Did you want to know the gender of your child?
 

My wife and I are expecting our first towards the end of October and we just had the ultrasound where they can usually tell if it is a boy or a girl. We elected to get the news we are expecting a girl but I have a coworker who is also expecting and just had an ultrasound and has no desire to know the gender.

Did you or do you want to know the gender of the child before birth? If not, why not?

I couldn't wait to find out in both cases,I wanted to shop,and I wanted to shop hard. Boy's cant wear pink,ya know? Knowing the sex of my babies helped me to better prepare for them.It was coming as is either way,sooner seemed better than later,and I was so ready for my girls because of finding out.

B.T.W. Congrats Daddy!

I wanted to know both times also. My ex and I couldn't wait to get the nursery going.

congrads first off, the missus and I did not want to know the sex, but near the end of the pregnacy and during the labour..etc all i cared about was health and making sure everything went well. forgot all about it really. although i should tell you my friend was expecting twins, twin boys.....well his daughters are about 2 yrs and doing great. doctors are not always right. most times they are but not always....all his pink nursey items are still in storage.:D

oh forgot to add that your going to get loads of advice from people over the next couple of months. and here is my advice as my daughter is now 11 weeks old. when people tell you that you should get all the sleep you can. do it. sleep like a hibernating bear. ;) :p

I elected not to...It didnt matter to me either way...I bought all the "pre clothes" in blues, greens, yellows, and whites. The only clothing I had for a new born that wasnt unisex was the dress I'd come home from the hospital in....fourtantely I had a girl..but I did have a back up outfit in case she was a boy. Also we lived in a rented house at the time of her birth and knew we would be moving shortly after (because of the way the lease timing was) so we chose to do the nursery in the new place as opposed to doing it twice and by that time we knew what we had.

I always told people if god wanted me to know the sex before hand my belly button would turn pink or blue :p

and the sleep thing...my daugther is almost 11 and the last nite I slept all nite long was the nite I went to bed at 11 pm and woke up the next morning at 7am in labor :lol:

yes, but I already knew it was going to be a boy- just a simple feeling and desire, and soon after that, a dream that revealed all.

We found out.

My reasoning - I wanted to know what color to paint the room.

I never felt bad about the decision for a minute. I don't like surprises.


Being a daddy is the most wonderful thing ever. Congrats!!

We did ... for all the obvious reasons. Our first ... clothes, nursery, etc.

BTW, it was pretty obvious what the gender was. We had to get one of those high-grade ultrasounds because there was some health concerns. 8lbs 13 oz :)

I did. Mrs. O'Rights did not. So, the ultrasound technician wrote the "answer" on a post-it note, and sealed in inside of an envelope. I opened it...looked...and put it back in the envelope.

We literaly didn't make it to the elevator before Val was pestering me about what "it" was. I wouldn't tell her, but I gave her the envelope and told her that it was up to her whether she wanted to look or not. We got home, and she reasoned to herself that if she just happened to hold the envelope upside down, and the note just happened to fall out where she could see it...then her curiosity and her conscience could be satisfied. Alas...post-it notes, being what they are, stuck to the inside of the envelope and wouldn't fall out, no matter how hard she shook it.


I've never seen an envelope rended so fast, or in so many pieces, in all of my life. :)

Curiosity. Gets ya every time. ;)

First of all high congradulations Kids are great I have two of them I found out what both were Im just impaitent though

Congratulations!

I have never had a kid, so I can't speak from firsthand experience.

However, when I was born, my parents were just about to fill out the birth certificate with the name "Ben Homer (last name here)" until the doctor told them it was actually a girl. I was supposed to be a boy.

That sounds like something I would do! :lol:

Two kids and did not know either time. Makes the delivery seem like a bigger event. Either way is fine.

edit: pls 2 see my post below, fanx.

Didn't really want to know and didn't find out... No real reason other than I like surprises.

First of, Congrats! Being a parent is great, most of the time. We've had 4 children and we found out for the 2 one and the third, except they weren't sure for the third one, and I said what it was going to be, and I was wrong.

We didn't for the first because we wanted to be surprised, and not for the last since we had a girl and 2 boys already, so it was a surprise as well.

Echoing the congrats already offered.

Here's my story with regards to sonographic details revealing the sex.

I wanted to know as soon as possible. My wife wanted to be surprised on delivery day.

