As for overly gendered presents—you can find out yourselves but not tell anyone else. That’s what we did. Everything on registry was neutral.

No cons, other than reminding providers you don't want to know. That didn't bother me.

The pros were not having too defined an idea of who the baby would be before they were born, which was important to me. It also made the delivery extra exciting - my L&D nurses were almost as excited as we were to find out the sex. FWIW, we didn't find out for our first two and did for our third. I do have very sweet memories of being told he was a boy - the nurse was excited for me and it was such a fun moment.

We didn't find out the first time and are TTC again, planning not to find out if we get pregnant again.

The only con I can think of is our attic is full of baby girl stuff right now so if we knew for sure our next (and last) kid was a boy we could declutter sooner. But that's not enough to move the needle for me personally.

I think people who don't find out are often expecting a special moment where the doctor says, "It's a _______.". But both of my babies' births were unexpectedly traumatic with dozens of people in the room, yelling, and a blue, limp non-breathing baby who is hustled to the NICU. I was also at risk with heavy bleeding, so far from completely lucid.

We had the doctor write down the gender after NIPT and put it in an envelope. We opened it over dinner and got to celebrate together. Then we sent blue or pink flowers to the grandparents and great grandparents, who called us so so happily when they received the news.

We didn't get a ton of overly gendered presents. We were having a girl, so one aunt made a few sweet baby dresses by hand. Another great aunt made a sweet baby quilt with pink, blue and yellow flowers.

I really hate all of the guessing conversations that seem to come when someone doesn't find out the gender. It always seems to be the only thing anyone wants to talk about, when it's the least of the life change that is happening.

We didn't find out for either kid. I guess I didn't want to visualize too much what the future would be like with a baby I had never met. The pros were minimal. The cons were that we had to tell the doctors at every appointment that we didn't want to know. That gets old.

We did find out at 20wks and I'll say there isn't a pro or con either way other than whether having more certainty earlier on is a good thing for you. For us, one of the pros is that we knew we were one and done, so it was nice to be able to make some stereotypically gender-specific choices regarding decor and clothing. That's a minor thing, though. We only had to sort out one name, not two.

Our child's birth ended up being very stressful including an emergency c-section so it wasn't the joyful placing of the newborn into my arms with that excited announcement that we all envision happening. Again, that's not common so I wouldn't make that a reason not to wait until birth, it was just our experience.

This question never makes sense to me. You'll find out eventually, right?

There is no con. Eventually you will find out. If not at 20 weeks, then 20 weeks later when the baby is born. You’d need to think of names for both sexes. People who find out earlier, can then focus on names for the sex of their baby.

Anonymous wrote:We did not find out prior to birth with either child (two girls!). Of course it is a surprise no matter when you find out, but I loved the announcement at the births and also enjoyed holding the possibility of a boy or a girl in my mind throughout the pregnancies. Downsides are not being able to stockpile gender-specific clothes or decorate nursery in an overly gender-themed way. But as you know, they grow so quickly that you don't need too many newborn clothes, and we just had a sunny nursery with pale yellow walls and some rabbit bedding that I loved for a boy or a girl. You do need to come up with names you like for a boy or a girl, which can be more difficult/time consuming if spouse has different taste in names. I also thought that if I anticipated gender disappointment, I probably would have found out in advance to try to process those feelings before the baby was born. Could go the other way as well, though -- if you know you will be disappointed if baby is a boy (or girl), maybe wait to be surprised at birth as you are far less likely to be disappointed in the beautiful baby in your arms vs the imagined one.

this was me (I mean I didn't have strong feelings but I did have a preference and rather than be disappointed a little in my kid before even meeting them it was nice to just be excited). Also for us, when we were having problems agreeing on names it was nice to just switch to the other gender for a while.

The only cons we ran into (we didn't find out either time).

1) When the NIPT results came back, we couldn't open the email, we had to wait until our provider called us. You can opt out of the sex-based testing, but then you also wouldn't know about a problem with the sex chromosomes, so I wouldn't recommend that.

2) Clothes in general are fine, we prefer gender neutral stuff anyway, but it does make hand me downs a bit harder. You need to either take it all (what we did, figuring we wanted 3-4 kids anyway so someday we'd use whatever) or just opt to only take gender neutral stuff which, depending on your sources, can really narrow what you'll get.

3) You have to agree on names for both sexes. We actually had a big fight about girls names when I was pregnant with my first, and part of me was like "there's a chance this doesn't even matter" - we almost found out to avoid the fight. And we did turn out to have a boy, but #2 was a girl so we'd just have been putting off the inevitable, I think.

4) Basically every time we interacted with anyone (midwives, ultrasound tech, specialist, nurses) we'd lead with "we don't know the sex of the baby and we don't want to, hello!" which was mostly funny. Reminded me of this scene in Seinfeld - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4BxeSOem_0

Overall, those are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. And there are MAJOR pros - announcing you're having a girl means that half the stuff you're going to get at your shower is going to be frilly pink completely impractical outfits. My cousin literally got 10 frilly pink dresses in baby sizes. And they were both finishing up grad school and just starting their careers and could have really used more of the practical stuff from their registry. What a waste.

We did not find out prior to birth with either child (two girls!). Of course it is a surprise no matter when you find out, but I loved the announcement at the births and also enjoyed holding the possibility of a boy or a girl in my mind throughout the pregnancies. Downsides are not being able to stockpile gender-specific clothes or decorate nursery in an overly gender-themed way. But as you know, they grow so quickly that you don't need too many newborn clothes, and we just had a sunny nursery with pale yellow walls and some rabbit bedding that I loved for a boy or a girl. You do need to come up with names you like for a boy or a girl, which can be more difficult/time consuming if spouse has different taste in names. I also thought that if I anticipated gender disappointment, I probably would have found out in advance to try to process those feelings before the baby was born. Could go the other way as well, though -- if you know you will be disappointed if baby is a boy (or girl), maybe wait to be surprised at birth as you are far less likely to be disappointed in the beautiful baby in your arms vs the imagined one.

We waited and I don't think there are any cons unless you want to reduce your anxiety. FWIW, I don't really think there are any pros either.

I don't think there are cons other than logistical and your tolerance for the unknown. I'm the type of person that will read the last few pages of a book if I start to get anxious of the outcome. I choose to spoil myself on TV shows and movies sometimes. I needed to know gender to reduce my anxiety on being a new mom, being a mom to 2, a mom to 3, etc.

My husband and I also had very different ideas on names for both genders, so it was helpful to have many months to get that sorted. If you also have room/sleeping arrangements that would be easier/make more sense based on gender that could be a reason too.

I don’t think there are any cons (I wouldn’t consider a lack of blue or pink clothes a con)

My parents did not know what I was and I know many people back in the 80s who did not find out.

What would you say are the cons in 2024?

We are high risk fwiw so I know that with the extra scans and testing I will need to emphasize we do not want to know based upon my last pregnancy it came up often. We did find out with him.

Anyone willing to consider what cons I should be prepared for?


I can think of not having clothing prepared and ready as one but for other cons, I struggle to capture what I am not considering.