Momberries! So partner and I already have two boys and we will be TTC in [name_u]July[/name_u]/August next year. We’ve decided that as this baby is our last, it might be nice to not find out the gender this time round?! ( We are still debating this) I know that quite frankly, it would probably drive me nuts not knowing the gender for 9 months. So really I am looking for hearing mums experiences whereby they didn’t find out the gender, bonus if you didn’t find out the gender and this was baby 2/3 or any other number and so on…
For instance, it would bother me that I wouldn’t have any girl clothes ( at all) if we had a girl. I literally have no gender neutral babygrows from when my boys were little. Also, nursery? Did you paint/decorate after they were born? And lastly, what about clothes you take to hospital. Did you just take in gender neutral or did you have a boys and a girl’s outfit picked.
Was is super special not knowing the gender? 
Thanks
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I’m curious to hear more answers about this too. I’ve been thinking about it a lot again and the only thing that makes me really want to find out is so I can devote all my time to finding the perfect name for one or the other. I feel like if my attention is split I might search harder for one gender and not the other and then if the baby is the opposite gender I might wish I put all my energy into just that name.
Probably overthinking it though.
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I completely agree. Gosh I find it quite the dilemma to be honest. I mean it would be totally lovely to not know the gender, but then again, knowing the gender feels like you can pick the perfect name
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First thing I’m not a mom I’m a teen in fact but I am the oldest of my sibs so there we go.
My parents decided to find out the gender on my last sibling mostly because me and the rest of my siblings really wanted to know and we were all very young and excited to find out so they did and we were all prepared that he was a boy. With me my parents decided not to and just waited until I was born. With that they had already decided on both a girl and boy name as well as being gender neutral with outfits. When I was born I turned out to be a girl so everything they had planned was just decided already. Then they used the boy name and those colors on the first boy they had. I think if it’s your first or you don’t care what the gender is I think not knowing is fun, but if you already have other children who are dying to know (
) or you want to pre-decide on a name, color, and theme then I think knowing the gender would be your best bet.
Best of wishes!
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I think that’s a good point you make. Siblings would probably like to know the gender too
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Yes, yours are definitely old enough to understand and be excited about it.
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I’m not patient enough to wait and since I have three already and am hoping for two and two, I want time to wrap my head around either answer, and not have any moment of surprise after the delivery. I won’t be disappointed, that’s too strong of a word, but I might need some time to process, so finding out early gives me that headspace. When it was our first or even second baby, I had no expectations really, so it would have been ideal then to wait, but as I said, I have no patience!
As for going home outfits, I always bring a neutral outfit, just in case the ultrasound was wrong!
I always admire the people that can wait, but our boys are so excited about this baby already, they talk about who is in there all the time and call them by their names, I think they would make me crazy if I had to put them through that for 9 months. So we’ll be finding out at the anatomy scan. It’s also a nice break in the pregnancy, the halfway point, something to look forward to, before you sort of buckle down and prepare for the remaining months ahead. Meeting them is the real reward but having something to look forward to halfway is nice too.
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This (G-d willing) will be our first “team green” baby—baby #7. TTC soon.
To avoid gender disappointment in case it ends up being boy #6, my strategy is going to be to focus on finding the perfect boy name to go with [name_u]James[/name_u], [name_m]William[/name_m], [name_f]Elise[/name_f], [name_m]Zachary[/name_m], [name_u]George[/name_u], and [name_m]Arthur[/name_m].
We make so many boys, I’m just gonna expect it to be a boy.
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Hi! Second time mom here and second time team green. I wanted to find out with #1 but DH didn’t want to so I agreed to wait. Its was so special to wait, that I decided to go team green again with #2. It’s so easy to find neutral infant clothes, at least for me. We have our babe in our room for the first few months anyhow, so we didn’t rush on a nursery. [name_m]Even[/name_m] now, my sons room is a pale/neutral green/yellow theme that could totally work for a girl.
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I have no patience either!!! Haha. And I agree it’s nice getting to the half way mark and the big surprise is getting a baby anyway.
@mill1020 ahhh it’ll be nice for you to have a girl but boys are so much fun too.
@JadeLinnell I know what you mean as baby stays with us for 6-8 months too. I am not just not a huge fan of gender neutral colours so the idea of being able to do a themed nursery would be exciting.
Hmm well I’m still firmly on the fence. Maybe I’ll ask my boys what they think too.
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For my second child (and my first son) we wanted to keep the gender a surprise, which was very hard for me to do as I was constantly obsessing over names and I didn’t know whether to be looking for boys or girls. In the end we chose [name_m]Ferris[/name_m] [name_u]Jay[/name_u] (or [name_u]Sloane[/name_u] [name_f]Ava[/name_f] if he turned out to be a girl). I am glad we did it because it prepared us in a different way and to what we would’ve experienced if we knew the gender. I would recommend it but if you were to do it, try not to build up expectations so when the baby is born and its not what you expected, you are not disappointed.
For the nursery, we painted it a mix of yellows, forest greens, purples and oranges and that would’ve been good for a girl as well. I found having lots of colours that complimented each other was much easier than picking one or two.
If you are thinking of doing it now, (and this is your last baby) I would go for it because you will then have the experience of having done it!
Sorry this is quite long, hope it made sense
Best of luck!!
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Thank you. Made sense. AHH I didn’t take that into consideration actually. Last baby means not ever having the experience again.
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We have only ever been team green and it’s been such a great experience each team if we’re ever blessed with more we intend to always been team green!
Name wise- it was never an issue we brought a boy and girl name to the hospital. When we talked about names we would start with one gender and then move to the next.
