…and we can’t decide whether to look at it or not! We did not find out with the first baby, and it WAS kind of fun to be surprised. On the other hand, it would be nice to know if we need to stock up on clothes for a boy or not, since most of my daughter’s baby clothes are pink!
One idea I had was to give the envelope to my sister, and have her return it to us on Christmas, and open it then.
What do you all think? Find out ahead of time, or wait to be surprised?
Obviously the choice is up to you. I personally don’t get waiting. It’s not like ruining the story by reading the last lines because if anything it’s just the beginning.
If you don’t know it’s always nice to have a surprise. If you do know then you can buy the right coloured clothes.
Not that my opinion is based upon being dressed as a girl because my mum expected a girl.
We found out with our second. It was so nice to get to “know” her while she was still inside me. I felt like she was my little estrogenic co-conspirator in my houseful of Y chromosomes. It even (God forbid this happen to you) made it easier when I started bleeding at 23 weeks. I felt like I made a slightly more informed decision about about what to do - because preemie girls have a much better chance than preemie boys. If she had been a boy, I would have held out longer AMA before getting a c-section, and that might have been disastrous.
It might make it easier for your first child to get used to the idea, as well. Letting her (him?) know it’s a brother or sister makes it more real.
Knowing ahead of time makes planning easier. Even if you’re not an ubertraditionalist with baby colors, if you don’t know, you’ll end up with *all * puke green and ugh butter yellow. Do you even have to have a circumcision discussion? (I was so relieved I didn’t have to sort THAT one out this time around!) Concentrate on picking the gender names you need to (but always have a backup for a last minute surprise oops!)
I never understood the “it should be a surprise” rationale. It’s still a surprise. Right now, you don’t know. When you open the envelope, you will. Boom! Surprise! There’s still enough going on in the delivery that you’ll have plenty of other surprises there - does she have hair? Does he have Daddy’s nose? Will she cry? Will he suckle right away? Even the most finely planned birth is full of surprises.
But I do like the Christmas idea. It could be your first present from the baby! 
I can’t say what you should do but if it were me, I’d have wanted to know the sex right away. I agree with the reasoning that the birth will still be a surprising and exciting time even with the sex being known. Congrats either way. 
I’d want to know. It’s not a suprise for very long.
I read your post before looking at the username, and immediately thought of you. Then I looked and realised it was you.
It’s still a surprise when you find out. It’s just an earlier surprise. Like opening your Christmas presents on Thanksgiving.
My wife and I are having this discussion now. I could never go without knowing, and she wants to wait. So, I’m going to find out and not tell her.
I don’t understand not wanting to know. The purpose of the ultrasound is collecting information about the baby. Why is knowing the sex taboo?
That gives me an idea. Let’s keep the baby’s sex a secret until three weeks after the birth, then have a sex shower* - like a baby shower but afterwards.
What’s the number for Hallmark?
Needs a better name. Sex shower sounds pornographic.
That’s my take on it as well. There are so many “surprises” at birth - gender doesn’t need to be one of them.
When we adopted, we could chose gender or not chose gender. If we didn’t chose - we were almost certain to get a boy (they had 11 baby boys waiting and a three month wait for girls when we did our homestudy). So we chose by not chosing.
So when we had a chance to do an ultrasound for our daughter, it seemed sort of silly not to know - having had the option of chosing with the first.
There were still plenty of surprises. A late ultrasound showed a baby with lots of hair - and I pictured my own baby pictures with thick dark hair. We had a nearly blonde bald baby (she did have hair, it was so fine and blonde she looked bald). I expected a long labor based on family history, had thirteen hours. Expected a small baby - she was born two weeks early - got seven and a half pounds.
Don’t do it! I know there are practical reasons to know, but Baby Surprise is really awesome. Go ahead…run with scissors. Buy lots of green and yellow clothes. You can’t miss!
Because we were on the older side of parenting, Pepper Mill had amniocentesis done, and we could find out what sex our child would be. Pepper didn’t want to know, and didbn’t try to find out.
All the time she was pregnant, Pepper didn’t even know f I knew or not, so of course she couldn’t find out if it was to be a boy or a girl. In fact, I did find out, but I didn’t want her to even know if I knew. It wasn’t until several months after we’d had our daughter MilliCal that I told her that I had, in fact, known. This meant that, during the pregnancy, I discussed both boy and girl baby names, argued the pros and cons of circumcision, and didn’t say anything about the many predictions everyone )hospital staff included) that she was having a boy.
I didn’t want to know. If I hadn’t had the surprise to look forward to, I don’t know how I’d ever have made it through the last couple of months of pregnancy.
