Alligators are just tacky. I believe that hippos are the traditional gender reveal animal.
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Do you know how much I want to make an “ingesting gender fluid” joke right now?
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The true reveal comes a decade or two later: “Mom, dad, I’m having a party.”
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Aw shucks, I just thought it was the mylar balloons hitting the power line again.
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[tasteless]
a) Can’t give the grandma a Darwin award; it wasn’t her idea AND she was too old to breed. She was just an innocent bystander.
b) “Gender Reveal Pipe Bomb” is an amazing band name.
[/tasteless]
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Just need a nice big tamper of natural copper for a boy and strontium 88 for a girl.
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So much this.
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Hold on to the nukes for the second party, at least if it’s a boy.
Then you can use the appropriate device to demonstrate if it’s a Little Boy or a Fat Man.
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This, indeed. When my children were (going to be) born I was kinda busy with other things than having a party.
I used to have those at the beach, with my toddlers. Especially little boys are quite prone to reveal their genitals in a partyful manner 
“Look, old lady, I’m a boy!”
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Agreed. It would probably help if physicians could refuse to tell (unless there was some medical need-to-know situation). With all the drama generated by people who feel others have stolen “their” pre-selected baby name, maybe that’s another thing that should wait until after the child’s arrival. 
We never even got to learn the gender.
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Sure we did, it’s “unspecified”.
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Strangely enough, it’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened at a gender reveal party:
I’d say these parties need to DIAF, but that’s the absolute wrongest choice of words.
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Or mabe a lot earlier.
I was very insistant that I was a girl from the age of two onwards. I had to wait nearly two decades before I was allowed to do anything about it though.
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When I had to think of a good name, I found it extremely helpful if we could scratch half the names. The echos were very clear on both our kids so mistakes were more or less impossible.
Thinking of a good name was (for me) one of the hardest things in my life.We wanted a name that didn’t invite bullying, didn’t mean something stupid (rather hard in the germanic languages, most names are rather bloodthirsty if you look up the original meaning), isn’t always mispronounced , was expressly not biblical (my wife has bad experiences with bible-thumpers) and on top of that would be a name we actually liked.
Slashing the number of names to choose from in half was extremely welcome to us.
Of course we were fussing over nothing, because even if you call you child Piglet you will think it is the cutest name ever after a week of associating it with your baby, but still you want to do the best you can.
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Ok, I know the dollar value disaster relief orgs and governments put on a human life. I also live in California and have directly suffered from the last couple years of wildfire (others have had it worse, but I felt it).
I gotta give it to killing grandma. Just on emotional gut reaction. The wildfire is a close second.
I think we can all agree that we have had enough latent transphobia parties.
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Wait a minute, your requirements were that the name
- not invite bullying
- not mean something stupid
- not be always mispronounced
- not be biblical
- and be one that you and your wife actually like
And yet…
I’d think you would want to expand the set of possible names as much as possible.
You went with Piglet, didn’t you? #noregrets
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Good luck with that.
Seriously. Those twisted little shits will make fun of anything.
It’s one thing if you want to name your kid something that means Ravenous Direwolf in Middle High Gothic. It’s quite another if your kid turns out to be a quiet, sensitive, brainy kid who is the president of the Drama Club.
Projecting extreme stereotypes of masculinity or femininity onto your kid before they’re even born is right up there with gender reveal parties IMO.
(which is why nobody asked me)
I remember one time when I was a little kid and went shopping with my mom, I met another kid shopping with his mom. The mom asked me my name and I told her, and she said, “oh, how nice, a Christian name”. Yes, she pronounced “Christian” in boldface. My mom and I both cringed audibly and got away fast.
My IRL name isn’t particularly Christian. It is Greek in origin and is at least as common among Jews as it is among Christians.
YMMV, but whenever I make a decision, I always need to filter first, filter fast, and filter categorically. Otherwise I waffle over the tiniest little things until eventually I say “you know, I’ve always liked Cunigonde* as a name”.
*of Germanic origin. Means “family war”.
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We wanted a list of possible names, to see which one would actually fit the baby when it came out. Needing to come up with twice as many names was not our strongest point 
While that’s true, i had a kid in class with a name like William Edward, surname Coyote. He was named after some family members and his parent’s hadn’t noticed… oh the agony…
Which is the sort of name we wanted to avoid. Turns out most germanic names mean something like that .
Been there, done that. Luckily common sense prevailed before the kid was actually born
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