Do midwives / doctors know the gender when you don’t??

[blessedmammy]

I’m 32 weeks pregnant and we don’t know the gender of this baby, when I attend midwife appointments or if I’ve gone into triage they will refer to the baby as he or she. “ she’s breech “, “ his heart rate is… “ every time they do it I ask if they know and they look a little panicked and say no if you don’t know then we don’t know.

i seen a doctor last night who referred to the baby as him and im just wondering if they have access to different notes which would tell him what the gender was. I understand people just refer to the baby as he or she but when you don’t know it really annoys me because it instantly turns your stomach thinking they’ve just let the gender slip that you’ve waited all this time not to find out!

I am under a consultant and having regular growth scans so I feel so anxious every appointment worried somebody is going to say something! Just wondering if anybody else has experienced this before ?

We didn’t want to know the gender and were having lots of growth scans towards the end too. On our notes it definitely said something like parents don’t want to know the gender, because whoever was doing each scan would confirm that with us at the beginning of the scan. I can’t remember how they referred to the baby while they were talking to us - just “baby” I think. I don’t know if the gender was also recorded on the notes or not.

While they’re doing a scan they can obviously see for themselves, and I was usually a bit nervous - wanting to watch but not wanting to suddenly see an obvious little willy appear! I think they’re usually pretty careful to respect your wishes on this though so I wouldn’t worry about the language that’s being used. In fact I also can now remember being told to look away at certain moments during scans if I didn’t want to know.

Usually midwives or consultants just have a default of calling every baby "he" or "she". It doesn't mean anything.

In the grand scheme of dealing with all the potential risk and health issues with a baby, I think getting stressed about accidentally being given/observing the sex of the baby is really an unecessary extra element.

The midwife referred to my baby as he a number of times at scans and check up of which I had plenty with a tricky pregnancy, so I was convinced I was having a boy, despite not officially knowing. I was so shocked when my daughter was born it actually took me a minute to catch up and realise we would be using our (much loved) girl name....ocassionally my husband and I still use our boy name as a nickname for her 12 years later as we had both developed the habit of talking to the bump using that!

I didn't find out with my first baby and for the whole labour my midwife was calling the baby a she - "wow she has so much hair, cmon mam I can see her head, wow she's a big one". And then out popped a boy 😅

We chose to find out (having a girl) and my midwife still automatically refers to baby as ‘he’ when I have my appointments - when I mentioned we knew the sex before she said she calls all babies he as she doesn’t like to call them ‘it’ but doesn’t want to ruin anything for people don’t know!

Generally speaking, no they don’t.

They do ( sonography), they won’t write it in your notes.
But they will definitely default to he or she! So depending on who you’re seeing you’ll get a a variation!!
Most will just say baby….

Unless they're scanning you there and then and can visualise the sex, then no they don't routinely know. It's not documented in your notes or scans. I've said he/she randomly to patients completely by mistake (struggle saying 'it') and they never believe me when I tell them it was just a slip of the tongue😂 Genuinely, we don't know!

I've been wondering this too. I've just had a growth scan today and they referred to baby as he. A few weeks ago at another scan they said they couldn't see "his face". C section on Friday so let's see if it is in fact a boy!

Sex isn’t recorded in notes ordinarily. The only exception I can think to this is if there was a sex related medical concern. It’s just most will use either he or she as standard

Even scanning the sonographer doesn't necessarily know unless they have specifically looked for it.