At one point during the sonogram...there it was plain as day. I knew instantly exactly the sex of our little girl, and the sonographer all coy like, started to play:

"Well I think I have pretty good idea what the sex of your baby will be. Do you want to know?"

"No!" says my wife.

"I know already, I just saw the imagine of that child as if a camera was filming a person sitting in a transparent chair from the floor. It is so obvious." I said.

"What? I want to know too then!" offers the missus, quickly changing her tune.

The sonographer then looks at me like I had just revealed the secret to an age old magic trick and said:

"What do you think it is, then?"

"It's a girl. Three distinct lines, and neither a twig or berries to be seen."

She got a chuckle out of that and said:

"That's what I think too."

Then my wife starting bawling. I think she probably would have either way :)

Anyway, the moral of my story is, to me it was a surprise to find out at 16 weeks. Just like it would have been a surprise to find out at 42 weeks.

As it turns out J8earette jr came at 25 weeks...and still managed to surprise us all :)

She's doing ok, for a 9 week old, whose not even supposed to be born for another month.

Congrats again,

-bear

Thanks for the congratulations and best wishes all!

Interesting answers and reasoning - some great stories.

A few points:

1 - All my wife wanted were boys, but for one reason or another, once she was pregnant, it ceased to matter. We chose for it to be a surprise, and it was great to be in that moment of the actual birth to find out the gender. (btw, it was a girl, and we love her....she's now 16 months old).

2 - Maybe i'm "forward thinking", but the whole idea of having to paint the nursery a certain color or dress the kid a certain way because of their gender is completely ludicrous to me. Half of my daughter's clothes are from the boys section (only place to get blue jeans or khaki pants). Blue=boy or Pink=girl is so old fashioned and backwards thinking it makes my head hurt. When my daughter was very young, she would wear blue sometimes, and women would always assume she was a he. They would say "it's a girl, she can't wear blue!" and my response would always be "you're a girl, so is your entire wardrobe pink?" The whole color thing is just so people can be lazy and have an instant identifier of your baby's gender.

3 - If you find out the gender of your baby via ultrasound, fine. That's cool. But I think it's creepy when couples announce the baby before it's born. One of my wife's friends sent out these birth announcements 3 months before the baby was born. We had to call to see if the baby was premature, but she wasn't. I just have this weird feeling that if you go about naming the kid and telling everyone you're having a girl named Jennifer Grace or whatever that if anything tragic were to happen during the birth, you've invested that much more into it.

4 - Again, do what you will, but I strongly advise anyone who finds out the baby's gender to not allow the baby's name to be an open discussion with everyone. In fact, don't tell anyone what you are even considering for names. Why? Everyone will tell you why it's a dumb name, why their name is better, and ultimately, you probably won't name the kid what you wanted to. My wife's family is hispanic and we knew they would have trouble pronouncing our daughter's name (which is Dutch) so we didn't tell them her name until she was born and the birth certificate was signed.

No offense, but maybe you've got some insensitive people around you. We have not "announced" a thing but if people ask we tell them it is apparently a girl. The first question is usually about names and we tell them what we are considering. No one has yet told us "that's a dumb name" or anything similar.

Luckily it hasn't happened to us, but we know plenty of people it has happened to.

Either way, as I said it was just my opinion. I think everyone should do whatever is right for them.

We chose not to find out with the first - a girl - and chose to find out with the second - also a girl. I really couldn't care less what I had, as long as my babies were healthy.

I wanted to be surprised.

So I asked the ultrasound tech.

I was surprised.

We didn't know until the day the little guy popped out. Lotsa fun. For all involved, adds a little suspense to the big day for all the family involved.

I have a son that is 9months now. When my wife and I went that day we were not sure if we wanted to know or not. We both decided that it would be easier if we did find out so we could go ahead and get everything we needed to get ready for the big change in our life. It really helped

My wife is not a girly-girl. She hates pink frilly things. Therefore, we didn't find out the gender until our child was born, so that if it was a girl, we wouldn't get all pink things at the baby shower. Turns out, he was male.

Another couple at the hospital had painted the room pink, and it turned out to be a boy. The dad was still in shock the next day (I never saw the mom).

Neither of us wanted to know... On the first one we didn't, and on the second one due to some complications that required an amnio we found out. We didn't want to find out, but there it was in the letter from the doc. Turned out there was good news in there from the amnio, so we didn't mind so much...

We didn't want miss out on the "It's a XXXX!" joy in the delivery room.

