According to the maternity websites that I follow, this week, our baby's roughly the size of an onion (or a turnip, depending on which website you look at...) That doesn't seem particularly big (and still far from the watermelon it's expected to become in August), but considering how just a month or so ago, the little thing was the size of a pea, I'd say it's definitely going through a growth spurt. Not only has the baby developed fingers, toes, teeth, and tastebuds (!), this week, it's developing sweat glands. Sweat glands, people, sweat glands!Also, sometime in April, Jude and I will be getting our second trimester ultrasound, which is when we could potentially find out the gender of our baby if we so choose. And that has been *the* question everyone's been asking us lately. To know or not to know? We were talking about it today and began thinking that back in Singapore, almost all our friends chose to find out the gender of the baby in advance. I don't think I knew anyone who didn't. And so at home, the question was less, "Do you want to find out?" than "Boy or girl?" Here though, the question has invariably been whether or not we even want to know in the first place. And our answer: we haven't decided.
On the one hand, there's something romantic and mysterious about the not knowing, about that one last surprise at the end of the journey. If labor is as painful as I'm imagining it to be, then maybe on top of being gifted with our baby at the end of the trauma, the added bonus of finally finding out whether it's a girl or a boy will make the process a little more bearable. We also won't have to deal with gift baskets full of all blue or all pink onesies... On the other hand, finding out the gender of the baby is a way of getting to know the little one that much more as it continues to grow in me, a kind of bonding, if you will. I mean, if it's already peeing and perspiring in me, and using up 15% of my calorie intake, I should at least know if it's a boy or a girl and stop calling it "it". Besides, it might seriously help the naming debacle Jude and I constantly find ourselves in (right now, our girls name list is almost twice as long as the one for boys- in Sam's words, though, they both need work...)
What about you? Did/Would you choose to find out?
6 comments:
We decided to find out instead of leaving it a mystery. Gabe and I felt that there was enough mystery to the little one already... what would she look like? Who would she take after? We started calling her by her name as soon as we knew (we had names picked out since our honeymoon) and she became part of our daily vernacular. I feel like we bonded with her from her first ultrasound.
Some of our friends who had little ones did find out and decided to keep it a secret... that kept the mystery for everyone else and they did not end up with pink only or blue only onesies.
No. I would not want to know the sex. It is one of the last surprises in the world.
-Tarja
Hey Serene and Jude,
This is Dan quietly looking at my wife's open tabs on her computer. When I read your posting I was thinking how your debate of whether to find out or not was similar to ours except Liz was the one pushing for not finding out and I was the one pushing to find out (we are truly opposites). We had a kind of compromise. Of course we told everyone else we didn't know, but that was only true for the 1st 8 months. At the ultrasound where they determine the sex, we asked the technician to write the answer down on a Christmas card (to ourselves of course) and put it in an envelope. We opened the envelope on Christmas. So, we found out like a month before Hannah was born that she was going to be a girl. Hope you have fun with whatever you decide!
Dan and now Liz since she is standing over my shoulder as I type.
I would not be able to not know. I am a planner down to the T so I would want to know what the name was going to be, what kinds of clothing to get, what kinds of troubles to look out for when he/she became a teenager (yes, I am that obsessive)... I would love to be able to talk to the baby using the name we've already picked out. We picked out names before we got married, I think.
I am so excited for you guys, I hope you keep telling us about the developments :-)
Thanks for sharing with us your opinions, everyone! Like I said, we still haven't quite made up our minds yet, but it's been so nice finding out what goes/went through your minds as you think/thought about the dilemma :)
We found out for our first, and didn't for our second. I preferred the not knowing. It was so exciting! :)
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