (I now dream of finding sleepers in other rainbow colors with an elephant, a giraffe, a lion -- anything but another marigold mallard.)

Besides, I have seen -- in ample photographic evidence -- that I myself wore light blue as a baby. But that would be nothing short of scandalous now, especially since those bizarre bow-bands once used to mark baby girls are out of style, presumably because someone figured out that they made otherwise charming she-children look like space aliens. (What ever happened to a nice bonnet?)

On a recent vacation, we had plenty of unsolicited input from self-professed experts -- a hotel clerk, a shopkeeper and a beachgoer.

``It's a boy, you know!'' all said at different times in one day, making us a little nervous since we had picked out more girls' names than boys'.

Each had a different observation about my anatomy (oh, the joys of being pregnant and becoming public property!), and each claimed a high level of accuracy in their random guesses. (One even believed we must be from Canada, where, she presumed, they don't have such newfangled procedures as sonograms.)

< So, we let the amateur soothsayers have their fun, but does anyone really believe that if these methods were legit, doctors wouldn't have brought the visual signs of a boy baby vs. a girl baby down to an exact science?

But in a surprising turn, most physicians and ultrasound technicians don't seem to care much whether a couple is having a boy or a girl (unlike my friends, who've already set up a small betting pool).

Unfortunately, we've recently realized that even those medical professionals may not have taken note of the gender during the sonogram -- or, in fact, whether our baby does indeed have a definitive sex.

And with all due respect to the hermaphroditic community, we're not looking for that much of a surprise in the delivery room.

Meanwhile, my mom is convinced it's a girl. My grandmother-in-law thinks it's a boy. And us? We think it's ... a baby.

Bets now being accepted at jillian.oconnor(at)dailynews.com.

Jillian O'Connor, [phone]

jillian.oconnor(at)dailynews.com

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2 photos

Photo:

(1) no caption (woman's pregnant stomach with the word BOY)

(2) no caption (woman's pregnant stomach with the word GIRL)