‘Mad About’ Baby’s Coming, but Will It Be a Boy or Girl?

It’s no wonder so many people are obsessed with sex, Paul Reiser says. “The minute you’re born, that’s the first place everyone is looking. You have a heart and lungs and nose and a nice big head, but no one says, ‘Look, a baby with two beautiful arms.’ It’s all about, ‘Is it there or not?’ ”

And it’s the same around the offices of Reiser’s sitcom, “Mad About You.” Just days before Helen Hunt’s Jamie Buchman is supposed to give birth to her and fictional husband Reiser’s first child, no one had been able to decide whether the kid would be a boy or a girl.

The climactic scene, filmed last month for airing on NBC Tuesday, was shot both ways. Since then, Reiser and the show’s producers have been debating which version to use.

“In life you don’t get to choose, so maybe we should just flip a coin,” Reiser said in an interview last week. “But I don’t think it’s going to make much of a difference either way. We’re not going to wake up next season with a precocious 4-year-old. The season will pretty much chart live time, and so the baby will mostly be a blanket that gets diapered occasionally.”

Reiser, who in real life has an 18-month-old son, said he and his colleagues have tried to attack the issue from every angle--from what feels right, to what would be funniest, to how each choice would affect colors--clothing, interior decorating and the like.

They have even screened the episode for test audiences and asked them to choose boy or girl. The response always comes up about 50-50.

“These are two very popular groups,” Reiser said.

No matter the baby’s gender, Reiser, who previously swore in interviews that his character would not have a baby because it sounded like what every bad TV series in history did when the producers ran out of fresh story lines, insists the show will not change.

“We’re not going to become what our viewers might fear: baby heavy,” he vowed. “After five years, this felt very organic, like it was what these characters would truly do in real life, and to avoid the issue would have been false. But the show is going to continue to be what it has been: a fun look at life with these two people. Except now the baby will always be around somewhere.”

In any case, the “big secret” gives NBC a hook to promote the season-ending blessed event, even if the answer matters little. Reiser said with a laugh that there was no pressure to try to top “Ellen’s” big-sweeps month revelation by having Jamie give birth to, say, a hermaphrodite.

“I can guarantee you this,” he said. “It will definitely be one of the big two.”

* The hourlong season finale of “Mad About You” airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on NBC (Channel 4).