The 9 Month Wait

The Case For Not Finding Out the Gender of A Baby

Our nine month wait is almost over. In just a few more days my wife and I, along with our son, will be meeting the new addition to our family. We don’t know if our baby will be a nervous one or a calm one, if our baby will enjoy being bounced on a knee or held tightly or if our baby will like mushed sweet potatoes or peas. Among the many things we don’t know about our new baby is the gender.

There’s a surprise in my diaper. Guess what it is…

My wife and I didn’t find out the gender of our last child, either. And while it drove our friends and families absolutely crazy and even sparked betting pools (90% said girl, the 10% minority won with the opposite guess) my wife and I remained resolute: we didn’t want to know until our baby could actually be held in our arms.

The people who “had” to know cited all the usual reasons and we shot down every argument:

Decorating The Nursery: This was one of the easier things to do. By avoiding the usual pitfalls of buying everything in pink or blue we were able to put together a nursery that didn’t immediately dictate what sort of person our baby would be. We initially had a lot of fun coming up with decorating ideas for a nursery and it helped us come up with a theme we both liked. We stuck with neutral colors like yellows and browns and greens. We picked bedding with little jungle animals in pastel colors that could easily be the nursery of a junior Tarzan of the Apes or a young Jane Goodall.

Clothing for the Baby: Again, we stuck with neutral colors that didn’t immediately indicate a boy or girl at first glance. Let’s face it: boy and girl babies pretty much look like little Cabbage Dolls that have been shriveled and melted in a microwave for the first month or two anyway. There’s plenty of time to move into high baby-fashion clothes before the little one even thinks about solid food.

Picking A Name: By not knowing the gender of our child before birth we’ve been forced to come up with not one but TWO names that we like, which has spurred a bit of creativity on both of our parts. Our 3 1/2 year-old son has even gotten in on the naming action. His top picks? If the baby is a girl he want to name her “Chair” and if the baby is a boy his top name choice is “Eyeball.”

“Don’t You Want To Know?”: Ahh, the obvious question. Yes, of course we want to know the gender of our baby. It would be extremely awkward trying to raise a child to the age of 18 without knowing if it was a boy or a girl. But we also want to know if our child is going to look like my wife or me, if it is going to like chocolate or vanilla and whether or not it will get into Harvard or Princeton. But just because we want these things doesn’t necessarily mean we can get them exactly when we want them, if at all. There is a time for everything, and the time for knowing if we’re having a son or a daughter is when the lower half of that kid comes out.

Baby Shower Troubles: Because so many baby toys, clothes and even diaper pails are all “gender specific” these days, it is a bit difficult for people to attend a baby shower without purchasing some overly pink or overly blue items. This drives a lot of people nuts, which amuses me to no end. The positive upshot of all this? The new parents-to-be end up with a LOT more gift cards, which are about a million times more useful than the 50 baby washcloths and 4 baby bathtubs most parents seem to be given.

And, of course, by not finding out the gender of our baby we are spared from the chance of actually being proven horribly wrong. We’ve all heard of stories people who have decorated the nursery in bright pink, invested a small fortune in pink and frilly and tiny clothing pieces all to be surprised when “Emma Isabella” popped out and turn out to be “Jacob Michael” instead.

In the end, I think my wife and I are of like mind on this: There are so few real and big surprises in the world anymore that it’s actually kind of nice to have something completely unknown and anticipated for nine full months. We desperately want to meet our new baby, but we don’t want to go into without preconceived notions of who that new little person is. It’s almost a liberating experience, being able to imagine our future with either a boy or a girl, at almost the same time.

Of course, all this is easy for me to write about now: our wait will be over in just a few more hours if all goes well… And then the real fun begins!