What happens when grandparents-to-be don’t want to know the baby’s sex

We hear plenty of stories about unreasonable or demanding adult children-in-law, but sometimes parents-in-law can really take the cake too, as as a poster on Mumsnet.com has just demonstrated.

A woman who is pregnant with her second baby says that her husband’s parents told her that they wanted to be surprised by the sex of the new baby, so warned her not to let the know whether she was expecting a boy or a girl.  Other members of the same family  jumped on the bandwagon in deciding they’d like to be surprised to, which she says is making conversations about the impending birth a minefield.

“[My in-laws] did this with my first baby and it was stressful trying not to slip up. A member of the family did slip up and they were really angry!” the Mumsnet poster wrote. “This time more family members on their side have decided they don’t want to know but I just think it’s stupid! It’s our news and we should decide whether it’s a secret. It makes me not want to talk about the pregnancy at all with them.”

The woman wanted to know from other Mumsnet users whether she was being unreasonable in being annoyed by the requests – and found that people were very much on her side.

“It’s your baby, so it’s your circus, unless one of them is going to offer to carry on the pregnancy and birth on your behalf, it’s nothing to do with them,” one commenter said, while another advised bluntly that “with requests this ridiculous, the only logical thing to do is ignore them”.

Others still said that although they weren’t keen on the new trend for ‘gender reveal’ events – the thing where parents-to-be throw a party just to announce the sex of their yet-to-be-born baby, in the misapprehension that anyone other than their absolutely nearest and dearest is dying to know – they’d put on a do just to rub the in-laws up the wrong way.

Others had an even more punishing solution to the issue. “Tell them that in that case you won’t be announcing the sex of the baby at the birth either and will opt for gender neutral names, clothes and toys for the first few years,” one commenter suggested. 

But at least one commenter said she’d experienced the same thing with her own parents as well as her parents-in-law.

“Both sets of parents and siblings have declared they ‘don’t want to spoil the surprise’ though why it would be any less of a surprise whilst pregnant is beyond me,” she wrote in sympathy. “Also we have known since 9 weeks due to some chromosomal testing we had to have done so it’s been a LONG time keeping this a secret. Only 7 weeks left until they can all say ‘I knew it’. Sigh.”

Were you keen to find out if you were going to have a grandson or granddaughter? Did you mind finding out before the birth or would you have preferred a post-birth surprise?