Waiting Until Birth to Find Out Baby’s Gender

It is the great debate when you get the positive pregnancy test result: do we find out the gender? It would certainly make planning décor and clothing and picking out a name a bit easier to have a theme, now wouldn’t it? Knowing what is coming make things feel more real, more solidified, more certain and calculated.

I am now 8 months pregnant with baby number 2 and yet again, we have chosen to leave the gender reveal until the birth. Truthfully, this time around, my husband and I highly contemplated finding out the gender, because we already have a son and struggle with selecting boy names. It was a back and forth conversation until only a couple months ago, when we settled on waiting.

While I completely respect and understand why people want and need to find out their babies genders, we enjoy the surprise. Finding out felt so final, there you have it, done and settled. But there is such a lack of true surprises left in this world, this is one we could still count on. Between spoiler alerts and detail leaks through the mass amounts of social media and the internet in general, this is something we could keep to ourselves and enjoy the surprise along with everyone else.

One of the most special moments of our sons birth, which was also a gender surprise at birth, was we had it in our birth plan that my husband was to be the one to announce the gender as he came into this world. Along with cutting the cord, it gives dads that special responsibility as us mothers do all the hard work.

Personally, I have also seen on numerous occasions, where a family finds out the gender of their baby and the opposite is born, so after all of that planning and purchasing for one gender, they are thrown off course with a real big shock. I much rather set a complete neutral nursery and wardrobe and add to it with more fixated gender clothing after the baby is here.

It’s comical to me to see the reactions of the general public when they find out we have chosen not to find out the gender until birth. My favourite line I have heard from way too many now is “Oh, I am such a planner, I have to know.” Clearly these people don’t know me very well, as I am the ultimate planner. Possibly, that is just it, I like to be prepared, so gender neutral allows me to reuse items with the next baby and it gives us that flexibility for any outcome.

This is something we have chosen as a family to maintain the surprise, and while we have truly gone back and forth with it, we are happy and content with our decision. And I respect those who decide to find out. That is the joy of life and having our own way with these things, we get to decide. Technology has allowed this option. It’s pretty remarkable. Everyone gets to make the choice to know or not know, and that is completely okay.

Melanie xoxox