https://people.com/woman-s-disappointing-gender-reveal-video...
Ducci Lou Carter captured her disappointed reaction to her sex reveal in a video that has now gone viral
Ducci Lou Carter gathered her husband and a small group for a sex reveal, showing her breaking down when she realized she was having a boy.
Months later, she shared the video on TikTok, which has since gone viral, amassing 10.8 million views.
Despite her initial disappointment, Carter says she's now excited for her future baby boy to come.
When you have a sex reveal, you never know how it's going to go.
This is what happened to Ducci Lou Carter, who posted a sex reveal video that didn't go how she'd initially planned. Carter and her husband had a small sex reveal with their family. When they cut into the cake, it revealed they would be having a boy. Instead of cheers, Carter felt tears.
"My mom was convinced I was going to have a girl, and the people around me made me think it would be a girl. I got lost in fantasizing about life with a baby girl," Carter shares with PEOPLE exclusively. "When we got into the cake, it hit me, I'm having a son. I had to grieve all of the fantasizing that I did about having a daughter. I cried because I don't get to do the little, cutesy girl things with her."
In the video, Carter's husband understands how she is feeling, sees her reaction, comforts her, and takes her into another room.
"He understood my feelings, walked me away from the situation, and talked to me. He said, 'Don't feel guilty about what your experience is. It's fine, it's normal. I highly doubt that you will not get over it. Just give yourself some time, give yourself a couple of days, and you will start getting excited about a boy.' He made me feel seen and made me feel understood," Carter recalls.
One of the reasons that Carter wanted a daughter, she tells PEOPLE, was that she knew her husband would be a perfect father to a girl.
"I just think about the way he is with me. He knew that I was feeling a lot of nerves and I was on edge, and I have expressed to him before that I was hoping for a girl," Carter shares. "At that moment, I didn't realize how controversial my reaction was because of how my husband made me feel."
Carter shared the video on TikTok a few months after the reveal, hoping to share an experience she knows other mothers go through. The video has now gone viral, amassing 10.8 million views. Carter's reaction was one of the reasons she initially shared the video, despite knowing it wasn't a particularly positive one.
"I always see videos of the dads throwing a fit or running away. I feel like men are expressive about their gender preference, and women are not allowed as much. We always have to answer, 'Oh, it doesn't matter.' [Women] might have preferences,” Carter argues. “Women are more ashamed of admitting to how they feel because they're afraid of being shamed for being a bad mom or not deserving to have a child."
"I'm so glad I shared that video because I never knew how many women experience that. Because most don't talk about it in person, not in public anyway."
Carter’s video struck a chord with many of the viewers, with some reaching out to her to share that they felt similarly with their own experiences. People in the comments shared similar sentiments, expressing that they understood her initial disappointment.
"I've had a lot of women message me personally and tell me my emotions in the video were normal, and they've experienced it, and they have filmed gender [reveal] videos themselves that they don't post because of reactions like that or because they felt ashamed."
Now that time has passed, she says she was able to reframe how she is feeling. She's excited to welcome a baby boy into her family and looks forward to him golfing with his dad when he’s older and buying boy clothes.
"I'm so excited now. All that I want is for my baby to be healthy and happy. I let go of all of the thoughts, ideas and fantasizing I did, wanting to be a girl mom, and now I can't imagine carrying a girl because my reality is I'm having a boy," Carter shares. "There's a lot of excitement that comes with [it] and an acceptance that settles in, and it is what it is."
Carter shares advice for those who find themselves in a similar situation.
"It's very important to let yourself feel. I would advise moms to give themselves time to grieve that life they fantasized about with the gender they wanted, move on from it and find things to get excited about. It will pass, and it does pass. If it doesn't pass and is hard to accept, I would recommend speaking to a professional,” Carter advises. “It is a temporary feeling. In the end, regardless of your initial emotions, it is the same excitement, the same feeling."
Comments
Was Supposed To Be A Girl
My birth name was Gwinn which sounds like Gwen. My mother wanted a girl and I heard about it constantly. It is a common theme in TG stories.
Gwen Brown
Babies are human beings, not accessories
Babies are human beings, not accessories. Anyone who gets upset about their child not being the gender they want are not emotionally mature enough to be a parent. People should only want their children to be happy and healthy. They should only be disappointed if their child is not happy and the disappointed should be because they are not able to help their child. I do not mean sad because they did not get not something they asked for when I said not happy. I mean if they show signs of depression. I am happy that Ducci Lou came to her senses but she needs to work her emotional intelligence.
Re: Babies are human beings, not accessories
I think that you have summed it up rather nicely. Babies are human beings, even before they are born. (My personal opinion/belief is that human life starts at conception.) And any woman who has ever experienced pregnancy, if she is truly honest, will tell you that the “fetus” is truly a separate being and not just a part of her own body that grows like a tumor in the belly of a woman.
