Let me begin by saying that patience is not one of my finer virtues. OK, it’s really not one of my virtues at all. I am as impatient as a puppy learning to “stay” in order to earn that yummy treat.
So, when given the option to find out the gender of my babies, what do you think I decided? That’s right, since the option was available, I wanted to know who and what I was carrying, ASAP.
Here’s what bugs me: There is a group of moms who look down on those of us who like to know what’s going on in there. They can protest and say it’s not true and they have no problem with parents who learn their babies’ gender before the birth, but the fact is that there is a decidedly uppity, holier-than-thou crowd who seem to equate gender discovery with, at the very least, semi-bad parenting.
If you’ve ever been on my side of the fence, you know exactly what I mean. You volunteer your coming little one’s gender in a conversation and earn a look and/or a comment such as, “But don’t you want to be surprised?!” Usually it’s the older ladies, the ones who didn’t have a choice during their pregnancies, who are the worst offenders, but I have been surprised by the number of moms my age or younger who radiate the same attitude, as if holding off until delivery earns them some extra good-parenting points or something.
I’m certainly not referring to every mom who decides to be surprised in the delivery room; I’m talking about a select few who clearly disapprove, like finding out the baby’s gender is tantamount to going to a fortune teller to have her look in the crystal ball for the answer. To those people, I want to point out the advantages of knowing your baby’s gender before he/she is born.
1. It’s STILL a surprise, whether you find out the sex four months before your baby is born or at delivery. So that whole, “Don’t you want to be surprised?” argument doesn’t jive at all.
2. You have the opportunity to bond even more with your developing little darling when you know whether you’re talking to a “he” or a “she.” It sure made a big difference for me, knowing I was thinking about and planning for a boy/girl rather than an “it.”
3. You can plan accordingly, from clothes to hand-me-downs to what color to paint the baby’s room.
4. Picking out names suddenly becomes a lot simpler.
I say, do what feels right for you and your partner. The key is respect, whether you agree with someone’s decision or not. There is no right or wrong choice here.
This advice is for me too, as I have a bad tendency to moan, “Oh, you’re not finding out??” and honestly mean it, which I suppose could be seen as a little less than tactful/respectful. I can hardly wait to know what other people are having, let alone myself.
Did you decide to find out your baby’s gender beforehand? Why or why not?
Love this! It’s so true. Although, I’ve been surprised during this pregnancy how many people have actually asked, “Do you know what it is?” I guess it’s just more common to know now! But the ones that don’t ask seem to look down on me when I tell them it’s a boy! If they really wanted to know, I would also tell them that if we didn’t know the sex of this baby, he would NEVER have a name! We had a hard enough time picking ONE name, let alone two! So butt out, people!
I’m in the “prefer to be surprised” group… but then, I’m a traditionalist in many ways, so that fits well with me. Also, I had planned home births, and we didn’t have insurance, so any ultrasounds we did would have been out-of-pocket, so spending $200 or so just to find out if it was a boy or a girl was not worth it. (I bought clothes at yard sales in both boy and girl, and eventually re-sold all the girl clothes, so it wasn’t that much expense for clothes. Had I been due in the spring or summer, I probably would have bought fewer clothes and done most of my clothes-shopping after the baby was born, but since I was due in Nov. the first time, and living in Chicago, I knew the yard-sales would not last long.)
Admittedly, I prefer for women not to find out — not that I think anything bad of them… just the “traditionalist” part of me, I guess — like opening up your Christmas gift a week or two early, then rewrapping it or something.
However, sometimes finding out can be a negative — if a woman has her heart set on a baby of one sex, and finds out it’s the “unwanted” or “less-wanted” sex, she may take longer to reconcile her feelings about the baby, than if she finds out after birth. Those labor and post-birth hormones tend to minimize any negative feelings about the sex of the baby, if found out after birth. Also, one other study I read of shows that when couples don’t know whether they’re having a boy or a girl, they tend to imagine the baby as a newborn more; but if they know the sex, they tend to skip over the trying newborn times and picture the child as older — a toddler, or even pre-K. The downside to that is, that when the baby does actually act like a newborn instead of the “little princess” or the “little man” they’d imagined, that makes it harder for the parents to deal with.
When my sister chose not to find out the sex of her babies, her best friend (who is very outspoken anyway) made no bones about the fact that she thought that was ridiculous — for much of the same reasons you mentioned above — clothes, painting the nursery, buying baby shower presents, etc. And actually the last time, the doctor forgot that she didn’t want to find out the sex of the baby, and at a routine late-term u/s let it slip. My sister was not happy, but what can you do at that point?
We had a late-term u/s with my first baby, because the midwife thought she heard two heartbeats, and she couldn’t attend twin home-births, so it was vital to find out whether there were two babies in there or just one. So we did find out the sex, about a week and a half before he was born. My husband, who had previously said he wanted a girl (but strongly thought, as had I, that the baby was a boy), was absolutely thrilled when he found out we were having a boy — I’ve never seen such a joyful look on his face! But then, it did seem kinda like a let-down at the birth, to say, “Oh, yeah, boy, knew that!” The second time, I was the first person to know the baby’s sex. That was good.