Calling my unborn baby they/them

[Irish24]

I am keeping the gender a surprise and the amount of people that are confused when I refer to the baby as they/them’ is starting to aggravate me. I don’t like referring to them as ‘it’ or just ‘baby’. They/them is a word and has been going around for centuries. It also is a singular pronoun and does not always mean multiple. My friends say they can’t get their head around it. I don’t understand. I know they/them is a controversial topic these days and more people are perhaps finding out the gender. I still don’t find it confusing at all and it never even occurred to me that it would be. Anyone else experienced this or am I being over dramatic here? It’s just tiresome having to constantly explain to people, I don’t know the gender so that’s why I’m calling the baby ‘them/they’

I can’t believe I didn’t notice this before 😂

We do. People are trying to make this a trans issue. It isn’t.

A 'pronoun person' oh fuck off 😂😂

That doesn’t seem very necessary.

That’s wrong with a new mother “yapping on about breastfeeding” on a parenting forum?

'Politicised pronouns' you people are too much 😂

I don’t get why everyone jumps on the “them/they” as a modern thing either. It’s standard if you don’t know the gender of someone. Eg. “Someone called about the boiler today” “oh really, what did they say?”
Or when the name isn’t clearly male or female. “Alex/Sam asked you to email them back”.
I’m also pregnant with an unknown sex baby and usually refer to them as “Baby” but look at what I have just written in this very sentence… so I clearly use “them” too because, you know, it’s the English language.

An example from the stage and now film: from the song Popular in Wicked:
"When someone needs a makeover I simply have to takeover and show them exactly what they need"

Back to the actual topic, I just used he for DC1 as I was convinced I was having a boy (she was not), and we would sometimes literally switch pronouns between he and she mid sentence with DC2.

You mean the phrase ‘the baby’s arrival?’ - I used that example because you were going on about how you would never use ‘they’ for someone who is present. But if you’d talk about a baby’s arrival then surely they’re not present? So if they’re not present, then ‘they’ is fine then, according to you?

Wow, look at all those ‘they’s!

Let me rephrase without theys:

’But if you’d talk about a baby’s arrival then surely the baby is not present? So if the baby is not present, then ‘they’ is fine then, according to you?’ Very clunky!

I refuse to believe the mental replies to this are serious. You cannot be real people they cannot be real thoughts. They just can't be.

You're right far too many 'baby's in there

I think 'it' is fine, but I've become used to referring to people as 'it' in Finnish because for some reason in spoken language the he/she pronoun is used for animals and the it pronoun is used for people (as opposed to the other way round in written Finnish) and I find that creeping into my English now too

People are perturbed, because it sounds like you're into gender bollocks.

I'm not sure what group of people you are assigning me to from my factual observation that the use of pronouns has become a matter of politics? Are you not aware that there has been a drive to encourage people to deliberately use 'they' in place of he or she until we are informed of an individual's preferred pronouns? And that this is part of a political campaign on behalf of transgender people?

That’s fine but it’s not for everyone. They / them is grammatically correct and doesn’t dehumanise in the way that ‘it’ does. Someone might assume on one occasion that there are twins but once that’s explained they won’t do it again unless they’re hard of thinking.

To try and connect this somehow with the trans issue is very odd.

Mumsnet is a totally appropriate place to come to talk about breastfeeding though. In fact, it can be very supportive. I hope OP isn’t put off asking for help if she needs it.

It’s the correct use of the pronoun and absolutely fine, but it will sound confusing to people because of the recent impact of gender ideology and their overuse of they/them to indicate non-binary.
Basically the usage and meaning of the pronoun as a singular has now been changed.

We didn’t know the sex and I don’t remember having considered this at all - I think we just said ‘baby’ most of the time.

Shakespeare. A Comedy of Errors, Act IV.

There's not a man I meet but doth salute me
As if I were their well-acquainted friend

also, apparently 75 uses in Pride and Prejudice.

@pearbottomjeans when talking about babies, arrival is used in a specific sense. We
know it doesn’t mean someone unknown is arriving from a place some distance away, on a plane, in a car, by foot. A baby is always present, the mother feels kicks etc.

Some people are so riled up about the idea that anyone might use ‘they’ to imply that they are gender fluid, that they have become slightly unhinged about other uses of the word ‘they’ too.

It really doesn’t, it sounds like OP is using the English language correctly. If someone wants to conflate that with ‘gender bollocks’ that’s 100% on them.