How I Guessed the Sex of My Babies

I’m no mystic. Just someone who’s pretty good at hunches, and guessing the sex of our babies has been something I’m surprisingly good at.

For our first baby, I never even pictured having a boy. At the same time, I wasn’t one of those moms who was dying for a girl. It was simpler than that. Every time I pictured myself with our baby, I just got an image of a girl. Maybe it was because she was the first born and I’m the first born so my natural tendency was to imagine what I know. But a few weeks before we found out the sex (and we did have the ultrasound to find out) I gave myself a chance to imagine having a boy. What if it is a boy, I kept thinking? I’m going to need to prepare for that chance.

But it wasn’t a boy. It was a girl.

Then our second baby was on the way. In one of our first ultrasounds, the doctor said he THOUGHT that MAYBE it would be a boy, but he wasn’t at all sure and thought maybe it was a girl, maybe it was a boy. After this murky declaration, my husband and I left the office with two different conclusions: It’s a boy! It’s a girl!

Despite the doctor’s initial uncertainty, I knew another girl was coming for one simple reason. I felt EXACTLY the same as I did when I had our first daughter. Physically, hormonally—all the same feelings. It just seemed the same. Despite his quasi-prediction of a boy, I was pretty sure we were headed back to the pink section of Carters.com

Two long months went by and we had a more thorough ultrasound where they checked all the internal organs. This time he knew for sure. It was a girl.

Then came the third. Right away I felt different. My face broke out. Not that I’m The Noxema Girl or anything but in my mid 30s I didn’t have much of an acne problem, until I became pregnant the third time. Something else was different too. At every OBGYN  visit, they’d remark at how big the baby was. This had never been said during my previous pregnancies. With them it was always, “Are you sure this is your due date? Because the fetus is quite small.” Lots of math ensued and those little round cards with dates always came flying out of lab coat pockets.

This baby was big. And also strong. I felt much more kicking than with the girls. So I knew. Even though I’d heard that the more babies you have of one sex, the more likely you are to have more of the same, I knew this was a boy. And he was.

Maybe I am a bit mystic. Or maybe I just got lucky. Actually, having three healthy babies in a row is the luckiest thing that’s ever happened to me, so I guess I’ll just retire my crystal ball for now.