What to Expect When You're Expecting II

"Gran-Gran!"

The elderly Water Tribe woman met her granddaughter with her father and a brilliant smile as the Fire Lady pushed through the door. "Oh, I just heard the news, Katara. I'm so happy for you!" Gran said.

"My little girl," Hakoda hugged her, "all grown up."

"I'm going to be a great-grandmother!" Gran-Gran burbled, tears brimming in her eyes. "Oh! Oh! I have to start making seal-skin onesies!"

Katara laughed. "I don't think we're going to need anything that warm here in the Fire Nation, Gran."

The old woman looked taken aback. "Nonsense. They have winters here, too. Besides, it's part of your heritage. You do want your baby to grow up know his people, don't you?"

"Or her," Katara quipped automatically. After her fight with Zuko, she was very conscious of making any assumptions of what her baby would be.

But Gran's mind had been made up. "It's a him," she insisted, lifting her chin. "I can tell by the way you're walking it's going to be a boy."

"The way I'm…?" Katara looked down at her feet as though they would have the words "It's a Boy!" stamped on them.

"I've always thought it was in the slump of a woman's back," Hakoda said, eyeing his daughter's erect posture. "When your mother was pregnant with Sokka, her spine was shaped like a question mark."

Katara figured that was only because Sokka was clueless.

(Somewhere in the palace, Toph cried, "Ba-dump-bump-shing!" and began to wonder if she was starting to go slowly mad, like Bumi and all great Earthbenders seemed to.)

"No, no, you're all wrong," Pakku pushed aside the curtain he'd been hiding behind. Gran-Gran glared over at him, seeming equally surprised to find out he'd been lurking in her room. "The way to know if it's a boy is by how her breath and flatulence smell. Burning suet—it's a girl; bad meat—boy."

"Eww!" The Fire Lady recoiled in disgust.

"Go on," the old man insisted to Hakoda, "take a whiff."

Hakoda and Gran-Gran both bent at the waist.

"I am not gassy!" Katara jumped out of their smelling range, avoiding their nosy…uh, noses.

"Don't hold it in, Katara," Gran-Gran warned. "It's not good for the baby."

"I'm the Fire Lady!" Katara said harshly. "I don't…I don't fart in public!"

Gran-Gran's lips lifted. "You'll have to, trust me. Especially when you start eating all the pregnancy foods I'm going to whip up…"

"Oh, no!" Katara groaned. "No pregnancy diets! Zuko has this long, stupid list of things I can and can't eat…" She produced the latest list. She'd already thrown it out five times that day, but somehow, someone was slipping it back onto her person unnoticed.

Damn Zuko's sexy ninja skills. Apparently, her husband didn't want her to forget what was expected of her.

Gran read through the list and frowned. "Oh, pish, this is ridiculous." The old woman crumpled the list up and tossed it in the fireplace.

A beam of hope spread through Katara's chest. Finally! Someone who agreed with her! But then Gran said, "Those won't do you any good…especially if you're going to have a Waterbender…"

Hope died a quiet death in her heart as her grandmother started listing out the things Katara would have to eat to produce a strong son of the Water Tribe. A strangled noise of frustration rose from Katara's tight throat. She didn't care what she had, as long as the baby was healthy and happy. That everyone and their hog-monkey wanted some hand in "making" this child infuriated her. She wasn't a factory—they couldn't customize the baby like a war balloon!

"…Turtle-seal Jell-o, and three cups of koalatter blood every day," the old woman was saying. "And you need to stay off your feet—you don't want to jostle the baby too much!"

"And no Waterbending!" Pakku insisted. "You'll make the baby moody like the tides if you agitate him too much!"

Arnook popped out of nowhere to add his two cents. "And keep out of the sun! It will make the child's blood too hot."

"And whatever you do," Bato piped in, "Don't talk to Momo."

"What?" Bewildered, the Waterbender asked, "Why?"

"Well, obviously because talking to flying lemurs will make the baby silly."

The others nodded their heads in grave agreement.

"Listen to your elders, Katara," her father intoned sagely as the others commiserated over their various pregnancy stories. "They know what's best for the baby..."

As if she could avoid hearing them or their nonsensical advice as she stormed out with the whole Water Tribe delegation following her, berating her for walking, slouching, frowning, swearing, kicking things and not eating enough because obviously she was too thin, and did she think making a baby was a joke and didn't she want to be a good mother and give her child the best start possible?

Katara bit her tongue, refraining from whipping out the contents of a nearby flower vase at her self-appointed babysitters. Of course she wanted to listen to her elders, please them, and produce a happy, healthy baby. And of course she respected Water Tribe traditions. But could the guilt or pressure possibly get any worse?

A blur of movement passed in front of her eyes and she felt the ghostly brush of an all-too-familiar hand across her chest as a new copy of the Firebender's pregnancy diet was tucked into her breast band. She withdrew the list and stared at it angrily.

Damn that sexy ninja husband of hers!

Not talking to monkeys/lemurs courtesy of HeavenlyMaron. Seriously, a lot of this old wives' stuff is real Chinese pregnancy crap that I swear is just made up. No bananas--your kid will be yellow (at which point I raise my hand and say "uhh...I'm already yellow..."). No watermelon--too cold. No snake meat--it'll make the baby scaly. You eat lots of pigs feet and chicken/ginseng/wine soup. And eggs. Lots and lots of eggs.