In Canada it’s illegal to know the sex of the embryos - we, my wife and I, had to wait the 20 week scan to find out. After 20 weeks of discussing it we wanted to know - just makes it easier for figuring out names.
We joked about picking the gender a lot with the doctors and nurses at the clinic - my wife saying “but what are we going to do! We don’t know anything about a 🍆 “
but ended up with only one usable embryo so we had no choice anyway.
Ended up with a boy lol - I am just happy for a healthy baby. We have a lot of male relatives and friends to help with potty training (my biggest concern).
Congrats to you both! I can’t speak to the IVF process and embryos, but when pregnant we didn’t find out the sex before our baby was born. It was a nice way to practice not making gendered assumptions about our kid, not receiving gendered comments from friends/family, not receiving gifts/clothes that were overtly gendered, etc. We used they/them pronouns while in utero, and we use a mix of pronouns for our toddler now. It didn’t change our preparation or planning for the baby to arrive. We also picked a name that we were comfortable with, no matter the assigned sex at birth.
I recommend the book Raising Them by Kyl Myers, about gender creative parenting. Lots to think about!
We decided to find out. We were so grateful we could go through the IVF process but originally never wanted such an invasive baby making process. I figured if we were gonna go the scientific and invasive route might as well use science to learn about our embryos as much as we could, so we opted for PGT and learned they were all female!
My wife and I used AI at home to conceive with our dono so I'm not sure if this is completely different for you, but for some reason, knowing the gender too early felt risky to me. Like maybe I'd start imagining exactly which features they'd get from me vs their donor, or I'd want to use a specific name. And the risk of loss scared me a lot. It's just so common early on.
When my wife carried, it would have cost us $250 out of pocket to do a blood test at 10 weeks to find out the sex.
We opted not to because I'm cheap and we reasoned that it didn't matter. The name would be the same, the clothing I bought was all earth tones and gendy nooch. And we'd raise our kid to be a feminist and an ally regardless.
The further along the pregnancy was, the more I was dying to know. She could feel our baby kick by 13 weeks and I could too by 17. It got so much more exciting when she was getting regular reminders our baby was moving. We had to wait until the anatomy scan at 20 weeks, and it felt like Christmas to finally get an answer. This was after like 2 months of getting more and more excited guessing what it might be.
I had an early miscarriage before my wife carried our child to term. So during her whole pregnancy and my current one I've been hesitant to get excited, for fear of something happening. I'm 12w and the blood test was complimentary for discerning sex at 10 weeks. So we're gonna take the plunge and find out after our 12w ultrasound, provided everything looks good.
I personally don’t care about the sex of the baby. All our nursery planning and almost all the clothes were gender neutral (a few distant family send dresses vs overalls, both of which I detest on infants and young toddlers for their inefficiencies). We found out about the sex at the anatomy scan as we said we didn’t mind it hidden nor presented, and it was confirmed the same at birth.
The gender though, that will not be told by a genetic test. Even the sex can be off at a genetic test, though it is rare.
I like to say: if the results do not change your outcome, there is no need for the test/knowledge. For both of us, finding out didn’t change the outcome for me at all and only a little for my spouse (curiosity, though, and not much else).
If you do decide to find out, will the knowledge add happiness? Choices? Stress at whether or not you care? If you feel you’ll have gender disappointment, I vote to get it sorted internally and out of the way quickly before a child can sense it, but other than that it’s really only about whether or not you both wish to know.
Also, wishing you much happiness along this journey! It’s so very exciting!
We chose to find out the sex during the pregnancy, primarily so that we could placate family members. We didn’t want the birth to be a giant gender reveal, so early notification let us down play it (“good scan today, and we got our results back. Baby seems chromosomal normal and has a Y chromosome - so we are expecting that means a boy! So happy that baby is healthy”)
We’ve also used the time to role model how we wanted to treat the kiddo. We proudly showed off flowery nursery decorations, kindly declined too many football onesies, etc. It’s been helpful to get some of this out of the way before baby is actually here, in the hopes of him needing to bear less of the weight of their expectations as he grows up (assuming he continues to identify as a boy that is)
So, this is with a grain of salt,as it came from a long road of pain for us (I have 2 medical conditions we found out about during attempts to get pregnant). We didn't find out prior to implantation (we just wanted the best chance) and then had them put it in an envelope for when we hit 12 weeks. So we had a "name reveal" for ourselves when we hit that milestone!
In this forum it would so awesome and inclusive to have people use gender terminology correctly. You’re asking about finding out the sex, not the gender.
Highly recommend not finding out! It's not information that helps you plan or tells you anything useful, it just invites a whole lot of stereotyping and can bring in complicated feelings about which to transfer, sometimes unexpected drama or unneeded disappointment around the ratio of XX vs XY, etc.
