Why am I so conflicted about finding out the gender of my unborn child?

16 weeks is still pretty early to find out. He could be wrong. Are you getting any more ultrasounds? Maybe they could tell you for sure.
I don’t really understand “gender disappointment” but I know it exists.

Don’t forget- you’ve got hormones streaming around inside you right now. So things that wouldn’t normally bother you- will.

I would try to figure out why, specifically, you would be upset with one gender over the other. Are you conforming to societal expectations of gender or being influenced by something someone once said to you? Everything comes from somewhere- find the root and you’ll probably find your answer as to why this is stressing you so.

I just wanted our first baby to be a boy, cause you know, men always want to have a son and they feel more proud for that.
It’s not that I’m not happy with a girl or I will love her less, I just can’t stop feeling that I’m expecting a boy. And all my friends and relatives around have the same feeling.

First of all, men don’t always want to have a son. Maybe your husband does, but has he even said so? If you are going to have two children, one of each sex, then it is better to have the girl first. Girls provide so much better role models, in general, for their younger brothers that the boy would if it were the other way around. Of course, this can vary.

I guess you feel conflicted because you wanted a boy and you’ve got a girl. You’re still hoping the ultrasound technician was wrong. I don’t think you have to do anything about these feelings. When the baby comes, you will most likely forget you ever had those ambiguous feelings. However, if you are seriously disappointed about having a girl (which you say you aren’t)—so much so that you don’t think you’ll treat the child properly, then I’d go to therapy to get some help in dealing with this.

In your case, however, it doesn’t sound like there’s much to worry about. Your feelings will change. You expected a boy and you’ve got a girl. That expectation will die a natural death.

@AnetM You said “I just wanted our first baby to be a boy, cause you know, men always want to have a son and they feel more proud for that.” – this is an assumption and isn’t true for all men – what you should do is ask your partner how he’d feel if you care so much. You should really get out of the mindset that it’d matter to either of you because you may not be able to have any more kids after this (who knows life, right?) and you should concern yourself more with having a happy and healthy pregnancy and a wonderful postpartum period.

This really isn’t a tragedy for me. I just want to understand, can my feelings be more related to the reality than what the doctor saw at 16 weeks. I just look at my belly, feel the kicks and I’m sure this baby can’t be a girl, really. I’m confused.
I have an ultrasound appointment next week, and I’m so nervous about that.

@AnetM Hopefully the ultrasound will ease some of this anxiety – really I don’t know either how one can ‘feel’ that they’re having one sex or the other.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Yeah I don’t really understand. I sort of knew I was having another boy, because my pregnancy was so similar to my pregnancy with my older son..but that was just me guessing because of the symptoms..not some emotional gut feeling.

@AnetM I hope you are happy with what you get.