The main factors for me to have that level of understanding at such an early age was due to being extremely curious and wanting to know how everything was made and how it worked, on one hand. And on the other hand, the firm resolution of my parents to never give a bogus or contrived answer to our questions, but to answer truthfully in an age appropriate manner. Even the honest “I do not know” was a valid answer. Though that would be countered with the challenge of “Why”. Back in the 1970s both of my parents had a pretty hard time researching answers to all my “why” and “how” questions. The World Book Encyclopedia (and several additional encyclopedia) was an absolute necessity in our family up into the 1990s.
What I did not include in my understanding of the facts of life, is that in my five-year-old mind I had concluded that since the belly button was so vital for the baby's growth and survival, and since the umbilical cord somehow connected the baby's belly button with the inside of the mommy's belly button, that the baby somehow exited the mommy's belly through her belly button. The information I had received was factual and age appropriate, though my conclusion missed the mark just slightly. But since I was receiving actual facts in an age appropriate manner, my conclusion got corrected in a very organic manner, and I never felt deceived by my parents.
Unfortunately way too many young people in our modern and supposedly enlightened society seem to have absolutely no idea of where human life originates from, and the huge responsibility resulting from that process.
When my wife found out she was pregnant the first time……
I didn’t care what gender our child might be. I was concerned more that we would have a healthy child, and about what kind of parent I would make. I never had a really good example of what a parent should be like; I suppose in many ways my mother was a good parent, but my father was more an example of what I didn’t want to be. Additionally, I worried about what kind of world my children would inherit, what kind of world they would be raised in - and because at the time I was on active duty in the Navy, and not exactly a stay at home parent, what impact that would have on them. My duties were not exactly considered safe, nor was I stationed in a place where I could be an active participant in their day-to-day lives.
By the time she became pregnant with our second child, we had settled most of those issues and I had discovered that I was in fact a good parent - my father serving as an example of all the things I did not want to be. So my only real concerns were once again whether our child would be healthy, and of course dealing with two rather than one child. My wife was in fact involved in a car accident while pregnant, luckily while I was home on leave, which caused us some concern - but mother and unborn child were both safe, although the car was totaled, lol. She had a ten wheel dump truck turn left across the road right in front of her while driving in a 55mph zone. Luckily, although the car skidded sideways when she slammed on the brakes, it slid into the rear tandems of the truck rather than going under the truck. The driver of the truck was ticketed and although my wife was rushed to the hospital by ambulance, she was only bruised and the baby was fine. I will say that when I received a phone call from my mother-in-law to notify me about the accident, I jumped in my car and beat the ambulance to the hospital by quite a bit - even though I was farther away, lol.
When she became pregnant with our third, we were actually hoping for a girl as we already had two boys and we both would have liked to have had a daughter. But no luck there. We were happy with the healthy boy we received instead.
We had decided to stop at three when some years later, I received a phone call from my wife - I was in Texas at the time, and she let me know she was pregnant again. We had thought we were past that point in our lives due to her age, and had not been as careful as we had previously been when I was home, lol. Unfortunately, she had a miscarriage and we never found out the gender. We both had hoped we might be blessed with the little girl we had wanted, but it was not to be.
Anyway, my point was that gender did not matter to me. All I wanted was healthy children, and to be a better parent than my own had been. I think that I was successful in both.
D. Eden
“Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir.”
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
Parenting
When my wife got pregnant with our first I was in no way ready to be a father let along a good father. I was still in the beginning stages of learning how to be a good husband. (Took another 13 years to get any real progress on that one. I'm a slow learner in that area.) Parenthood, for me, was advanced babysitting. The real differences were I didn't get paid to do it and there was no one coming later to take over so I could go home.
My wife, who had a sister and no brothers, refused to even consider girls names; she wanted a boy. I wasn't until final stages of labor that she would let me talk to her about girls names. Having such a conversation between contractions isn't likely to be too coherent on her part. The result was for all practical purposes, I named both our girls. I wanted a child with ten fingers and ten toes who was healthy.
I heard a funny that seems to apply to me and how I was involved in raising our girls.
Our oldest was, and still is, a strong-willed child. Our second child was a people-pleaser. The oldest was a chore to raise and I don't think I got it right, because 56 years later she's conically unemployed, living with us and is still a chore to have around. The second only had to be disciplined rarely. She's been married over 29 years and produced two fine grandchildren. She's joy to be around as is her husband and children.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
German wisdom
There is a German folk wisdom that is relevant here:
The translation into English, although without the meter, rhythm nor rhyme, is:
To put it bluntly, it only takes a single act of intercourse and the male becomes a father. But to be a father for the result of that single act of intercourse takes a heck of a lot of effort spanning at least 18 years.