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| Yes | 61% | 280 votes | Total: 458 votes | |
| No | 39% | 178 votes |
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Add to FavoritesYes! Why would you want to be left in the dark about anything regarding your baby? The last thing I would want is my doctor keeping secrets or withholding information. If the doctor knew my baby would have a freckle on their butt, I would want to know! I have both a boy and a girl and knew their sex in advance both times. There is so much going on when your baby is born. You finally get to see what your baby looks like and hold them for the first time. It's a wonderful experience. Finding out the sex while you are bored, depressed and tired of being pregnant can really make those final months more endurable. Other reasons for finding out include:
Bonding
Knowing the sex of your baby can make it easier to bond with your unborn child. It helps you to dream about the future and what your family will be like. It's exciting! When you are pregnant with your first child, it helps you to realize there's actually a life growing inside of you!
Choosing a name
Choosing a baby's name can be an overwhelming decision for many parents. It takes a lot of thought and preparation to find the perfect one. When couples don't agree, cutting the choices in half can make it easier and less time consuming. It may not be relevant to argue about naming your child Jason or Mathew if you are having a girl.
Decorating the baby's room
Should you choose a hockey border or princess stickers? Most parents would decorate their baby's room differently if they knew the sex in advance. The generic moons and stars will satisfy any baby, but decorating the room for a toddler or young child will save you time and money in the long run.
Clothes and Toys
Even in 2008, most families prefer sex-oriented clothes and toys for their children. Frilly dresses for girls and trucks for boys are still the norm. Knowing the sex of your baby can help avoid an overload of green and yellow sleepers. Dressing your child in gender appropriate clothes will help others from calling your boy a cute little girl.
Medical reasons
Will you need to consider a circumcision? Are there hereditary complications you will need to consider? Various muscular dystrophies, hemophilia, Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and color blindness are all gender specific diseases. Knowing the sex of your baby early can help you plan and make important decisions about your baby's future health.
Will your baby be a boy or a girl? Women have been plagued by this question since the beginning of time. It's a question that the majority of women have wanted to know. Now that it's possible to find out, why not do it? It helps you bond, pick a name, decorate the room, buy and receive appropriate clothes and toys and be aware of any information your doctor has about your baby. If you can afford it, they actually have 3D ultrasound machines where you can get a realistic picture of your baby. I think that's great! Finding out the gender of your baby is different from choosing the sex yourself. That's a topic for a whole new discussion.
Learn more about this author, Tammy Lee White.
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No
We should leave some things to the element of surprise.
There are many practical, sound, logical reasons to use when convincing yourself that it's the best thing to find out the sex of your baby right now. You can plan that lovely nursery (that the baby will only sleep in when it's dark). You can buy a whole wardrobe of the proper colored baby clothes that will be too small almost the moment the baby is born. You can pre-print baby announcements, buy cigars with the colored band matching your baby's sex, and you know for certain which section of the Baby Name book to start perusing. Baby accessories and toys can also be color-coded to the advance news of baby's gender.
I know several couples that had it all done baby room, entire layette, car seats, diaper bag embroidered with the unborn baby's name weeks before baby was born. Somehow, it just doesn't seem as magical.
There are so few things in our technology-laden society that we DON'T know. We have cell phones with cameras so we can send pictures of events the very second they happen. We have email that sends long missives instantly across oceans. Public records are accessible at our convenience on dozens of websites. We can check grades, stocks, library catalogs, and even see our own signatures on our checks on-line at any moment. Our lives post industrial technological revolution are factual, concrete, and documented ad nauseum.
The birth of a child is still, despite our every modern medical marvel, nothing short of miraculous. The breathless anticipation of expectant parents, waiting and longing to hold that baby in their arms, is joyous and poetic. Whose eyes will the baby have? How much hair? How tall? Will Baby like chess? Football? Dance? Will Baby play a musical instrument? Whose giggle will Baby have?
These are the questions, the ponderings that make expecting a baby a mystical event. It should stay one. There's really no need for parents to spoil the magic. There is no practical reason to "peek" on the sex of your baby that overshadows the mysterious and supremely satisfying journey to the delivery room and hearing the doctor's voice announce, "It's a.."
Learn more about this author, Julie Ann Keith.
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