This is the most dramatic podcast ever and iHeartRadio podcast. Chris Harrison and Lauren Zema coming to you from the home office in Austin, Texas. Opening up the playbook today on a very interesting and very specific topic, and it's a topic neither one of us have really ever discussed, but it came to us via social media and we have a special guest joining us a little later. But it is gender disappointment, and on its face, when you hear that, LZ, it has such a negative connotation, such
a guilty negative connotation. We are here to dispel that.
So I didn't even know this was a phrase, but because of this video, I was kind of googling it. Gender disappointment even has a Wikipedia entry, and yeah, it's just a really interesting concept because this woman posted a gender reveal and people have a lot to say about it, and her caption of her video was gender disappointment is real. So I start looking into that, and I do think
people have strong opinions right away. A lot of people say, whatever your baby's going to be, you should just hope for a healthy baby, and of course we all hope for a healthy baby, but I also think we have to acknowledge what's real. I thought a lot about your kids, About Josh and Taylor, you have a boy and a girl, and let's even let's take parents and siblings and kids into it. Taylor has often said, oh, you know, it would have been great to have a sister, or Josh
probably wishes he would have had a brother. I know my own brother has two sisters and has always said he wished he had a brother. So of course, in any family, you're going to kind of have feelings of, oh, you know, what if we'd had boys and girls, and you just think about your dynamic. Right.
Can we all just come at this with an open heart, in an open mind, and an understanding that we all agree on a couple of principles. It's a blessing to have a child. Not everybody can. It's difficult. When you can, it is a blessing, and what you're really praying for as a healthy baby. We all can agree that is true. But at the same time, what you were just saying, LZ can also be true, and that is you can kind of hope for a boy or hope for a girl. In my family, it had been I think I've gone back.
It's been it was like forty five or fifty years of all boys in my family, what all boys like from I had a cousin. I'm the youngest of seven cousins, so what two or three cousins ahead of me was a girl? That was the last girl through all the rest of the cousins, including myself, and then I want to say, nine great grandchildren over forty eight or fifty years. So when I had, my brother had.
Two boys and it's just you and your brother.
You have no trus me and my brother. And then my brother had two boys ahead of me. And then I had, I got pregnant and it was a boy. It was Joshua. Then we got pregnant again, and I'll be honest, I was kind of hoping it was going to be the first girl born in our family in fifty years. And I was excited to have a baby. And if I had another boy, my god, I would have been blessed and happy. But when I found out
it was a girl, I cried. I was so happy to tell my grandmother, We're going to have a girl finally. So you know, you and I talk about this a lot, and it comes up a lot two things and even multiple things can be true at once totally.
And you know, I know with my little brother, he was my dad. He was gonna be my parents' last baby. They knew that my dad had had girls, and then he got a boy, and he was so happy. I distinctly remember I was like eight, and I remember going to toys Rs With my dad and him picking out like a football and a baseball bat when my mom had just given birth, and I remember saying him, Dad, I think he's too small for this stuff.
By the way, I can totally relate to your dad. Yeah, I bought Joshua like Cowboys Dallas Cowboys gear, like all this stuff that anyways.
Eight pounds, right.
But you know, I often think that when people are projecting, like putting negative or critical comments online, first of all, a lot of the time it's bots. Everyone just be aware of that, trying to cause controversy and get comments going on on websites, so the engagement looks high.
I witnessed a lot of that.
And we sure did and we felt it.
But I do think when people are truly being harsh, it's coming from their own pain a lot of the time, and that doesn't make it okay. But I just try to remember it. And I think that you know, listen, we live in a time where I think we've made some really great strides about gender not being such a strong identifier and it not defining you so much. But at the same time, gender also like unites us in
a lot of ways. And I know, I love my girlfriends, and guys need their guy friends and that kind of thing. So it totally makes sense that people could be excited about having boys or girls. And then it also makes sense that people might say, oh, you know, I was really hoping to have a boy.
I was hoping for a girl.
And if this doesn't resonate with you because you feel the way LS was just talking, that's great too. Like nobody is saying all things need to be true for all people. It's just there are moms and dads out there that really do feel this from time to time, and siblings. And the whole point of this and the whole point of all of our podcasts is to just make you okay with the fact that you've had those feelings, make you realize you're not alone.