Clothes wise- I was never a fan of gender neutral. I literally took my baby bag and divided it in half and half the clothes I filled with one gender and the other half with the other. There’s two ways to go about this- keep receipts so you can return the clothes you won’t use or I’ve had friends who have asked for clothes from those who have each gender. You only need nb to start off with so I’ve never had to feel like I’ve had to dress my kid in “neutral”. Plus white onesies are a must with either gender .
With nursery I did a gender friendly option to
Plan ahead and then added the boyish: girlish touches when they arrived.
For my husband and I it was so worth it to wait each time as nothing compares for us then the in the moment at the hospital (be it natural or c-section - we’ve had both) where the baby comes out you hear the cry and then they ask my husband to announce it to the world and hearing my husbands voice each time saying “it’s a boy!” [name_u]Or[/name_u] “it’s a girl!” Never gets old! Always worth it to me!
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Thanks for the feedback. AHH that’s so sweet. I have two boys so I wouldn’t need to buy a single thing if we had a third boy. If we had a girl ( as third baby is our last) I would just really love to buy girlie stuff and do a ultra girlie nursery etc. Only from the view that I am outnumbered in my house with the male to female ratio lol so it would be refreshing to be able to look and shop down the girl aisle for once. Of course this is all speculative at the moment anyway as we will be TTC our last in [name_u]July[/name_u]. That’s a good time for us.
Another thing I am thinking about is gender disappointment. I don’t want to call it this. As this is too much of a strong statement for me. Naturally, I am hoping a bit more for a girl but as far as I am concerned we’ve made a commitment to bring a life into the world and gender really is superficial in that sense. What matters is healthy baby etc. [name_f]Do[/name_f] you think therefore it may make sense to find out the gender because the anticipation of 9 months and
having more of a preference for a girl would be just too much. I don’t know. In some ways I feel like I don’t want to get my hopes up for a girl and wait 9 months. When I can find out gender at 20 weeks and appreciate that there may potentially be no girl for us. That’s not to say discovering we were having a boy would make me upset. It would just take away that anticipation. Etc
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I actually think I’ve made a decision on this.
I think for someone like myself who 1. Dislikes surprises 2. Is a control freak 3. Likes to be in the know. It is probably best that we find out the gender. I can, however totally understand the magic of not finding out the gender and respect to those who don’t. I bet that was a wonderful experience/surprise.
You have excellent self control too🤣 but actually in some ways as this is my third and I have two very energetic boys. The idea of doing up the nursery in a gender specific colour scheme after the baby is born ( whilst looking after my older two is likely not going to happen lol)
When I am prepared I feel ‘safe’ and ready. I think someone made the point on here that as this is third baby and not the first baby, practically speaking I should maybe have implemented this idea of not finding out, with our first born. But with TTC our third and thinking about the 4th bedroom for them and whether or not I need to retain all the boys clothes or donate them. I think it would just give me something to do during the pregnancy.
What I have decided however is to have names that I like but nothing set in stone. I don’t want to name my bump. I literally want to meet the little guy/girl and decide their name. I do feel like this will be the surprise element for us. It would be so interesting to see if we had a girl and she didn’t look like the name we are totally in love with etc.
Thanks for everyone’s feedback though its been helpful.
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After reading the whole thread I was going to suggest that it sounds like you want to know! It will certainly make planning easier and it will be a lovely surprise whenever you do find out, during or after.
I’ve always been so obsessed with the idea of having a girl first I thought I’d be devastated if I had a boy. But then I finally found the perfect boy name so now I feel much more at ease with either haha.
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@anon25197097, I’m totally with you on the ‘control freak’ element. You’re making the right choice, I think. But I did want to mention that if it’s the frilly clothes you’re worried about, my experience has been that (for whatever reason) people are about 10x more interested in buying pink/frilly stuff than neutral or “boy” clothing. We were inundated with literally more clothes than [name_f]Elise[/name_f] could ever wear. Maybe it was just my late Grandma and her enthusiasm for shopping and little girls, but it was kind of insane. I felt a little bad for my boys after that—not that they weren’t loved, but that the clothing was more exciting for people to gift. [name_f]Elise[/name_f] was #3 after two brothers, too. Also, this was 13.5 years ago, and it’s totally possible people’s attitudes are ever-evolving over gender neutral baby clothes. I’ve certainly noticed more cute neutral stuff lately.
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Thank you.
Oh it’s more a case of I don’t really like white or pale colours which I tend to find a lot of the neutral clothes are. I always dress my boys in lots of stripes, dinosaurs or boy prints. Because whenever they wear white or pale stuff, well you can imagine with lots of boys yourself. [name_m]Just[/name_m] shows up every stain/dirt imaginable 
not that it’s a problem it’s just mine would look permanently scruffy.
[name_f]Elise[/name_f] is such a pretty name by the way.
I think you are right grandmother’s or older generation tend to go nuts on grandaughters. [name_f]My[/name_f] neice is a twin (boy/girl twins) she is the only granddaughter in the family. Girls stuff does tend to look more exciting I must admit! It always saddens me when you go into a clothes shop and there is a ton of girls clothes and accessories and very little for boys.
I’m not sure if I have seen much cute gender neutral clothes. It does tend to be the whites again. What I have seen is less stereotypical gender association clothing for girls. So for instance, pink dinosaur babygrows which is refreshing to see. It’s not the same for boys though. [name_u]Haven[/name_u]’t really seen any blue mermaid onesies yet hah.
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That’s so good to hear. I agree when you find a name you are excited about then it makes having that gender more appealing and exciting!
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