A collection of gender reveals that took intense planning.
When it comes to revealing the gender of a baby, expectant parents often take extreme measures to announce whether they're having a boy or a girl.
Inside Edition is presenting nine of the best reveals pregnant moms and their baby daddies have made to family and friends.
A West Virginia couple may have gone to the greatest lengths to share their news. Lance Patrick and Ashley Blankenship launched a weather balloon more than 1,000 feet into the heavens to say "It's a boy! Tesla Curtis."
A parachute attached to the balloon displayed the gender. "We put a stuffed animal, 'Spunk the Space Monkey,' in a little astronaut outfit. This is a gift for our son. He can say his stuffed animal went to space," said Patrick.
A Georgia mom-to-be and her firefighter husband used a fire hose to declare their first child was a girl. With the help his colleagues, Justin Tubbs arranged for a training session to be the site of a gender reveal party for him and his wife, Erica.
Surrounded by family and friends, the couple held the hose as it sprayed bright pink water. “We’ll be able to look back the rest of our lives on something like this, show our baby girl when she comes and gets older, show her the love that everybody has for her,” Justin said.
Sometimes, despite the best plans, things can go hilariously wrong. A Colorado couple was supposed to announce the sex of their baby with a balloon on a lacrosse field. The father, identified only as Sean, was supposed to swing his lacrosse stick and send a ball flying into the balloon, which would spew a colored powder.
Instead, he hit the string, sending the balloon sailing away. His wife, Kristin, was able to improvise by holding up a blue jersey to declare the couple was expecting a boy. "I was shocked when the balloon flew away," she told the Caters news agency.
Josh and Mimi Anderson of California decided to prank the guests at their gender reveal party with a cake that was neither pink nor blue.
Video shows their family members looking on in confusion as Mimi cuts the cake to display yellow layers. "We are both the jokesters of our families and wanted to have some fun," Josh Anderson said. “There was a lot of anticipation to find out the gender from our mothers.”
When they brought out a second cake, and held up a slice that showed pink layers, their guests screamed and jumped up and down. "By the time the 'real' cake came out everyone was beyond eager for the results," Anderson said.
When this California couple set out to discover the gender of their baby, the excitement left the soon-to-be grandfather blue in the face.
A wayward baseball, containing blue powder to reveal Brittany and Max McCauley would be expecting a boy, accidentally ended up hitting the grandfather-to-be, Scott McCauley, raining blue powder all over his head.
Scott was good-natured through it all. "He was just so excited even though his forehead was bleeding a little," Max said.
"Lumberjack or Lumber Jane?" Tennessee couple Trevor and Tayler Adams used a chainsaw to disclose their baby's gender. They wanted to pay homage to the great outdoors, so Trevor found a rotting tree on a friend's property and hollowed out the inside.
Then they inserted a pipe filled with blue paint. In a video made by the couple, Trevor fires up the chainsaw and fells the tree as it bleeds blue.
"The tree cutting was pretty sketchy," he admitted. "It was a little bit intimidating to cut a tree that was dead. I was so focused in making it not blow out or fall on me," he said.
Sarah Stonebaker of Philadelphia took matters into her own hands to disclose her baby's gender to husband Kyle Devaney, a tattoo artist.
Stonebaker picked up a tattoo gun for the first time and used it to permanently write "It's a boy" on Devaney's ankle. "It's not the best tattoo I've ever seen, but it's one of my favorites for sure," he said.
His wife couldn't be tattooed because she's pregnant, so the couple decided that she would tattoo him.
"She hasn’t been trained or gone through apprenticeships or anything, nor was she a tattoo artist," he explained. "But all my co-workers and friends were watching. She was being supervised."
An expectant dad in New Jersey used a Ferris wheel to share the news that he and his fiancee were having a girl. Matt Ostergaard and Adriana Zbik were originally having twins, but one fetus perished. "It was really hard losing the one baby," she said. “There was a high percentage something like that would happen, but you don’t think it could happen to you. When it does, it’s hard to take your mind over it, even with one blessing coming."
Her partner was determined to make her happy. So he contacted the management of a fair held near the couple's vacation home in South Carolina. When the couple went to the fairgrounds, Zbik was stunned to see the SkyWheel, a 187-foot tall Ferris Wheel, lit entirely in bright pink lights.
“It was breathtaking," Zbik said. "It was a lovely moment. I couldn’t believe this was happening to us."
A Florida couple got a little help at their gender reveal from "Caddyshack" star Bill Murray. The expectant couple wanted to announce the sex of their child at the Murray Bros. Caddyshack golf tournament, with assistance from Bill.
But organizers informed them that wouldn't be possible.
Little did the Jacqueline and Michael Davis know, their friend John Resig, the co-founder of the tournament, had secretly arranged for Murray to help with the announcement.
The couple thought they were having a girl, but in a moment captured on video, blue smoke filled the air as Murray struck a golf ball.
"It’s a boy!" the parents to be could be heard screaming, which Murray confirmed.
In another moment, Davis screams, "Bill Murray just told me I am having a boy!"
RELATED STORIES
