Al Sheahan had kept the gender of her first baby a secret and thought there would be no issues doing it again—but she was wrong.
When an expectant mom called her doctor to get the results of a prenatal screening, she began the conversation with a simple request: Don't tell me the sex of my baby.for a number of reasons.
A study by researchers at Ohio State University of first-time expectant mothers found that those who kept the baby's sex a surprise were more likely to score high in"openness to experience" and hold more egalitarian views on gender roles. Al Sheahan, from Perth in Australia, was in the midst of her second pregnancy when she made the call that changed everything.
"We didn't find out the sex of our first child and didn't intend to find out for our second either," she toldSheahan remembers telling the doctor at the start of the call:"I don't want to know the sex. I think it might be on there , so please don't tell me that.
""I just said, 'No, no, no, I don't want to know the sex, sorry,' and pretended I didn't hear," she said. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done. There was understandable disappointment for Sheahan, who had managed to keep her first child's sex a secret until birth.
"We really loved the surprise of finding out at birth with our son and had no gender preference, so we wanted that surprise again," she said. It hadn't always been easy, but they had managed it. This time around, however, they stumbled at one of the first hurdles of the pregnancy. Despite the initial disappointment, Sheahan holds no bitterness toward the doctor who made the mistake and can now see the funny side of the mishap.
"It's hard to be upset when you learn you have a healthy, growing baby. The shock of it was disappointing for a moment," she said. Nora Snowy Sheahan, named after her great grandfather, arrived a few months later and is due to turn 1 next week. Having experienced both the highs and lows of knowing and not knowing a baby's sex before birth, Sheahan is in a unique position to compare the two approaches.
"I just think that, as long as you don't have a gender preference, there aren't many surprises left in life, and finding out who your baby is when they're born is genuinely so special," she said. "Choosing a name was easier because we didn't have to plan for both, but otherwise I'd always choose to keep it a surprise. "She also has advice for anyone hoping to follow her example and keep their unborn child's sex a mystery.
"Remind every provider you speak to at the start of every conversation because it's really easy for people to slip up," she said. "I wouldn't do anything differently. Everything happens for a reason, and she was always going to be our girl whether we found out early or not. "
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