When you were a kid, did you ever go looking in the back of your Mom’s closet to see what you were going to get for Christmas?
We did not find out the gender with my son and that was the perfect choice… for that pregnancy.
However, we did find out the gender with my second, mostly to help my son get to know his sister (he was 2.5 at the time).
He talked about his baby sister in concrete terms and felt very close to her, while we were expecting. Until she was about 18 mos old (old enough to get into what he way doing…) there was very little sibling rivalry, and even now (ages 11 and 8) they play really well together.
Not that I think it’s all becuase we knew the gender, of course 
!
But, I do think in the early months of the preganancy it did help the little guy get acclimated to the whole idea!
Thanks, everybody! I’m surprised there are so few votes for waiting…I thought I was the MOST impatient person in the world (yes, I DID go looking for Christmas present in my mom’s closet when I was a kid)! During the car trip back to my office after the ultrasound, it felt like that piece of paper was burning a hole in my pocket.
We do have some green & yellow newborn clothes, since we didn’t know with the first one, but it would be nice to stock up on clothes if we need to.
I like this idea. My daughter (she is 2.5 as well), keeps saying it is a girl, of course, so maybe it would be a good idea to prepare her ahead of time if it isn’t!
The first part is exactly the point I use although I am not quite sure if I agree with the latter. That is because the present isn’t “open” yet. That comes at the birth. Finding out the sex is just a clue about a critical piece of it. We definitely wanted to know the sex of our children. A lot of it was for practical purposes but I really do believe it breaks up the surprise into more manageable pieces. There is more than enough left over and your capability to be surprised is going to get overloaded on the day of birth anyway so I think that you add surprise when you find out early by making it two events instead of one.
We found out with my son, but I tried to convince ElzaHub not to find out :D. He wanted to be ‘prepared’ in case we were having a girl (he didn’t, and still doesn’t, think he’d be a very good dad to a girl, because he’s never really been around little girls), and he talked me into finding out (good thing, because I was convinced we were having a girl!).
I don’t think we’re going to find out with the next one. I will be thrilled with a second son, and if number two happens to be a girl, we’ll be just as lucky. I had kind of a crappy birth with my son, so I’d like that moment of ‘it’s a…’ to add a little to my second birth. I figure the baby’ll be sleeping with us for several months anyway, so we have time to redo the nursery and if it’s a girl, it won’t hurt her to wear some blue clothes.
It’s up to you, but of course, now that you have an envelope with the sex, I want to know! If you do find out, you have to tell us. But if I were you, I’d wait. Clothes are easy to get:), and you can always stock up on a few boy clothes from eBay or a children’s consignment shop before your little one arrives just in case.
E.
Sarahfeena-
I have 5 children and have never found out with any of them. I hate most surprises, and can be a control freak at times. But after the first one, I figured I pretty much knew what to expect, there was nothing else to look forward to. I loved the surprise. The last child, I would have bet at least $10,000 that it was a girl. When a little boy came, the surprise was fantastic.
I also thought the whole “Oh, my belly, Mike, is really moving around today.” is kinda goofy.
So many things in life are planned, and regulated, and micro managed. Enjoy the surprises, especially the good ones.
Funny how often we hear “didn’t find out with the first, did find out with the second”
That’s exactly what we did. We opted to wait, with Dweezil. I was once at the doctor and the chart was open and I glanced and saw: “Sex: F” and got upset and told her “you shouldn’t leave that open, we didn’t want to find out”. She gave me a blank look and said “What are you TALKING about?”. I said “I saw that it says sex is female”. She laughed and said “That’s your sex, not the baby’s”.
When my child was born with outdoor plumbing, I knew she’d told me the truth
With Moon Unit, we were also planning to wait - and we didn’t have amnio with that pregnancy, but we did have ultrasounds. But when the pregnancy started to have problems (pre-eclampsia/HELLP) I decided I wanted to know so I called the ultrasound place and asked them (they had noted, but not told me, per my request).
I don’t know that it helped Dweezil to know - he was an autistic 2 year old and quite clueless about the whole thing. But it was helpful to me.
Don’t worry…if we do find out, I will definitely let you guys know!
This was my thought with the first one! I really did think it was fun to find out in the delivery room. I have a friend who has 3 kids, and didn’t find out with any of them…she says it have her incentive to push!
It was also fun because my husband and I both had dreams towards the end of my pregnancy that it was a girl. When the doc said it, my first words were, “I knew it was a girl!” Everyone laughed…it was a fun moment.
Put it in a spoiler box. I really don’t want to know until he/she makes her debut. I already have a vibe…and no…I’m not telling what it is!