We had our routine 20-week ultrasound yesterday.
We DON'T know the sex. It was kinda weird. I've heard all sorts of answers to the question, "Will they tell you the sex at the ultrasound?" Some people have said yes, they will at HSC but not at St. B; some have said, no, they won't at either place; some have said no, not at the routine ultrasound but yes at later ultrasounds; so obviously there's a lot of confusion. My best guess is that the hospitals' policies have changed over the years so that some parents have been told one thing and some have been told another. Perhaps it also depends on the tech who's actually doing the scan. Who knows? But some people are very disappointed or even become angry when they are told they might not be able to find out the sex of the baby.
Anyway, the tech did ask if we wanted to know the sex, and we said no. It was tempting though.
Personally I think that doing an ultrasound for the sole purpose of finding out the baby's gender is not a good use of resources. Ultrasound is one of the most useful imaging modalities available for about a zillion different things and demand for ultrasounds already outstrips supply, so I don't think using them simply to satisfy curiosity is appropriate. In addition, there are always risks with any test (admittedly small ones, in the case of ultrasound, but still not zero) so if you're going to do a test, there should be a good reason i.e. you should be getting practical and important information out of it that will help you decide what course of action to take -- and not just help you decide what colour paint to buy.
However, there are good reasons to have an ultrasound done routinely at around 20 weeks or so (a full pregnancy is 40 weeks, though any delivery after 36 weeks is considered full-term); primarily one is looking for placental or anatomical abnormalities, abnormal growth or even multiple babies. The idea is that if there are any surprises, 20 weeks is late enough that one will probably be able to see them on the ultrasound but early enough that (hopefully) one can do something about it, or failing that, at least to prepare for it.
And as long as the ultrasound is being done anyway, why not give parents the option of finding out the sex? In some countries the concern is that boys are preferred to girls and there's a fear that if parents learn that the baby is a girl they will have an abortion and try again for a boy, so they don't tell people the sex for that reason. (I have no idea if studies actually support this hypothesis or not.) And as noted above, an ultrasound for the sole purpose of determining the gender is not a valid use of a limited resource.
But that's not generally a concern in Canada, where in most cases an ultrasound is done (once) routinely. In Canada people mostly want to know (a) to help with preparation and to avoid getting everything in green or yellow and (b) to satisfy their insatiable curiosity. And at the end of the day, what's wrong with that? Why shouldn't parents be entitled to all of the available information about their baby if they want it?
