SEX OF BABY

To know or not to know

Should you find out the sex of your baby? Parents talk about their choices. One decision many pregnant couples grapple with is whether to find out the gender of their child. Auckland radiologist Richard Davis is asked to spill the beans with 50-60 per cent of his patients. Although most find out purely for curiosity’s sake, some couples need to know for medical reasons, he says. Either way, in scans done earlier than 18-20 weeks it’s very difficult to be accurate, but by the time a woman is 20 weeks pregnant, the baby’s genitalia can be seen clearly in 99 per cent of cases. It’s impossible to tell if the baby is turned away, too low in the pelvis or the mother is too large for the beam to penetrate far enough. Dr Davis often deals with couples where only one partner wants to know. He writes the sex on a piece of paper and gets the partner who doesn’t want to know to hand it to the other. He was once asked if he could tell the color of the baby’s skin, and sometimes gets phone calls from mums who want to find out, but don’t want their partners to know they know. “I prefer not to, but I have been known to use passwords or hum tunes (to convey the information).”

So, did you find out? Mothers spill the beans…

Jacqui Primus: With our first baby we found out at the 20-week scan. It was important to us that we could name her and call her by her name – they can hear in the womb. When I got pregnant a second time my midwife asked me if I was going to `open the wrapping before Christmas’. I told her, ‘Of course. What’s the surprise? It’s either going to be a boy or a girl.’ But then my husband decided he wanted a surprise, so we haven’t found out. It was a pain in the butt, really. I couldn’t get organized; I didn’t know what color to paint the baby’s room. Kate Harrower: Our first we kept as a surprise and we didn’t want to find out the sex for our second. Either. But towards the end of my third trimester the report from my 20-week scan arrived in the mail. It wasn’t supposed to have been sent to our house. Of course we opened it and it said the fetus was male. We were really annoyed we’d been told. Two weeks later, Kate gave birth to a girl. Katie Dilks: Our first baby was conceived after two miscarriages. We were just so happy to be pregnant we really didn’t care what the sex was, so we didn’t find out. With our second we didn’t really mind if we knew or not, so when we were at the 20-week scan I said, just for fun, “What do you think it is?” Even though we were told she’d be a girl we didn’t really take it as gospel as we knew they sometimes get it wrong. In this case, they got it right.