Boy or Girl?

We’ve decided to wait to find out the baby’s gender.   Wait, as in until the baby is born, wait.

Don't worry - keep reading, a Jackalope will fit into this post.

I have to admit, it gets more and more difficult to stay in the dark about our baby’s gender as the pregnancy progresses.  It was such an easy decision at week 10 – this was 5 months ago!  During the last ultrasound (in early January) we had the opportunity to fing out but ultimately decided against it.  When the technician said she was less than 40% sure of the sex I was reassured that we had made the right choice to not find out.

Pros and Cons of not finding out:

PRO – save lots of money – you can’t buy much on a whim unless it’s gender neutral, which is rare.

PRO – Moms aren’t sending lots of stuff – YET!  Since they don’t know, they can’t buy stuff either!

CON – I can’t call it by its name yet – just belly, baby, or a combination of our chosen names.

PRO – It will ultimately be my last carrot as I push and push and push!

CON – I experienced serious anxiety when I couldn’t stick my tongue out at my brothers and say, “na na a boo boo, stick your head in doo doo, I get to use the name.” (this was Christmas time with my family when we all found out we all wanted to name our first born sons the same name!)  Coincidentally, they hope I am having a girl!

PRO – It makes our Baby Pool much more exciting!

PRO – I am buying gender neutral nursery and baby items (stroller/car seat) that will hopefully be re-purposed for Baby 2!

PRO – Other people get to name our child what they want, typically a combination of the names we've chosen.  My favorite so far: Jackalope

So as you can see – I’m finding more Pros than Cons about keeping our bundle of joy genderless!

Of course others have different views on finding out - like this Dad who is a blogger for Babble.

Reactions from others when we tell them we’re waiting:

A typical reaction is filled with giddy smiles, telling us that it’s exciting that we’re not finding out but there are a few people who have said, with quite strong emotion that they can’t believe we’re not finding out!   All I can say is, “YEP, we’re not finding out!”

Our Childbirth Prep class is made up of about 18 couples and about it is about split among the couple who know and those who don’t.  One couple is split – while the husband does know, the wife doesn’t.  That would be super difficult!  I don’t think Nolan could handle that sort of knowledge without spilling the beans to me or someone else!

Harassment is low when the subject is brought up but our parents are itching more than we are to know so I tend to get the “look” when they really want to know – few words.