boy babies vs girl babies - in your EXPERIENCE is there any difference?

Meghan - posted on 08/13/2010

I wanted a girl SOOO bad. BUT now I thank God for a boy cause even though he is my Joshua the menace...I wont have to deal with as much emotional teenage bs (I hope)

Brandy - posted on 08/13/2010

Nope. I have a girl (2) and a boy (7 months) and so far, no difference. Both very mellow, calm, happy babies. My daughter woke every 2 hours for the first 3 months but I blame that on her being premature, not on her being a girl.

Chatty - posted on 08/12/2010

GIRL POWER! Haha!

I had always wanted a boy when I was growing up because I wasn't a girlie girl but when I was pregnant I will totally admit, I wanted a girl SO badly and my wish came true.....of course I would have still been happy either way.

I think for me hearing about how Chad was such a lil' monster right into his teenage years when he ran away and eventually never came back vs. his sister who could apparently do no wrong, it just made a lil' Chad running around seem so unattractive. Obviously my thoughts aren't rational because girl or boy, our baby could have ended up with Chad's personality. Roxanne has A LOT of Chad in her but thankfully only the good stuff! ;) Makes me wonder what the parenting had to do with his behavior as a child vs. how they parented their first BUT that's a whole other topic.

I don't necessarily think gender has much to do with their personalities.....I met a lot of aggressive lil' girls which is stereotypically reserved for lil' boys and vice versa. It's just their lil' personalities. I could have ended up with the female version of Chad!

Meghan - posted on 08/12/2010

I only have the boy, BUT I think that for us he has been raised in a house full of woman...he is very intuned with body language and tones and looks (lol, a house full of woman, he gets lots of looks)...he sucks the big one at sleeping but I thought that was just him-and my parents have told me that I was a horrible sleeper when I was younger too.

Jessica - posted on 08/10/2010

I don't think it has anything to do with gender. The more you talk to people you'll find that it goes either way for either gender... like Nicole said, it depends on their personality.

I only have a little boy so I can't comment on girls personally ;) For the first 6 months he too was one of those up every 2-4 hours. Wouldn't nap for longer than 30-45 minutes at a time during the day... just generally a bad sleeper. But he has always been a pretty laid back baby in terms of crying. After 6 months he started sleeping better- on his own, we did no sleep training. And unlike what JuLeah said, he is not, in general, emotional or needy. He's so laid back and has such an outgoing, loving personality. Very observant. Obviously, he has his days (he's almost 14 months now) when he's teething, learning a new milestone, growth spurt etc where he's more needy and cries more, but that's not typical for him.

On the other hand, several ladies on my birth board (on another site) for June 2009 have extremely clingy, needy babies, suffered bad colic and the whole bit- who are girls. So it really all depends.

Mia - posted on 08/10/2010

i do sort of agree with Nicole on this one, that its about the personality as to the sleep thing but also agree with JuLeah about girls being faster at picking up non-verbal communication as thats what i've heard from my friends experience and my own with my little girl. but i do have a sister in law who's youngest child was very very smiley from the word go, so dont know if that disproves that theory?

And then the whole personality thing....how much of it is about how we handle them *their experiences*?

JuLeah - posted on 08/10/2010

I am not sure one can say for sure. In my experience, boys are sooo much more emotional, needy, and stay little a lot longer then girls.

Girls are more self reliant, independent, logical.

I have found that girls are so fast to pick up on body language, no verbal cues, tone of voice ....

In my experience, yah, they are different, but what shapes personality? We don't know for sure.

Nicole - posted on 08/10/2010

I am with personality on this one.
Of the 5 friends who had children a couple of months before and after my son three of them were boys and two of them girls.
One of the girls suffered horrible colic and didn't sleep through the night till she was almost a year.
The other girl was a dream. The boys... my son was one of those up every 2 hours, but stopped when we moved him into bed with us and later we figured out his room was too cold (it was winter time) and that was why he was waking.
Two of my friends sons were wonderful sleepers and eaters. Another was not as good a sleeper, but he would still sleep about 4-6 hours at a time at night. And the last kidlet was just as you described your son.

I am told my sister and I were of the up every 3 hours through the night variety, but we were twins and 7 weeks early so it was to be expected. My brother slept through the night from day one. My mom had to go make him wake up to eat.