You know, I have a question about when you had kids, Yeah, because you then got a boy and a girl. Is that part of why you didn't have more kids? Like, say you'd gotten two boys, do you think you would have had a third child?
We I will be very revealing and honest here. We had what's called the king's choice, older boy, younger girl. Someone told me another phrase, I haven't someone explained that to me that way, that it's it's the king's choice, because I guess you know air And so I was so happy that I had one of each. I have one sibling, so two kids. My brother had two kids. It just felt symbiotic and.
Right, it makes sense your ex is a child of two also, so you guys were familiar with two kids situations.
We thought we were pregnant with a third and technically we were and it didn't turn out, and so clearly we didn't have a third child, and it was unfortunate, but it also kind of gave us the feeling of if it had happened, we would have been so happy and had a third baby. But we realized, you know what, we're good, and that's when we decided we weren't going to have any more kids. So, yeah, it was something that kind of just happened to us and with us.
But that was definitely part of it of having I got my boy, got my girl, I'm good like I'm good.
Interesting. Yeah you've never shared that with me before.
Yeah.
Well, and I'm sorry, but I mean it's no matter what, it's a loss. And as you're saying that, I'm sitting here thinking, I get how two things can be true, because what's interesting is well, like, for example, my little brother was an accident. He knows this a blessing. Well at the time, my mom told me later when she found out she was pregnant, she cried out of sadness. Oh wow, because she was so ready to get back to her career. Yeah, and that was her plan.
She had you and your sister.
And so it's just really interesting. How like I say this from a place of zero judgment whatsoever, Like we all have to be empathetic to each other and know that, you know, just because someone's having feelings in a certain way, that's their life and it doesn't discount your feelings and it isn't them trying to say that your pain isn't real. But how these different, You know, we can all have different takeaways from these situations.
And even for your mom again, so many things can be true at once.
Yeah, and now she loves my brother.
Well, and we all love John, but all you know, so many things can be true at once. And that's why I think this black and white world we live in these days where social media you have to jump on this side or this side, and if you jump on this side, it means everything, and if you jump on this side, it means everything in totality, and that's never the case in anything in life. There are so
many layers. Take your mom for example. She could be upset in that moment, she could have those genuine feelings and at the same time feel so excited and blessed that she's having another baby. That is so important and for some reason in our lives we realize this and feel these things, but then when we're on social media, it's like, well, you have to feel all of this or you're wrong. And so I think this is one
of those topics. And again, this is why I wanted to dive into it, because people are going to have, I think, very visceral reactions to this.
Do you know what I think part of the reaction to this video, this viral video with Kendrick, who we're going to bring on is is also people have very big reactions to gender reveals.
Yeah, that's true. Thing, Yeah do you We never did one, by.
The way, I don't think it was a thing years ago, and I don't know when it became a thing.
Eighteen years ago we had Taylor, it was it's not a thing.
Well, and they've been problematic, they've caused chaos, they've gone viral for bad reasons. But I'm not a Again, it's sort of interesting in this time when we're like gender's fluid, and that is really a movement. We also have made very popular this gender reveal thing, which really is is it a boy or girl?
And pick one?
And I'm not against gender reveals. I'm against them being done in ways where they can har others, hurt harm others. Yes, some have gotten really stupid. Can we just cut a cake and keep it easy? Some get out of control?
Like I think it's cute if you know the guy hits a golf ball and it explodes pink or blue? You pop a balloon and it's either pink or blue inside? Or what this woman we're about to bring on Kendra. They lit a smoke bomb and a jack of lantern because clearly it's Halloween and the pink smoke or the blue smoke comes out, so and that point that is
what drove this whole concept in this idea. Today was this viral video that came out on I saw it on TikTok of this woman, Kendra, who's already a mother of three, and her and her husband and her three girls are all dressed up and they're fall colors and they're in the woods and they have a jackal lantern and immediately the pink smoke starts billowing out of the jack lantern. And her reaction is so genuine and so
honest because it was spur of the moment. And remember, she has all the emotions of being pregnant, and she starts to cry. She bends over, doubles over, and starts to cry, and the older sister is kind of upset. She wanted a little brother. Nobody really knew what to do in the moment because everything was just so real and so raw. And she posted this and I thought, what a vulnerable, honest thing to post, because it's really easy to be especially in this day and age. Trust me,
I know afraid of being canceled. So she could have easily hid this, but she felt that this gender disappointment is a real thing and it's something she felt, and so we chased her down and we we have her on the podcast today. So let's bring her on. So, Kendra, first of all, thank you so much for joining us. It's good to meet you. Nice too, And just so everybody knows the timeline you actually have post posted this.
