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Real Mom Talk: Finding out the Sex of my Baby
August 5, 2014 7:16 pm | by

“When are you finding out?”1347

 It’s the question everyone asks as soon as they find out you’re pregnant. They want to know when you’ll find out if the baby is a boy or a girl. 

But what if you don’t want to find out? When you announce that, people are surprised- why wouldn’t you want to know? There are lots of reasons to find out before birth or not to, but here was the thought process that went into each of our decisions…

With our first child, my husband really wanted to know. He said he didn’t like yellow or green. I thought this was silly since we were planning on having more kids and having neutral clothes would be nice. But, I didn’t feel so strongly about not finding out that I would argue, so I was on board. We had the tech write it down and opened it together to find out. It was nice to be just the two of us and it confirmed what I thought: that we were having a boy. 

We knew that my husband would be in Afghanistan when our second would be born, without any chance of being home for the birth. This time I felt really strongly about NOT finding out the sex of the baby. In my head I thought that the motivation of finding out if it was a boy or a girl might just be the little extra I needed to get through labor and delivery without my husband standing next to me. That ended up being at least a little bit true, so I was happy with our decision.

When you have two boys already and are having a third, everyone around you wants you to have a girl. I didn’t necessarily feel the same way. And I didn’t want to spend the second half of my pregnancy having people congratulate me for having a girl, like the first two had been consolation prizes, or pity me for having a boy, when I would really be thrilled with that. I figured that those thoughts would be less likely to be expressed once the kid was actually here (turns out, I was wrong about that one). But it was nice to wave off those kinds of comments with a “we’re not finding out” before our third was born.

Finally, with our fourth, I was just so very sure that I was having another boy that I didn’t think it would matter to find out. Plus, let’s be honest- when you’re on your fourth baby, people aren’t as excited as when it’s your first (which is totally fair). So I felt like not knowing if the baby was a boy or a girl made people a little more invested in the kid. Ha! I was right about both having another boy and having people excited to see if their guess was correct. I love being right.

 So, did you find out the sex of your baby before birth? Did it annoy people that you didn’t find out? That you did? Anyone have a great story about being told one thing during an ultrasound but at birth- oops- it turned out to be the other? We want to hear from YOU!

About the Author

Claire is an Army wife that may not have been cut out for homemaking. Follow her adventures as she, her husband (Sergeant Handsome), their three sons and two dogs try to keep it together over on her personal blog, The Half-Hearted Housewife, where love means never having to do the dishes.

Comments

2 Comments

  • margret said...
    August 6, 2014 at 11:29 am

    No we didn’t find out. My husband and I thought, if we were supposed to know the gender before the child is born, God would have made the woman’s belly see through and/or have a window.

  • Tiffany Robinson said...
    August 5, 2014 at 8:53 pm

    With our first, we decided to wait until the birth. I really felt like it was going to be a boy, and I was right. Being the first grandchild on both sides of the family, people were alittle bummed that we weren’t finding out the gender. They didn’t give us a hard time about it though. I was really happy with the decision because we knew we wanted more, so neutral clothing was handy. It also helped me to not fear the delivery. I was too focused on the outcome, finding out if I had a son or daughter. Baby #2 was also a surprise, which was also fun (BOY). Baby #3 was due when two sister-in-laws were also expecting (Both first time pregnancies and decided not to find out the gender), so for once I thought it would be fun to find out the gender. We ended up deciding on our third boy name pretty early, but by the time labor started my husband had grown tired of it and changed the name. So that made me hesitant to find out the gender for baby #4, but we did. This time we had a hard time deciding on any boy name. Yep, four boys….so far….. But I think if there is a next time, I’m gonna keep the gender a surprise. The experience is more fun that way.