Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

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I had fun announcing my pregnancy. At six weeks, I decided to tell my immediate family. I sent each of them a personalized email (e.g. for my brother who likes Scrabble I sent him a picture of tiles which when unscrambled read "Uncle S_____"). On their own, some of them may have been a bit too vague, but I think all together they worked.

Only problem was, my dad was on a business trip at the time so he didn't get to see all the pieces come together. Here is our email exchange:

Hi Dad,

I've got a probability problem for you that I would like your help with.

"Suppose a generic test is able to detect the chemical hCG with 99% accuracy. Suppose false positives occur 0.01% of the time. If a certain woman performs the test and it comes back positive, what is the probability that she actually does contain the chemical hCG?"

I don't think this problem has enough information (I can't fill in all the spots for normal Bayes rule stuff). What do you think?

His response:

H0 = HCG absent
H1 = HCG present

P(detect HCG|present) = .99
P(detect HCG|absent) = 0.0001

P(present|detect HCG) = P(detect HCG | present) P(present)/(P(detect HCG|present) P(present) + P(detect HCG|absent)P(present))

So, it appears that you need a prior probability P(present) = 1 - P(absent).

And then he kept ignoring his phone all day even though my mom and I called him a few times. So that announcement sort of failed.

What fun announcements have you seen?

I was one that didn't get her announcement right off. She sent me a roll recipe with the insertion of "form the rolls. Put the buns in the oven until May then remove and let cool" or whatever.

And I kept asking, "Are you saying I always burn my rolls? I'm a bad cook?"

/personal anecdote relating to original post

This is how my friend told her kids. It cracks me up how they just aren't getting it!

chillygator wrote:This is how my friend told her kids. It cracks me up how they just aren't getting it!

SO CUTE! Those kids are learning the laws of logic young.

We sent out handmade valentines to family members and a few friends since the end of my first trimester was on Valentine's Day. This way we didn't have to worry about upsetting anyone (cough my MIL cough) about what order we told people in. They were little pink pigs holding hearts that said "Happy Valentine's Day," and we signed it from the three of us. Then we sat back and let the calls roll in as everyone got them in the mail. I expected the calls to come in waves according to how far away everyone lived, but for some reason my siblings in Utah got theirs later than everyone else. I even sent two to the same address, one for my sister and one for Uffish, and Uffish got hers before my sister did.

My mom was always super stealth. I was in eighth grade and would be like "oh yeah, my baby sister X" and people were like, "we didn't even know your mom was pregnant!"

My parents were super devious. They told everybody when my mom was going to have a baby, but they kept the gender completely under wraps until it was born. They didn't even tell us kids!

I remember when my last sibling was born that my cousin (who had been babysitting us while my parents were at the hospital) went home to check the answering machine (this was in the day before cell phones). She came out singing "someone has a new baby sister!" We freaked, of course, as we were all boys until she was born.

As frustrating as it was as a nine year old, and as much as my grandparents and everybody else hated it, I kinda like the idea of keeping the gender secret until birth. I think it would be fun to have such a Big Deal kind of secret between me and my spouse, just the two of us and the doctor, for nine months!

Craig Jessop wrote:As frustrating as it was as a nine year old, and as much as my grandparents and everybody else hated it, I kinda like the idea of keeping the gender secret until birth. I think it would be fun to have such a Big Deal kind of secret between me and my spouse, just the two of us and the doctor, for nine months!

My cousin asked the doctor and ultrasound technicians not to reveal the sex of the baby because she had to do a ton of infertility treatments in order to conceive, so, as she put it "nothing else about this pregnancy is a surprise, so I want that to be!" It made for complications when planning the baby shower, since the guests didn't know if they should buy girl or boy clothing, so they ended up suggesting unisex clothing in green, which works equally well for boys and girls.

Actually, I have it on good authority that children and infants of either sex can wear clothing of any color. It is kind of amazing.

Marduk wrote:Actually, I have it on good authority that children and infants of either sex can wear clothing of any color. It is kind of amazing.

Very true. But sometimes it's hard to find more neutral clothes. Most pink/purple/yellow colored baby clothes are very girly. And a lot of the blue/brown/green colored things even say "boy" somewhere on there.

Marduk wrote:Actually, I have it on good authority that children and infants of either sex can wear clothing of any color. It is kind of amazing.

No way! Since when?

My sister chose not to find out the gender of her latest baby because she knew it would be a scheduled c-section and wanted something to be a surprise, but her husband wanted to know, so he found out. He told his side of the family, so they knew, but no one on our side of the family knew until the baby was born.

Katya wrote:

Marduk wrote:Actually, I have it on good authority that children and infants of either sex can wear clothing of any color. It is kind of amazing.

No way! Since when?

Way! Even applies to adults!

I hear everyone, but especially thatonemom.

With adults it's easier to tell if someone is a boy or girl. With babies, most all of them look just smiley and drooly, so it can be quite hard to tell sometimes. And then it just gets awkward- "oh! /it's/ so cute! What did you name /it/ ?" Also, parents tend to get slightly offended if you get it wrong.... Also goes for dogs, i've noticed....

I think it's funny when we as a society ahve an obvious cue for baby gender (GIANT BOW is probably a girl), and people still get it wrong. My friend's daughter was super bald for a long time, so she put big bows and flowers on her head, and people still said "your son is so cute!"

I have friends who purposely buy things as gender neutral as possible so they don't have to buy new clothes or toys in between each kid.

Imogen wrote:I think it's funny when we as a society ahve an obvious cue for baby gender (GIANT BOW is probably a girl), and people still get it wrong. My friend's daughter was super bald for a long time, so she put big bows and flowers on her head, and people still said "your son is so cute!"

I have friends who purposely buy things as gender neutral as possible so they don't have to buy new clothes or toys in between each kid.

These parents hid their kid's gender from all but a few close friends for five years.

Sasha’s unique upbringing went beyond language. His bedroom was painted yellow, he was encouraged to play with all types of toys, including dolls, and he wore whatever hand-me-downs fit him, whether they were his older stepbrother’s or his older stepsister’s. While around the house, Sasha was even known to dress up in a tutu and wings or a pink two-piece swimsuit.

Imogen wrote:I have friends who purposely buy things as gender neutral as possible so they don't have to buy new clothes or toys in between each kid.

My mom bought mostly gender neutral stuff for me, because she was planning on having something like 9 kids. Aaand then she only had two. With a 10-year gap in between (during which time she got rid of most of my baby stuff).