I don’t think being opinionated is a bad thing – as long as you are informed and open to other points of view. But, when a person is ignorant, close-minded and opinionated…. Well, that just gets on my nerves.
An acquaintance, yesterday, was talking about her 8 week pregnancy. A friend of mine asked her if she was planning on finding out the gender, to which she replied no.
Personally, I think that’s great, for them.
But she chose to follow it up with two ignorant statements:
1. Well, God didn’t intend for us to know.
2. My friend and I are having completely opposite pregnancies, and she thinks she’s having a boy so I must be having a girl.
Um… First off, God didn’t intend for a lot of things – including for us to get sick and die, or to even need an epidural for pregnancy (thanks Eve!!).
Second, every single pregnancy is different, even for the same woman and has no real relation to the sex of the baby.
For example, here are some common “sex revealing” myths:
Carrying high/low
Heart beat rate
Cravings
and other myths…
I have a friend who was carrying high with a low heart rate and craving salty things (all supposedly pointing to a boy!) and had a beautiful baby girl.
I had a friend whose pregnancies were exactly the same at the beginning, and each time she gave birth to a baby of the opposite sex.
The truth is it’s a fifty-fifty chance that your unborn child will be a boy or a girl, and instead of focusing on random things that mean nothing at 8 weeks, maybe people should be doing more research on pregnancy and parenting. And tact…
The Undomestic Housewife 
What? You don’t believe that intense heart burn means a baby with lots of hair? Or being really sick means you’ll be having a girl?
Well, me either.
I think much of this thinking comes from fatalistic thinking–the thought that you have no control over your life or its outcome.
As for me, I do my best to keep my mouth shut when I hear things like, “chicken soup will cure all your morning sickness!” I try really hard to nod my head and thank the person respectfully, even if deep down I want to glare at their silliness. But I’m still working on not saying anything when I hear silly causal relationships between pregnancy ails and gender/size of baby/hair/whatever. If people want to believe that those things predict certain outcomes, by all means believe away. Just don’t be disappointed when things turn our not like you expected. ; )
Or don’t shove your beliefs down other people’s throats? haha.
My mom gets that kind of thing all the time.. She has MS and a whole bunch of other stuff and everyone is trying to convince her they know the latest cure – because their brother’s uncle’s roomate’s ex-wife did it and it worked for her… I think to me it’s mostly the way it’s said… There’s a difference between saying, “You should do this because…” as opposed to, “I know you do a lot of research, but have you heard of this…”
Those are like the best answers EVER to why you don’t want to know. My favorite is the oppisite pregnancy reason. Ok, did that come out sarcastic? It might have. Hmmm. We didn’t find out because I insisted on the surprise because I would be too busy with at least one child to be unprepared for the next child(ren).