BY PAM LOBLEY

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

NOW THAT'S FUNNY

Parents, good news. Now you can choose the gender of your baby. All it takes is money. And lots of it.

As fertility treatments have become more advanced and effective, a side business has emerged. Using techniques developed to help women conceive or avoid genetic abnormalities, doctors can now almost guarantee you a baby in the gender of your choice.

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is available in the United States, but is illegal for non-medical reasons in Canada, Australia and the U.K. As reported on Slate.com, the process is very expensive and doesn’t always work the first time. Because it involves in-vitro fertilization, it can take a few tries to get the desired outcome, which can eventually cost tens of thousands of dollars. Gender selection is a booming business, raking in at least $100 million every year.

And when we choose – we choose a girl.

While many cultures in the rest of the world – China or India, for example – show a boy bias, we in the United States prefer girls. The Slate.com piece states that girls seem to be the overwhelming choice of American parents who opt for gender selection.

I always imagined that I would have a girl. Like me, I figured, she would like ballet, and reading, and the color pink. We would have fun going to lunch and shopping together.

I have two boys. They hate shopping. Don’t even get me started on how they feel about ballet.

And for good measure, they don’t like to read either. I know some boys do, but mine don’t. Perfect.

But having boys has proven way more fun than I ever imagined, and if I could magically choose to have another baby, I might just choose a boy. I know girls are wonderful, too, because well, I AM a girl, and I’m wonderful. But girls don’t usually burp the alphabet, and, surprisingly, I’ve grown to enjoy hearing that.

My boys do not care AT ALL what they wear on the first day back to school. They don’t need new backpacks, unless the old ones are falling apart. In fact, even if they old one IS falling apart, they sometimes still want it.

My older son buzzes his hair twice a year, and that’s the extent of his hair care. My boys each have two pairs of shoes: sneakers and dressy sneakers. My boys constantly tell me how pretty I am and that I don’t need make up. They know how to fix stuff, they open the door for me, they lift heavy stuff for me. The older one is taller than I am now, so he reaches stuff for me.

As for things we do together: they love to go to lunch. LOVE IT. They can eat a restaurant out of business. We play tennis, we go to the theatre, we ride bikes, we’ve been skiing. They like to cook. They are really noisy and funny. They do this weird wrestling thing where you think they’re going to kill each other but actually it’s just how they enjoy themselves.

Before I had boys, I might have said I would prefer girls. I’m glad I didn’t have a choice. Too much control takes the fun out of life.

Pam Lobley writes the “Now That’s Funny” column. Check out her blog: Better Living Through Chaos! Follow her on Twitter @plobley.

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