Sex of the Baby

These days it is quite common to know the sex of the baby even before it is born. Since an ultrasound scan is usually used to gauge the condition of the baby, it is quite often used to find out the sex of the baby as well. The ultrasound scan must be very useful indeed to see how the baby is doing but sometimes I feel that it is overdone. The doctors seem to scan at every single visit and I wonder if thats good for the baby. Still, I'm not a medical practitioner, only a mother, and so I can't comment on the safety of ultrasound in this post.

"We don't want to know the sex of the baby till the birth." we told the doctor from the start. We wanted to have a surprise as it didn't matter to us what sex the baby was. Finding out the sex at birth is much more fun. The doctor informed us that most couples are eager to know the sex of the baby when she scans. Sometimes some of them asked eagerly "What is the sex? What is the sex?" instead of "Is my baby healthy?" she said.

It made shopping for baby stuff a little bit harder as we had to stick to unisex colours but still we stuck to our decision for our first child. I still remember coming to after the operation with general anesthesia and immediately asking my doctor in a blur "Is it a boy or a girl?" to which she replied "Its a girl!".

For the second, we decided to do things a little bit differently and so we decided to know the sex of the baby beforehand. From the ultrasound scan we found out that it was a boy. It was later confirmed to be a boy at birth.

If you are interested in reading about the accuracy of the diagnosis of fetal sex through ultrasound, you can read this faq "Ultrasound diagnosis of fetal gender" .

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