-smarm

We really wanted to know. Namely because it helped witht he baby registry and name choices. We tried to keep most of the clothes and everything gender neutral, but got a few little girl outfits when we found out. Don't rely too much on the Ultrasound though. I know a couple of people that were surprised at the birth of their child when it was not the sex they were told. As our ultrasound tech told us, "Don't go buying all pink clothes yet, because little boys are really good at hiding things."

I found out with my first child. (with another spouse) But me and my wife now are expecting a child in about a month. She decided that she wanted it to be a surprise so we have waited. Only draw back that she has experienced is everyone at her work all saying... oh you are carring high it is a girl.....oh your tummy is round it is a boy..... oh the 3rd moon of saturn is aligned with jupiter it is a girl... well you get my point. I know that is annoyed her at times, but hell she is pregnant it doesn't take much. But the waiting is almost over..... I CAN"T WAIT!

p.s. there is also having to pick 2 names!

We (my wife and I) had three and didn't know the sex of any of the three. To me it was just so much funner and exciting. We always picked out a girls name and a boys name.

I thought my mother in law was gonna bust a blood vessel because we would refuse to know. Oh she would get upset at us.

We found out on both our childern and both were correct. We're planners too.

Nope. I was gloriously surprised by my sons' penises in both cases! We didn't name the guys until after we help them in our arms -- I think we wanted to take everything "as is" from birth. We suffered a few miscarriages, and we wanted God to symbolically put that child in our arms before we made any assumptions about being parents.

As others have said - congratulations highthief. And as others have also said - now you will learn about sleep deprivation and the ensuing insanity. Good luck!

We found out for our first (Daniel) and plan to find out for #2. As j8ear said, it will be a surprise at 18 weeks just as much as it would at 40. And I'm not so sure about that name stuff - I named my boy after his uncle and grandfather and wasn't too concerned what anyone thought about it.

Good luck again!

We found out before that she was supposed to be a girl. Figuring Dr's can sometimes be wrong we still went with mostly neutral gender stuff but got a few frilly things too. I'm glad we found out early as I ended up having an emergency C-section and when they brought her out I was so drugged up and my arms tied down so I couldn't respond much. Learning at that point what she was mattered little. Just that she was ok was all that mattered. We still had names picked out for either gender too. Gender didn't matter at that much to us. We were glad to have her either way.

She's grown into a Daddy's girl. Just last week she was asking about what getting married means. I told her that she could get married when she was grown up and found a boy that she really loved and who loved her. She promptly said "Well I love Daddy." :D

We have 3 children. First born: didn't, second born: did. Having experienced both ways, we decided that ignorance was more exciting. So, for the third born, we didn't. I think we would not find out if we had another. For us, it's just more fun that way!

NEWSFLASH: god gives us the technology and intelligence to find out the sex of our children.

i am sick to death of all you people not finding out the sex of your kid. there is no logical, mark this, LOGICAL, reason for not finding out the sex.

i dont think i am vulcan here, but only for really subjective and retarded purposes do people make this unenlightened decision.

oh, we want to be the first to know before anyone else; oh, we dont care, just want a healthy baby; oh, my spouse and i are retarded freaks who want to keep information from getting out.

my wife and i have had four kids and found out immediately. it makes it very easy for you AND YOUR FAMILY. think of other people besides yourself you selfish bastards.

we have the technology. it is not invasive. it is not expensive. to find out adds to the love and preparation for the delivery. and for you people who feel there is a god, once again i will try to get throught to your fucked up and warped belief system: if god made human beings, and if god watches over human beings, and human beings get smart and develop technology, didnt god then want you to use the technology?

lets jump on board for the big win here people

cheeterbo, Wow you're harsh today.

I do agree I find it annoying when parents refuse to even find out the gender of their child. It's even more irksome when they find out but prefer to keep it a secret. For what purpose? I have never understood that. Just to irritate?? How about just ask people to commit to babysitting for ya - that can irritate them down the road. :P

Not everyone wants to find out, its a wonderful surprise to be handed your babe after 9 months of waiting. Everyone does things differently, and you could respect that, instead of criticizing them for not making the same choice as you.



As for me, we'll be finding out August sixth what this little one will be. This will be the only one we find out the sex for, there was no real reason why we choose to find out. When the moment comes and we're looking at our baby on the screen, it wouldn't bother me a bit if we couldn't see what sex he or she is. :) :icare:

Whoa!! I didnt know you were pregnant :eek::eek: Congrats!! :)