Boy/ girl - why do people care so much?

[pinkwaffles]

We've decided not to find out the sex of our baby until s/he is born. It's our first and probably only.

I appreciate I'm probably in the minority but I have been fascinated by people's reactions to this.

'How will you be able to buy anything?' being a big one.

'You won't be able to have a gender reveal!' being another.

Honestly - I don't believe in gender reveals or pink for girls/ blue for boys anyway - but even if I did - there are other colours!

I don't think my newborn is really going to care whether they are dressed in 'gender appropriate' clothes, and I'm certainly not fussed, in fact I'd rather they weren't.

It's just winding me up partly because my mum is desperate to know and is pressuring us to change our minds.

What do you think? To me it's kind of the least important thing - as long as I have a healthy baby, I'm genuinely happy and I cannot relate to the 'which would you prefer?' question. How can you have a preference before they are even here and you can't possibly know who they are going to be?

I completely agree with you.

First time mum to be here, having a girl. The most common question I've been asked is "what did you want, boy or girl". I couldn't have cared less, I'm just grateful to be pregnant with a healthy baby. Second most common comment is, bet you can't wait to dress her in lovely frilly dresses. Actually no, she'll be dressed in baby grows or whatever she's most comfortable in and then whatever clothing I fancy when she's a little bigger.

People seem to fixate on the sex/ gender and the associated stereotypes still, which battles me!

We aren't finding out and didn't with our last two. It gives me something to push for in the end, I say!
My favourite answer to the 'what would you prefer?' question is 'a healthy one' . Shuts people up pretty quickly, especially when they know my history...I used to be more blunt and say 'for it to come out breathing' when we had our next after our stillbirth because I was so peed off by the question but I've toned it back a bit now for this one!

I was very much the same first time round. I couldn't believe that ever other mum at pregnancy yoga (maybe 15 others) had found out the sex and having a 'surprise' is seemingly so rare.
Stick to your guns, it was lovely to find out at the birth.

Having said that, second time round we do feel the temptation a bit more. Just for practicalities (am I washing all my girl clothes or just picking out the neutral ones). We are wondered if being able to tell my 2 year old that they're having a brother or a sister would help them process (probably not, just a screming newborn intruder at the end of the day 😅).

I found out because to me it was just another piece of available information about my baby, like head circumference etc.

However, we didn’t tell anyone the sex for a while because I knew I’d be annoyed at the gendered responses, and yup, they were incredibly annoying. I have two older SILs of whom I’m very fond, but I had never previously realised the depth of their obsession with ‘having a girl’. (Both had kept having babies until they ‘got their girl’.) Suddenly they were commiserating over DS being a boy as if I’d just discovered some terrible medical issue, and kept saying how ‘brave’ I was being, when in fact I’d had no sex preference at all. People are very weird.

I have to say I personally don’t get the ‘surprise’ thing. I mean, it’s roughly 50/50. It’s not terribly surprising either way.

I found out for ease really! We were finding it quite hard to agree a boy’s name so it was helpful to know if we needed to try harder there or could forget about it. I’m not one to go into frilly pink ruffles for a girl but properly gender neutral clothes are actually pretty hard to find beyond newborn, and I wanted to get organised with 6 months of stuff, plus a lot of neutral stuff is beige which is really not my taste or white which is really impractical stain wise. I don’t personally get the surprise thing, there’s only 2 possible outcomes and the baby is going to have it’s own personality anyway, and it’s not like you think oh the birth was lacking in magic because I already knew it was a girl. You’re (I would hope!) delighted to have a healthy baby whether you know the sex already or not. I just didn’t view it as massively significant so figured may as well find out and then I could buy the navy flowery sleepsuit and forget about trying to agree a boy’s name!

When it comes to other people though- ‘are you finding out the sex’ and ‘do you have a preference’ are probably just small talk because people want to show an interest but can’t think of anything else to say. As for ‘you won’t be able to have a gender reveal’ if that’s not sarcasm then yikes!!

Completely agree!

We didn’t find out for our second and I was taken aback how close family members (particularly mum and mil) seemed a bit annoyed and desperate to know (despite it not being a thing to find out when they had babies)

and just the general surprise from others ‘I couldn’t imagine not finding out!’ type reactions. Nobody questioned anything when I did find out the sex with my first. I don’t see the big deal.

@Tellerain Yep, that's part of my worry too. We'd probably find out if not for the gendered responses we know we will get.

If I'm honest I'm partly doing it because my mum wants to know so badly - because if she finds out it's a girl, there will be 100 'pretty' frilly dresses to kit us out for the first year (not my style at all).

At least not finding out delays the inevitable 😂

@InTheRainOnATrain I guess my point is I would happily put a baby boy in a navy flowery sleep suit. I mean why does it matter, it's a baby?

I've found plenty of cute clothes in greens, yellows, greys, browns, oranges, reds etc for all ages!... furthermore it is my honest to god belief that the world wouldn't implode if a girl wore something blue or a boy wore something pink 😉

I think people ask because there’s not much else to ask about an unborn baby. It’s mostly just small talk and people don’t mean much by it, if the response is the usual ‘oh a girl/ boy/ surprise, how lovely’. Your mum sounds overbearing though and maybe I’m too blunt but I’d shut it down next time. I’m experiencing the opposite where we haven’t found out, and so many people respond saying we’ve done it the right way and a surprise is nicer, and it’s surprised me how those comments bug me. I don’t know if it’s being praised for a decision that really only concerns DH and me, so I’m not looking for that approval, but it does make me a bit uncomfortable. I don’t mind people saying they did or didn’t want to find out with their babies when I say we haven’t found out, but it’s when it overlaps to expecting other people to want the same as them.

