I utterly fail to understand parents who want to wait for birth to find out their baby’s sex.
“We want to be surprised,” you say. Well, whenever you learn it, it’s a surprise then! Isn’t it better to have the surprise early, so you can buy the appropriate clothes and furnish the nursery?
You never hear “I keep my eyes closed when I change the baby’s diapers so I won’t know its gender. When it reaches puberty, I want to be surprised.”
This is actually a point of minor disagreement between me and my wife. When we have kids (fingers crossed), she wants to know as soon as possible, and I don’t. Not sure how we’re going to work that one out.
Oh, and regarding this:
It’s strongly recommended by doctors, family planners, etc. that you not go out on a shopping binge pre-birth. You don’t paint the nursery, you don’t get a thousand packages of diapers, you don’t have a closet full of tiny shoes and jumpers, etc.
Why? Because if something goes horribly wrong with the pregnancy at a late stage, and the baby doesn’t survive, you end up with a house full of baby-related stuff that reminds you of what you just lost. Based on everything I’ve read, it’s much easier to deal with the loss and move on if you don’t have a ton of crap to throw away or put in storage.
Besides, the baby doesn’t do much besides sleep and eat and soil its diapers for the first couple of weeks, so all you need initially are a few basic supplies (diapers, thermometer, lotion, etc.) and a place for the baby to sleep. After you know there won’t be any problems, there’s plenty of time to go get all the other stuff. Actually, more accurately, there are usually plenty of friends and relatives you can dispatch with the shopping lists while you try to catch an hour of sleep in the middle of the day.
My wife and I haven’t done the kid thing yet, so this is just based on word from friends and some reading on the subject. Any experienced parents who want to tell me I’m way off base, please, feel free. 
Well, Cervaise, all I can say from experience is if you don’t paint the nursery before the kid comes, it ain’t gonna get painted until he’s old enough to tell you what color he wants.
The likelihood of anything going wrong at the last minute these days is very slim. (Although I do know people to whom it has happened.) I don’t think that avoiding buying baby stuff would help all that much. You’d have living reminders in front of you everytime you walked out the door.
Preparing for the arrival is fun and healthy. But you’re right about not needing a ton of stuff. We didn’t get loads of clothes, but both my kids had stuff they outgrew before it was ever worn.
I agree with Five on this one. I personally would want to know if the information were available.
But then, I’m the kind of person that immediately zooms in on threads that say “caution! SPOILER inside” for movies or books, even when it’s a movie I’m planning to see and haven’t seen yet.
I’m also with Five.
Er…why would you have to know what sex the baby is to buy clothes, toys and paint the nursery? This ain’t pink-for-girls-blue-for-boys world here. Lots of baby clothes are fine for either sex, lots of baby toys are fine for either sex, lots of paint colors are fine for either sex.
I don’t think I will want to know, when the time comes. I can’t really explain why, except that when my aunt had my cousin, she didn’t find out. She said, “There are very few true surprises left in life.” She thought knowing before the birth took some of the specialness or mystery out of the whole process. That struck me, even though it may not make much rational sense.