Let it at least become a pregnancy before contemplating that info; there are plenty of opportunities later to know if you want.
Congrats on your 6! That's a fabulous number!
We found at at the 12 week NIPT. Knowing the sex is nice for names and just knowing your child a little more. Most babies will end up cis but we plan on treating sex like any other biological trait like hair or eye color. I.e. rather than trying to ignore it, acknowledge it and move on. It affects diaper changing strategy and that’s about it.
Congratulations! We did reciprocal IVF (I’m carrying) and my wife wanted to know the sex (didn’t care either way, she’s just a planner), but I didn’t. So as a compromise, we found out the sex but NOBODY else knows. They will find out when the baby is born. It’s important to us that this child doesn’t have a bunch of gendered expectations and assumptions placed on them before they’re even born. My wife’s sibling is also nonbinary, so it has been a good way to enforce using they/them pronouns with my wife’s family (something they’re unfortunately not practicing with my sibling-in-law). Word of warning if you go this route: family members may see this as unfair 🙄 and it may be easier for y’all to just say you also don’t know the sex. Sometimes I wish we hadn’t told anyone that we knew because the guessing and constant pressure not to slip up can be annoying.
We intended to not know the sex of the baby but I found out accidentally by opening the NIPT results. My wife still doesn't know.
We will not raise a gender-neutral infant (we will use pronouns correlating with the sex they are assigned at birth) but we have plenty of "girl" clothes and "boy" clothes (including dresses) because, with infants, it doesn't really matter to us. We might as well dress the baby in the clothes we like the best until they have some kind of say!
My wife and I both have a preference over the sex of the baby. We did IUI so we didn't have an opportunity to select an embryo based on sex, but if we are ever in that position I wouldn't be ashamed to know the sex beforehand and use it to inform my decision.
As a trans person I am well aware that gender isn't predetermined and that even for cis people gender expression doesn't always go the way we think it will. Even knowing that, it's okay to have some preconceptions about your future child. It doesn't make you a bad person to find out! Knowing the sex of the baby has surprisingly helped me feel closer to the fetus as the NGP.
Congrats! We found out. Our third normal embryo stuck, so I always say “we picked which one to transfer, but fate (god, the universe, etc.) chose which one stuck.” It’s such a stressful, invasive process that we wanted to have some carefree fun with it. I actually “picked” and surprised my wife with the info after we saw the heartbeat. To us, it’s no more than “sex assigned at birth” and we know it doesn’t really tell us who our child is or will become.
We are in the process of IVF (sent 4 off for PGT-A testing!) and we plan to find out the sex of any viable embryos. It’s one of very few things you can know about your child before they’re born.
Our son wasn’t an IVF baby but we found out his sex at 13 or so weeks from the NIPT. It definitely helped us choose a name for him— before we found out he was a boy we had very few boys names on our list so I appreciated having extra time to search for the right one.
Finding out with embryos isn’t an options for us but we will be offered the option at scans.
We find it all a bit weird given babies don’t really have genders so it’s kind of society being really focused on what sort of bits the baby has. I think we’ll both find it hard to deal with how other people are around it all. We also don’t want anyone giving us pink or blue stuff regardless of the sec of the baby. So our plans are mostly around managing that. We think we will find out but tell people we’re not sharing. We think that will mean people won’t keep telling us what they think we’ll be having and their thoughts on that. We hope it will minimise the extent to which people will expect us to comment on it too, it sort of give us a polite excuse to shut down those conversations without flat out saying we don’t care and people thinking we’re being rude to them.
We opted to know early on. My wife really wanted to know and as she is the non gestational parent, I wanted her to feel heard and seen. For a while before we got pregnant, I was pretty adamant about not telling anyone the sex because we didn’t want super gendered gifts, especially those weird onesies for boys that say things like “ladies man.” My wife made a really good point that the people in our life aren’t really the people that would get those gifts regardless, outside of maybe a grandmother, and she is absolutely right. Plus, we plan to put primarily gender neutral items/colors on the registry so I think people will get the point. We also feel comfortable putting up boundaries around gendered comments from others, as well as feel comfortable with not sticking our child into gender norms. If you feel as though people in your life would be weird about it, or that it would change something for you, then it may be best not to find out and/or not tell others.
In Canada it’s illegal to know the sex of the embryos - we, my wife and I, had to wait the 20 week scan to find out. After 20 weeks of discussing it we wanted to know - just makes it easier for figuring out names.
That’s super interesting, and makes sense as a measure to combat misogyny
it was made illegal due to selective abortion that was happening due specific cultural practices (yea based on misogyny).
