Lucy and I were at one of her favorite play places on Sunday when a man asked me if she was a boy. No, she’s a girl. I mean, she was dressed completely in pink, which I thought would have been a dead giveaway.
“But she doesn’t have pierced ears!!!!!!!!!!” he exclaimed.
Because that, my friends, is apparently how you differenciate a boy toddler from a girl toddler.
Was searching for a GF’s blog and came across yours and started reading. Came across your post about your toddler dd dressed in pink and called a boy. Cross generations look for signs and signals of gender identity. Babies and little girls with pierced ears often in many cultures are signals for females even more than the univesal pink color for girls.
We had this happen many times too with our dd and after three times in one day, dh asked me if we could pierce her ears since he wanted “daddy’s little girl” to look like a girl. I was surprised since our dd was 13mos old and thought this a bit early for pierced ears. However, when I asked our ped, she said, it has become more popular to pierce newborns, infants and little girls ears because is safer with the newer ear piercing instruments than the traditional methods of using a needle, thread by the mother or grandmother.
I asked her advice and she was surprised that she encouraged me to go ahead and pierce both our YDD’s ears saying this was the best time when mommy could care for them. Afterwards she showed me a picture of her 8 mo dd with little pearl earrings! I was truly surprised at her response and told her I would think about it. Her reasoning was when mommy cared for them, there was never any problems during the healing time, but when little girls wanted them, they often failed to care for them properly and they got infected.
She gave me some suggestions for moms having their dd’s ears pierced, but I was still uncertain. I put them away and thought it would be awhile before I needed to read them. Dh hadn’t mentioned it for awhile so I thought my decision was made to wait. Wrong. Now I guess that I was tuned into to looking for earrings on babies and little girls too. Well, I began seeing other little babies including two in my playgroup turn up with earrings and realized how cute our little toddler would look with cute earrings.
I don’t know if you’d considered having Lucy’s ears pierced now, but after I did, dh said he was on board and the next thing you know I’m going with my mother and MIL to have Sandi’s ears pierced 🙂 I pulled out my ped’s tips found someone experienced and took her to Piercing Pagoda. It was so much easier than I thought and she looked adorable and never had problems and has never been called a boy despite the color of her clothing.
I’d say if you’ve remotely thought about having the other girls ears pierced, then your mommy intuition is telling now is better.
Write me an e-mail for our ped’s tips if you’d like them.
Angie
Angietune@hotmail.com