So your daughter has been born. She's beautiful, healthy, happy, congratulations on being a mother of four beautiful girls, very blessed. But you posted this about a year later after your daughter was born. What prompted you to kind of open up and be vulnerable and show that you actually were in the moment anyway, you're not disappointed that you have a beautiful girl, but in the moment you were disappointed.
It wasn't even like it wasn't even that I was unhappy with the fact that it was a girl. It was more of the fact that, like, for a split second, I had a very big moment obviously of sadness that I will never experience, like having a boy, having a son, having a mommy's boy. You know, I have a lot of nephews, so I see the bonds and I just had a moment where I was upset that, you know, I'm never going to experience having a son because.
You knew this was going to be your last pregnancy.
You just said, yes, yes, it was going to be my last pregnancy. It was very different actually could have been in my head, but it was very different from my other three pregnancies. So I saw it was a boy. My husband was like, it's a girl, like for sure, and I was like, no, mom knows. So I just I just going in thought it was going to be a boy. And just I mean, I wasn't even sad that it was a girl. It was just like just that it of like sadness that I was never gonna get.
That's so so much sense to me. I think that's so beautifully put.
You're not sad about what's happening, but you are sad about something you know won't happen.
Yeah, And I mean I definitely like a lot of friends and family that I shared with the pictures. You know, I posted the pictures to Instagram, and so I mean the pictures are on that video as well, and you could see I obviously was upset, but all my friends and family, like, you know, we're very supportive, and I mean it was obviously once that initial were off, I was like, how freaking awesome, I'm gonna have four girls. Like I am just like happy that it's a healthy baby. I'm like thriving.
You know what, what I think is interesting. And Lauren and I bring up topics all the time, you know that really strike a chord, And I think it's just because we don't talk about a lot of this stuff. Yeah, like Laura and I dove into miscarriages one day and just little just topics like this that are taboo and they just we whisper them in corners, but we don't really admit that we have these feelings. And that's why I wanted to have you on. That's why I wanted
to talk about this today. When you posted this, was the response overwhelming of oh my gosh, thank you, because yeah, I felt this too.
Yeah, to be honest, I had an overwhelming amount of positive comments. I had like a handful of negative. It definitely was way more overpowered by positive and a lot of people that like resided in like my the way I felt, and they're like, oh my gosh, like I experienced that as well, Like thank you for like I don't feel like a monster anymore.
Like I you know, I had the same thing.
People made me feel horrible about it, and you know, like so many, like so many positive comments.
I was overwhelmed.
I think even one of my comments are on there was like, I'm so overwhelmed with the amount of like positivity and feedback I got because I never really thought when I posted it it was gonna blow up.
Like I just.
Everyone was sharing their pumpkin trend photos and.
I know more about about Halloween.
Yeah, I was like excited, like feeling October, you know, all fall feels, and I was like, I'm going to post my gender reveal, like, you know, maybe somebody will you know, reside with it.
I was also wondering, Kendra, if you were It's I love hearing that you got positivity and that people related, because that's the best possible outcome of social media. But I was wondering if you were apprehensive or nervous at all that people would attack you for having a feeling that you wished for a certain gender.
Yes, definitely why I waited like almost two years to post, you know, post it. I mean obviously everyone knew already that, you know, I was, you know, at least close friends and family that I was disappointed. But the Internet opens you up to a lot more, you know, comments on your life and stuff, So I mean I definitely was hesitant, And you know, I definitely don't want people to ever think that I don't love my baby or I just didn't want a healthy baby. I am so grateful that
I got a healthy baby. I'm so grateful for all of my girls.
I love them.
I wouldn't change my life for anything. I'm meant to be a girl mom, that's for sure. Clearly, I enjoy my nephews a lot, so I get all the boy love through my nephews. And I mean, yes, I was definitely scared to speak out about my feelings and clearly, you know a lot of people were upset with it. So but it is not I'm not trying to disregard anyone's feelings by any means. I just, you know, I was hoping to reach an audience of people that could reside with how I was feeling as well.