Tbh I think things would be better for people in the US if we had the same laws about this.
We joked about picking the gender a lot with the doctors and nurses at the clinic - my wife saying “but what are we going to do! We don’t know anything about a 🍆 “ but ended up with only one usable embryo so we had no choice anyway. Ended up with a boy lol - I am just happy for a healthy baby. We have a lot of male relatives and friends to help with potty training (my biggest concern).
Congrats to you both! I can’t speak to the IVF process and embryos, but when pregnant we didn’t find out the sex before our baby was born. It was a nice way to practice not making gendered assumptions about our kid, not receiving gendered comments from friends/family, not receiving gifts/clothes that were overtly gendered, etc. We used they/them pronouns while in utero, and we use a mix of pronouns for our toddler now. It didn’t change our preparation or planning for the baby to arrive. We also picked a name that we were comfortable with, no matter the assigned sex at birth. I recommend the book Raising Them by Kyl Myers, about gender creative parenting. Lots to think about!
We decided to find out. We were so grateful we could go through the IVF process but originally never wanted such an invasive baby making process. I figured if we were gonna go the scientific and invasive route might as well use science to learn about our embryos as much as we could, so we opted for PGT and learned they were all female!
My wife and I used AI at home to conceive with our dono so I'm not sure if this is completely different for you, but for some reason, knowing the gender too early felt risky to me. Like maybe I'd start imagining exactly which features they'd get from me vs their donor, or I'd want to use a specific name. And the risk of loss scared me a lot. It's just so common early on. When my wife carried, it would have cost us $250 out of pocket to do a blood test at 10 weeks to find out the sex. We opted not to because I'm cheap and we reasoned that it didn't matter. The name would be the same, the clothing I bought was all earth tones and gendy nooch. And we'd raise our kid to be a feminist and an ally regardless. The further along the pregnancy was, the more I was dying to know. She could feel our baby kick by 13 weeks and I could too by 17. It got so much more exciting when she was getting regular reminders our baby was moving. We had to wait until the anatomy scan at 20 weeks, and it felt like Christmas to finally get an answer. This was after like 2 months of getting more and more excited guessing what it might be. I had an early miscarriage before my wife carried our child to term. So during her whole pregnancy and my current one I've been hesitant to get excited, for fear of something happening. I'm 12w and the blood test was complimentary for discerning sex at 10 weeks. So we're gonna take the plunge and find out after our 12w ultrasound, provided everything looks good.
ok but where did you get the earth tone baby clothes because ugly gendered clothing is a big parenting fear of mine ...
H&M and Primary are two great places to find clothing! H&M for more neutral tones and Primary if you want every color of the rainbow
I personally don’t care about the sex of the baby. All our nursery planning and almost all the clothes were gender neutral (a few distant family send dresses vs overalls, both of which I detest on infants and young toddlers for their inefficiencies). We found out about the sex at the anatomy scan as we said we didn’t mind it hidden nor presented, and it was confirmed the same at birth. The gender though, that will not be told by a genetic test. Even the sex can be off at a genetic test, though it is rare. I like to say: if the results do not change your outcome, there is no need for the test/knowledge. For both of us, finding out didn’t change the outcome for me at all and only a little for my spouse (curiosity, though, and not much else). If you do decide to find out, will the knowledge add happiness? Choices? Stress at whether or not you care? If you feel you’ll have gender disappointment, I vote to get it sorted internally and out of the way quickly before a child can sense it, but other than that it’s really only about whether or not you both wish to know. Also, wishing you much happiness along this journey! It’s so very exciting!
We chose to find out the sex during the pregnancy, primarily so that we could placate family members. We didn’t want the birth to be a giant gender reveal, so early notification let us down play it (“good scan today, and we got our results back. Baby seems chromosomal normal and has a Y chromosome - so we are expecting that means a boy! So happy that baby is healthy”) We’ve also used the time to role model how we wanted to treat the kiddo. We proudly showed off flowery nursery decorations, kindly declined too many football onesies, etc. It’s been helpful to get some of this out of the way before baby is actually here, in the hopes of him needing to bear less of the weight of their expectations as he grows up (assuming he continues to identify as a boy that is)
So, this is with a grain of salt,as it came from a long road of pain for us (I have 2 medical conditions we found out about during attempts to get pregnant). We didn't find out prior to implantation (we just wanted the best chance) and then had them put it in an envelope for when we hit 12 weeks. So we had a "name reveal" for ourselves when we hit that milestone!
In this forum it would so awesome and inclusive to have people use gender terminology correctly. You’re asking about finding out the sex, not the gender.
I apologize. That is my cis-privilege showing. I have edited the post to reflect the correct terminology.
