3 Nov 2020

Gee you lot have filthy minds. I bet you clicked on this one much faster than you clicked to read the one about publicity the other day!

Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend a doctors appointment with my daughter-in-law and got to see my second grandson on the scan, and hear his heartbeat. We don’t know his name yet, but we’ve known that he is a he for quite awhile now.

There seems to be very few people nowadays who don’t find out the gender of their unborn baby prior to the birth. If you or someone you know is one of the exceptions, I apologise for that big generalisation.

Back when I was in the reproducing age bracket, very few people knew what sort they were getting before they got it. Neutral pastel colours were the way nurseries were decorated and lemon, lilac, pale green or white were popular colours for newborn clothing gifts. Parents had to have two names up their sleeves too, and often the one for the gender you didn’t get on delivery wasn’t the name that popped up again next time you went down the baby production line.

I remember when my sister had twins, she had all sorts of permutations ready depending on what she got. Two girls, two boys, or one of each – every possible outcome was catered for. I also remember the sheets of paper listing possible name choices!

For our first child, we had three boys names and one girls name chosen. We got a boy and it only took a minute or two on meeting him for the first time that Benjamin became the preferred choice ahead of Matthew or Stephen. It became more obvious it was the right choice when one of the nurses commented on both his name and his birth weight (chunky) and labelled him “Big Ben”.

Second time around we only had one boys and one girls name selected. We obviously told some people about our preferred names, because after the premature delivery, when my husband went to collect the firstborn from my sisters house where he’d been looked after during delivery, my sister asked my husband what we’d called the new baby boy. “Joseph”, was his reply. Her response was “I thought you were going to call him Joshua?”. He blames the trauma and lack of sleep for getting his second born child’s name wrong. He has never been allowed to forget this error.

But – apart from names, and colours of clothes you can gift a newborn, what are the big pluses to knowing what sort you’re getting before the delivery??

In the case of our family, it’s handy knowing we will have a grandson of the same gender, arriving around the same time of year as the last one. You’d think this might have stopped the respective grandmothers from buying more clothes, because the ones worn by the first boy will still be seasonally appropriate for his age and size.

Unless this one turns out to be a chunky bum like his dad was.

I wonder if they’ve considered Joseph as a name?