How did you deal with gendering your baby?

Layla149 · March 2014

I feel like all the baby stores only have pink stuff for girls and blue stuff for boys and I am worried about gendering my baby too soon? Did anyone else have this concern? Also I don't want to know the sex of my baby until it is born because I will love my baby no matter if it is a boy or a girl but I keep getting negative comments because they say I should know ahead of time in order to prepare, does anyone feel the same way?How did you deal with it?

Giraffealaff · March 2014

Exactly what Nicb13 said.

Just buy what you think is cute. It doesn't matter what section it comes out of.

Personally I found out the sex of DS but it was a personal choice for H and I, and had we chosen not to it would have been no ones business but ours.

Beckel84 · March 2014

I agree with PPs, but would like to add...we have a baby boy and did find out in advance. Even knowing that, I've chosen a lot of "gender neutral" things and will use them for a girl if/when we ever have one. For example, DS has tons of onesies that are maybe solid blue or green with a turtle...I see no problem letting a girl wear these. I got a lot of green and yellow in the stroller etc...but colors really don't give your baby a gender identity. Their experiences do.

PrimRoseMama · March 2014

You can't control your child's gender expression no matter what you dress them in or what you give them to play with. Someone who identifies as a woman will eventually do so. Likewise for someone who identifies as a man, & all across the spectrum of LGBTQ.

I am handling it by not worrying about something beyond my control. I buy what looks cute & don't worry about what gender the item is supposed to entertain.

lbbryant90 · March 2014

We didn't find out what we were having beforehand, but that wasn't our choice at first. We had wanted to know until our LO decided to be stubborn at the second ultrasound. We then had the choice to wait or drive 2 hours to have a 3d u/s done. Although many people told us to wait until after he was born, we had the baby showers before and got plenty of nuetral items. More than I expected tbh. If you look enough, you'll find many stores have some, but you may to look through a few aisles. Now that our little boy is here, we shop in only the boys section, but we plan to keep most of the things we have for any future children, whether it's a girl or another boy.

Zimger · March 2014

I wouldn't worry about it too much. I hit up a huge consignment sale before I knew DS1 was a boy. Most of the outfits I purchased ended up matching the color scheme in his nursery (green and yellow). Some have pink and lavender accents. No one has ever commented in a negative way and he sure doesn't seem bothered by it.

mysticl · March 2014

We didn't find out so all of the newborn and 3 month clothes we received before the birth were gender neutral (lots of duckies). They were also all sleepers which is really all you need at that age. Outfits are cute but sleepers are much easier to deal with. Since he was born his clothing does come from the boys section (I rarely buy him clothes because he has two grandmothers who have made it their life's work to dress him) and people still call him a girl because at 18 months he hasn't had a haircut yet. I've kept everything that didn't fall apart. If we have another boy it will get used. If we have girl I will probably use most of it, just not the stuff that says "boy" or "little man" on it.

When regular people would find out that we weren't finding out they would act shocked. However, medical personnel thought it was awesome that we weren't finding out.

We also didn't really decorate the nursery. We painted it blue (my favorite color). We bought a wood grain crib and the crib sheets were green or polka dots. The wall hangings are a sampler that hung in my childhood bedroom, a print from my favorite children's author (it is "girly" and if he doesn't like when he's older I'll move it), and some Disney prints DH had. There is no theme at all. We didn't want to spend a ton of money on something the kid decided he/she didn't like in a few years.

Don't stress yourself and buy what you like.

CoraCordero · March 2014

I'm really excited to NOT know. I love the thrill of waiting! I haven't bought anything pink, but I have bought a lot of blue, green and yellow. Pink can't go on a boy, but I think blue can definitely be on a girl.

nonzero · March 2014

You can find a good amount of pale yellow and green, especially if you shop the boys side (why? i have no idea). And if you look online, you can find more interesting colors, like bright reds and oranges. I think all the blue clothes I own were gifts, and I've bought tons of clothes for both kids myself.

MissDemeanor · March 2014

We didn't find out what we were having either, and I found getting gender neutral stuff was a bit tricky. Mainly I shopped in the boys section, as I thought blue outfits with frogs were better for either gender than all the pink outfits in the girls section.

I have a boy, and I'm not going to dress him in a pink outfit covered in butterflies and hearts, but I have no issues with his blanket that has blue and lavender elephants on it. We decorated his room in blue and yellow, with elephants.

I think it's good to not push gender roles on kids. Not every outfit needs to be a pink tutu with a princess shirt. But sometimes kids gravitate towards that themselves. II would totally have wanted the pink and purple Lego when I was a kid!!

munchkinrhodie · March 2014

We decided not to find out either. I admit at times it was a little annoying not knowing when it came to clothes shopping since there isn't a ton of neutral stuff, but we decided to get a weeks worth of clothes that were all neutral and then bought more clothes after my LO was born (It was a boy

) Carters has a bunch of cute neutral clothes, like what others said it's a lot of ducks but we didn't mind. Also like what other people said we looked in both girls and boys sections and used our judgement if we felt that a boy or a girl could both wear it. My husband was involved the whole time and always went shopping with me which was nice because I could get his point of view if something seemed too girly or too boyish
For the nursery we did winnie the pooh which was neutral.
I also would get comments from people for not knowing, most of our friends it was just because they wanted to know what kind of clothes to buy (they all just ended up buying clothes after LO was born). I did have some family that told us we should know in order to plan when we first announced the pregnancy but after they saw we had a nursery theme and everything, they backed off. Just ignore the negative comments (that's what we did) and enjoy the guessing game

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