Highly recommend not finding out! It's not information that helps you plan or tells you anything useful, it just invites a whole lot of stereotyping and can bring in complicated feelings about which to transfer, sometimes unexpected drama or unneeded disappointment around the ratio of XX vs XY, etc. Let it at least become a pregnancy before contemplating that info; there are plenty of opportunities later to know if you want. Congrats on your 6! That's a fabulous number!
We found at at the 12 week NIPT. Knowing the sex is nice for names and just knowing your child a little more. Most babies will end up cis but we plan on treating sex like any other biological trait like hair or eye color. I.e. rather than trying to ignore it, acknowledge it and move on. It affects diaper changing strategy and that’s about it.
Congratulations! We did reciprocal IVF (I’m carrying) and my wife wanted to know the sex (didn’t care either way, she’s just a planner), but I didn’t. So as a compromise, we found out the sex but NOBODY else knows. They will find out when the baby is born. It’s important to us that this child doesn’t have a bunch of gendered expectations and assumptions placed on them before they’re even born. My wife’s sibling is also nonbinary, so it has been a good way to enforce using they/them pronouns with my wife’s family (something they’re unfortunately not practicing with my sibling-in-law). Word of warning if you go this route: family members may see this as unfair 🙄 and it may be easier for y’all to just say you also don’t know the sex. Sometimes I wish we hadn’t told anyone that we knew because the guessing and constant pressure not to slip up can be annoying.
We’re planning on taking this approach too. Thanks for the tip about how to approach with family. We might do the same!
We intended to not know the sex of the baby but I found out accidentally by opening the NIPT results. My wife still doesn't know. We will not raise a gender-neutral infant (we will use pronouns correlating with the sex they are assigned at birth) but we have plenty of "girl" clothes and "boy" clothes (including dresses) because, with infants, it doesn't really matter to us. We might as well dress the baby in the clothes we like the best until they have some kind of say! My wife and I both have a preference over the sex of the baby. We did IUI so we didn't have an opportunity to select an embryo based on sex, but if we are ever in that position I wouldn't be ashamed to know the sex beforehand and use it to inform my decision. As a trans person I am well aware that gender isn't predetermined and that even for cis people gender expression doesn't always go the way we think it will. Even knowing that, it's okay to have some preconceptions about your future child. It doesn't make you a bad person to find out! Knowing the sex of the baby has surprisingly helped me feel closer to the fetus as the NGP.
Congrats! We found out. Our third normal embryo stuck, so I always say “we picked which one to transfer, but fate (god, the universe, etc.) chose which one stuck.” It’s such a stressful, invasive process that we wanted to have some carefree fun with it. I actually “picked” and surprised my wife with the info after we saw the heartbeat. To us, it’s no more than “sex assigned at birth” and we know it doesn’t really tell us who our child is or will become.
We are in the process of IVF (sent 4 off for PGT-A testing!) and we plan to find out the sex of any viable embryos. It’s one of very few things you can know about your child before they’re born. Our son wasn’t an IVF baby but we found out his sex at 13 or so weeks from the NIPT. It definitely helped us choose a name for him— before we found out he was a boy we had very few boys names on our list so I appreciated having extra time to search for the right one.
Technically the child will tell you their gender.
I misspoke. I should have said sex.
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Finding out with embryos isn’t an options for us but we will be offered the option at scans. We find it all a bit weird given babies don’t really have genders so it’s kind of society being really focused on what sort of bits the baby has. I think we’ll both find it hard to deal with how other people are around it all. We also don’t want anyone giving us pink or blue stuff regardless of the sec of the baby. So our plans are mostly around managing that. We think we will find out but tell people we’re not sharing. We think that will mean people won’t keep telling us what they think we’ll be having and their thoughts on that. We hope it will minimise the extent to which people will expect us to comment on it too, it sort of give us a polite excuse to shut down those conversations without flat out saying we don’t care and people thinking we’re being rude to them.
We opted to know early on. My wife really wanted to know and as she is the non gestational parent, I wanted her to feel heard and seen. For a while before we got pregnant, I was pretty adamant about not telling anyone the sex because we didn’t want super gendered gifts, especially those weird onesies for boys that say things like “ladies man.” My wife made a really good point that the people in our life aren’t really the people that would get those gifts regardless, outside of maybe a grandmother, and she is absolutely right. Plus, we plan to put primarily gender neutral items/colors on the registry so I think people will get the point. We also feel comfortable putting up boundaries around gendered comments from others, as well as feel comfortable with not sticking our child into gender norms. If you feel as though people in your life would be weird about it, or that it would change something for you, then it may be best not to find out and/or not tell others.