There's always, you know, no shortage of people that are willing to tell you how to live your life because they know they know best.
After all, I also thought it was interesting, Kendra, like watching your Well, what makes this video stick out so much, I think is that you, as a mom are having this reaction about not having a boy. So many I've seen a lot of other videos where the dad's upset he's not getting a boy, and then people kind of comment, oh, typical guy.
But do you think that's part of why it stuck out to people?
And what did people say to you in the comments about you being a mom wishing you were getting among.
Yeah, you know, a lot of comments.
Did you know note to the fact that like, oh, if the husband were to react like that, people would have like a heyday, right. And I mean I think my husband going in, you know, knew it was a girl, so you know. And also he loves his daddy's girls. They take care of him, you know, so he gets you know, he's got that and he loves it. I mean, it's it's hard because, you know, I think what stuck out a lot was my older daughter.
You know, Yeah, she has.
A stronger action.
You can clearly see she wants to be an older sister to a brother.
Second, I gave her the second I was pregnant with my second baby. She was like I want a brother, Like I want a brother, I want somebody to play, you know, in the dirt. She was definitely more like you know, forty, she's you know, more into like getting down in the dirt and biking and stuff. So she's like, I want a brother, you know. So then it was
like a sister, and it was another sister. Of course, you know, everyone said, you know, I put it in her head, but she was very you know, yeah, she wanted brother.
You know. That's and I feel like that was natural for her.
You know, I would never put that in my kid's head to like want a certain gender. But I feel like all of my kids' reactions. I mean, obviously my three year old at the time, she was more scared of the smoke, but you know, my second daughter, she's like jomping up for joy.
So I'm just like pop pop. So I think all of our reactions all over the board is what really made the video.
I just liked how genuine the reactions were. I mean, your your reaction was immediate, instantaneous, so it was just so real to me. I loved and I could relate to your husband who immediately kind of had that thousand yard stare of I don't know what to do, which often we as husbands have that moment of oh god, I'm just gonna rub her back and I'm going to stay silent. And I loved it. I don't know if
it was a friend, a photographer, or family. Someone tried to be a hype and in the moment of like girl gang, yeah, like trying to like pump everybody up. It was really like everything was so natural and so genuine. That's what I really loved about it.
Yeah, and it was it was just a small moment, like I we weren't going to do a photo shoot, but you know, I was reminded it was my last pregnancy. They're like, you know, do a gender reveal. And I was scared to do a gender reveal for that, but you know, it was my last pregnancy and I wanted to do a cute thing, and so it was it was just like family and that's it. It wasn't a party. We didn't like throw a whole thing. No, I know.
That's another thing.
People are so critical of the gender reveals because of like which I mean, it's not totally without me.
Like one gender burned down forests in California.
But and it was it was very simple. We actually told our kids that day that we were pregnant.
Would you would you what was that like?
So they found out you were pregnant and the gender all in one day.
What was that like? And would you recommend that method to other?
I mean, I feel kind of bad because you know, I guess I did kind of bombard them with like, hey, you're getting a sibling. Oh and then here it is boy or girl. But in the other video, you know, my oldest was is it a boy or girl? Immediately when I told her, you know, that I was pregnant, and I told all my family by videoing them and saying like one, two, three moments pregnant And so you know, that's why we wanted to photograph them and their reaction.
To news so well, you all looked so cute. You were coordinated for the moment. It was so the fall vibes were on point. And then I love how this video has blown up.
Well, the reason we wanted to have you on was just that just to relate to other people, other parents who have had these feelings, who either held them in, swallowed them, or you know, felt guilty about expressing them.
These are all natural things and it's you know, I find it very ironic when people try to shout you down for expressing the feelings you have because they want you to feel how they think you should feel, which is very interesting because the whole point is to be able to express how you're feeling and not feel guilty about it. And I know a lot of parents have been in your shoes before, and I think you just really brought to light something that we have all felt before.
So thank you so much, Kender And by the way, belatedly congratulations you have such a beautiful family. And by the way, the whole point of this was, Hey, we're going to do a gender reveal because it's the last one. It's one you're never going to forget.
Ever, I'll never forget it. I'm very happy, so lucky. Honestly, I'd love my girls. Wouldn't change the world.
God bless you and your family.
Thank you so much. You have a great day.
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