To find out baby’s gender but not tell anyone

[JemimaTiggywinkle]

I’m pregnant and want to find out the baby’s sex/gender. I want to find out because I just like to know things. I will try to challenge my own biases and won’t be imagining a future of ballet classes for a girl and football for a boy etc.

My question is, would it be weird to find out ourselves and not tell anyone else?

My reason for considering this is that I don’t want to get loads of gendered pink/blue/ daddy’s little princess babygro type presents. I don’t want people to decide what baby’s future should be based on their gender, before they’re even born.

Also, MIL has made general comments in the past about how if she ever has a granddaughter she hopes she wouldn’t be as big and tall as grandson (my nephew) because it’s “not nice” for a little girl. I want to avoid comments like that.

To be clear, we would tell people after the baby was born... I guess I’m just hoping to hold of the inevitable for a little while.

Also I know there is nothing wrong with choosing to dress your baby in pink/blue etc, but it’s my preference not to.

Oh and @VinylDetective wanting other people to not find out or share the sex of their baby to please you isn't 'old-fashioned', just controlling

We didn't find out but people kept saying they thought we had and were lying. One of my colleagues kept trying to catch me out! I'm an awful liar and loved looking at both girl/boy stereotypical clothes which I can imagine not doing if I knew for sure, as much as I try to avoid it. Depends how good you are at keeping secrets.

We’re very old fashioned and really didn’t want to know until the baby arrived.

Errr, like it's about you-?!

It’s an opinion. 🤷‍♀️

Don't tell anyone. But my two children were born in the days before baby scans were around., so non of this gender reveal and baby showers palaver.

@aSofaNearYou

If only my stepson and his wife had done this. We’re very old fashioned and really didn’t want to know until the baby arrived. There’s another baby due in a few weeks and they’ve done it again. I’m very grateful you had to wait until the birth when I had mine.

Bit of a tangent but I would really, really love to hear someone explain why they would feel this way when it isn't even their child, because I just don't get it at all!

Agreed - what difference does it make to you ? I feel this is extremely self centred

We did that for similar reasons as you OP, it was quite fun seeing everyone making guesses and we referred to the baby sometimes as he or she just to mess with them . Mil wasn't very happy though as according to her she couldn't shop anything for lo without knowing the gender...

Personally, I find it annoying if the to-be-parents find out and tell people they have found out and dont tell anyone girl or boy, like a pp said "smug"

Fine if they say they dont know, no problem at all with that (yeah, i get that its a bit weird)

My sister done this recently as she didn’t an influx of pink or blue clothes, she wanted to buy her own things and announce it at the birth. I found out and told everyone mostly from excitement, and because I worried people would be more interested in knowing the sex than seeing my babies, but if I had more children I’d keep it private. No one NEEDS to know anything so don’t feel like you’re unreasonable to want to do this, your baby your choices.

We lied and said we didn’t know.

The truth was I didn’t want to know either, but if anyone knew, I needed to be privy to the information. I would have just skipped the sonogram so that information remained unknown, but I actually needed multiple scans for medical reasons. Once we knew that had to happen, we found out the sex.

If only my stepson and his wife had done this. We’re very old fashioned and really didn’t want to know until the baby arrived. There’s another baby due in a few weeks and they’ve done it again.

I hope you didn’t say this to them though? Parents shouldn’t have to constantly be on edge trying not to let the gender slip just because someone else wants a ‘surprise’?

I knew the sex of my 2nd DD but my DH didn’t (nor did anyone else)
We had a surprise with our oldest and DH wanted one again while I wanted to know.

I never told him or anyone the sex (i just said we didn’t know) and we still decided on a boys and a girls name, clothes were a mix of my oldest Dd’s And my nephews and the cot was set up in our room.

We have 9 weeks to go. We have found out what we are having but haven't told anyone. This is baby no 4 for us and all the others we didn't find out until they were born. When people ask did we find out we say yes but we are not telling anyone that it's just for us. Even my eldest 9yo DD is just used to it now, initially she was annoyed we didn't tell her

Instead of keeping it a secret, why not start educating your relatives on gender stereotypes and how you plan to parent and dress your child now?

There's no benefit in hiding it being a girl now, then as soon as she's born MIL starts dropping round the frilly dresses

Politely but firmly say "she won't be wearing that thanks" and give it back. Not hard. Compared to the rest of parenting, telling MIL to fuck off with the stereotypes is a piece of cake

We didn't find out with either of ours but made it clear from the start that I'm not a pink/blue person so wouldn't be raising my child as such, we were not expecting gifts but if anyone felt the need then something bright would be appreciated :)

Tbh, in the kindest way, no one bar you really cares about the sex of your baby. It doesn't make much difference to any one else so please don't stress about other people's perceptions.

Politely but firmly say "she won't be wearing that thanks" and give it back. Not hard.
‘Not hard’? Rejecting a gift sounds really hard to me!

It might be easier to be upfront beforehand: “Obviously you don’t need to get anything at all but in case you were thinking of buying anything for the baby please just be aware that we’re planning to dress her gender neutrally - so nothing very stereotypically girly please.”

We didn't find out with either baby. I loved not knowing. It was the best surprise ever.

It also meant we got lots of neutral gifts. It also stopped me buying anything too gendered before baby came. This meant we had tons of stuff we could reuse for baby 2 (we have one of each)

If one of my kids was doing the whole 'I've got a secret, but I'm not going to tell you' I would explain how irritating it is to make it clear that you are deliberately excluding someone from your 'secret' and I would have no sympathy if their friends/siblings didn't want to be a part of it.

I feel much the same about adults doing similar, and am really struggling to understand the mindset of someone who does that to their own child.

Find out or not find out it's up to you but probably better not to tell people that you know the sex of the baby but aren't telling anyone.

When my children were born we weren't asked if we'd like to know the sex of the baby.

Somehow I still managed not to dress my baby girls in pink, ever, nor my son in blue.

We got some very frilly pink things for one of my DDs. I either took them back to the shop and exchanged them, if I knew where they were from, or put them to one side to be given away.

Oh whoops, I meant to post that on another thread (also on the sex of unborn babies), will ask MN to delete

*We were given some very frilly pink things, that should be.

@Hardbackwriter I did find your comments very interesting though, so thank you. Can you send me a link to the other thread? I’d be interested in reading it.

I don't get the idea of finding out the sex and then not telling other people, it's all just a bit