We weren't allowed to know the sex during scans as we were in an area where abortion of female foetuses was common.
I didn't mind either way as long as they were healthy but I warned everyone in advance that if they were girls I did not want anything pink or frilly.

Both had kept having babies until they ‘got their girl’.

Oh I can’t stand it when people use that phrase 🤢 I see it so so much online- ‘I had 2 boys before I got my girl’ ‘I was lucky as I got my girl first’ ‘finding out the gender tomorrow, will I get my princess or will it be boy no.2’ Nobody ever says it for a boy either.

In MOST cases I’d think the reason is a natural and understandable one - impatience, excitement and the desire to be able to picture/visualise the child and what your future might look like. Most people can better visualise who their child might be if they know the sex, and that’s an enjoyable daydream.

And then the planning, being able to buy things, is just a symptom of that. They don’t NEED to plan around the sex, they want to.

it’s also an easy topic of small talk - I’m currently pregnant and being asked what we’re having during every work or personal conversation I have where the pregnancy comes up, so at least 3-4 times a day. Most aren’t actually interested, it’s just easy small talk.

(I’m sorry for those of you who have actually had desires for one or the other imposed on you by others, that must be incredibly frustrating - I appreciate my theory doesn’t apply to them!)

I didn’t as I knew 2 people who were told incorrectly so dd1 was a surprise. Dtds I did find out as finding out I was having twins was enough of a surprise and they were high risk so I wanted to name them in case I didn’t get to bring them home. It actually helped me feel bonded with my babies. Dh got total sick of comments of sympathy (3dds) - he’s a great dad to girls but people saw that as a negative. He stopped telling people the sex at that point.

I understand having a slight preference but it makes me so sad when one particular sex (usually boy in the UK) is not wanted and the mother seems to be completely depressed about having one. I had a slight preference each time - one time I wanted a girl and the next time I wanted a boy. I ended up getting what I preferred each time. However, it wouldn't have mattered at all if I hadn't. They were my child. It was my job as a mother to love them no matter who they were.

Yes! The thing was I hadn’t known that this was how they viewed it. They’re a good bit older (DH is the baby of a large family), so the youngest of their children was 12 when DH and I had DS. I’d had no idea until they told me that they’d been so desperate for girls.

Desperate to the point where when one had a complicated second pregnancy and birth and was advised not to have another child, she went ahead anyway and had another boy (another very messy birth ending in an emergency CS and a haemorrhage) AND then went again and had a daughter whose birth she barely survived.

OP. Yes, that’s exactly what happened, only I was being sighed over by the SILs who’d been picking out frilly dresses and headbands.

There's only so much you can say about someone else's pregnancy. Discussions about girl/boy are the easiest and most obvious. They're just trying to be polite and show an interest.

Personally, I found out with my first as the pregnancy was due to a double contraceptive failure and I was struggling to bond/accept the pregnancy in my head. Knowing baby was a girl and giving her a name helped me visualise her as a person and helped me adjust (I would have loved a boy too, it was more about taking what little control I had of the situation if that makes sense!).
I found out with DC2 as well so I could tell DD she was having a little brother.

We are all different, you should stick to your guns if you want a surprise!

This is what I think and what I have always thought. It will be a girl or a boy. Simple as that. Why people over-complicate and make such big dramas about it is beyond me. We did not find out until either of ours were born, which I think is far preferable and more authentic than a burst of pink or blue confetti.

With our first, we had very few items in the house before the birth because of a previous miscarriage. We lived within walking distance of a town so it was actually great to get out of the house with the baby to buy things. My parents bought us a buggy when I was still in the hospital. Ignore people and enjoy your pregnancy, OP!

I used to say 'a puppy' 😂

Shut most people up

We found out but just because of what pp said, it was just another piece of information like the estimated weight and we wanted to know it all.

People are desperate to gender stereotype ASAP.

Oh I remember this! I didn't find out with my last and it seemed to actually offend so many people. Whereas I'm offended by the pink and blue binary particularly the "little Princess" dainty delicate girl shit. My girl is absolutely not dainty and I won't enforce that on her. And for that matter my boy could be less boisterous and I'd be happy 😆

I am very much a planner so wanted to plan names and sort prep. It did mean we were subjected to the comments about hoping for a girl for me which was a surprise but helpful in working out who were misogynistic wankers so there's that.

I’m not finding out the sex of my baby either, but it’s not any more or less ‘authentic’ to wait until the birth. Pregnancy can be difficult and uncertain, and if a confetti cannon revealing the sex of their baby brings people joy in their pregnancy then great and preferable for them - like how waiting for birth is preferable for me. As long as people aren’t starting forest fires or accidentally killing their family and friends with their gender reveals, I think it’s a really nice thing that parents can decide how and when they discover their baby’s sex.

I'm also waiting until birth to find out. I'm not bothered either way, as long as it's healthy. I don't really care that people ask, as PPs have said, it's probably just small talk. But similar to others' experiences, I'm surprised at how some people react when you say you're waiting. My MIL was the classic "how will I know what colour to knit" 🙈 And I've had so many remarks about how I won't be able to prepare. Babies' needs are all the same as far as I can tell, other than I've read up on nappy changing techniques for both sexes! I know a lot of people like to have a name ready too, but I'm quite enjoying still being able to think about a broader range of names and having longer to think about it.

I think a lot of it comes down to the fact babies are actually quite boring, it's hard to picture the future with a 'baby', it's hard to talk about a 'thing', sex can be quite a defining thing, you start building up a picture of this little person, and it starts becoming more real. More than anything, I think it's just conversation, I don't think they're going home excessively thinking about why pinkwaffles isn't finding out the sex. So don't over think it.