Has anyone found out gender but kept it a secret? « Back to Group Discussions

[CookAMH]

My DH and I have agreed to find out this time (#3). The first two were surprises, such fun, but DH really wants to try finding out, so I'm cool with going for that. But, we lean toward keeping it a secret from everyone else. I wonder if that is worse torture for our families than not finding out and not hearing any names, LOL. What would you think of friends who did that?  I'm not usually concerned about what people think of my life in general, but my DH is a pastor and I don't want broadly offend a lot of people if they think I'm being a prick for not telling.

[OceanSolitude]

You can always say you don't know... but I don't know if you are comfortable wIth that type of lie. My husband and I are debating the same thing. I'm hoping to avoid tons of pink if its a girl or all stereotypical boy clothes.We like color and variety. I am hoping others who have kept it a secret will share their experiences.

[CookAMH]

I wouldn't be comfortable with that...if we did it, we'd say that we found out but are keeping it a secret. At least we have a few weeks to decide!

[Jennyanydots]

I don't know, I think if you tell people you're deliberately not letting them in on something you know they might feel excluded and distant. We tried to do that to my MIL last time around- not for the whole pregnancy, but i really liked the idea of revealing the gender in a creative way, with a little party. She knew when our US was, though, and called DP immediately afterward. She is such a sweet, wonderful person, but man, is she sensitive! She started crying on the phone when he wouldn't tell her the gender, she was so hurt.

Of course he broke down and told her, and then you know, you can't have one grandma know something and leave the other one in the dark... So the cat was out of the bag and there was no party :P

[katalopolis]

This is exactly what I want. But we're not finding out because no matter how hard I try to keep it a secret, I will use a gendered pronoun accidentally at some point. And I'd rather no one know than have to share it.

[nettlesoup]

We are going to find out, and ideally I would like to keep it to ourselves, but there's no way we'll be able to. But that's partly because we'll be telling my almost 4 year old what it's going to be.
 

[cmu204]

We kept it to ourselves with bio baby 1, but this time: eh. I tried so hard to be gender neutral, and my girl is the pinkest, frilliest kid you ever saw. So I figured I won't be too fussed about it this time around.

[nettlesoup]

I know exactly how you feel, cmu204! We said no pink countless times, and now she has lots of pink and she's a complete girly girl.
 

[LivingSky]

One of my coworkers and his wife are in that boat - they found out the sex but aren't telling anyone. The biggest problem I've seen with it is a lot of our coworkers trying to trip him up into saying "he" or "she".

DH and I found out the sex last time but didn't tell anyone the sex until at our baby shower, to prevent people from getting us gender specific gifts. We asked everyone for "green gifts" - green in color and/or 'green' environmentally. Then at the shower we had cupcakes and we filled the cupcakes with blue icing so everyone found out the sex when they bit in to their cupcake. It was fun and meant we didn't have to keep the secret for too long, and it kept our friends from pestering us too much about the sex of the baby because they knew they would find out at the party.

[letniaLynne]

If you want to find out but don't want to tell due to the gender stereotyping with gifts I have seen a new trend going around where you find out at the 20 wk scan and then announce the gender at the baby shower verses before. It is done in many creative ways but the one I liked best was the color of the inside of the cake would either be blue or pink. So when you cut into the cake and pull out the first slice everyone gets to find out together.

I have also heard another variation where the parents have the US tech write the sex in an envelope which they give to the baker who makes the cake and then everyone gets to find out together at the shower. I kind of think this is an interesting idea.

[luvroo]

I plan on finding out and I don't plan on sharing it with anyone. I plan on saying: "I'm keeping it a surprise". That's not a lie, it's just the power of semantics. It will be a surprise...to them. 

[chispita]

That was our original plan - finding out but not telling anyone. Mostly to avoid all the gendered stuff.

But then we talked about it a bit more, and neither of us had a strange urge to know, we decided that we'd rather not know ourselves either.

[CookAMH]

I'm glad to hear various thoughts!  We won't be having any showers since it's our third, and the main reason we wouldn't tell is to keep a lot of the fun of the actual birth and anticipation of it.  We discussed too, that if we tell our kids, everyone will know, so oh well. We're still on the fence. I love the old fashioned way of everything being a surprise at the end - gender and name, but want to honor DH's wish to find out and I'm liking that idea of finding out, while still trying to keep some surprise there.