Tip: Don't reveal baby gender if you want gifts from your actual registry

I'm 36 + 4. We've had three different baby showers as our families live in different cities from us. His mom threw a shower where she and his family lives, my mom threw one where she and my family live, and we had a shower dinner for our friends where we live.

Our intial plan was to wait until birth to find out our baby's gender but due to a long, frustrating story, that ended up not working out. A few people on his dad's side of the family found out we were having a girl and decided to spread the news even after we asked them not to. The invitations given out for each shower had our Amazon registry, as well as a Target registry. Every gift from his dads side were clothes with the exception of a stroller purchased from the registry. Everyone ignored the registry and just bought a bunch of baby girl clothes.

At the baby shower dinner we threw, and at my mom's baby shower, no one knew the gender of the baby. From these two showers we checked off 80/90 gifts from our Amazon registry. So if you're wondering how to get people to actually buy off your registry, holding off on revealing the gender might do the trick.

ETA: We are more than grateful for everything we received, clothing included! We even had some clothing on the registry. We did not feel entitled to anything and are very fortunate to have people attend the showers whether they purchased from the registry, off the registry, nothing at all, whatever! We plan to use as much of the clothing we received as long as she can fit and will donate when she can't anymore.

We assumed we would have to purchase larger, more expensive things ourselves and did not feel entitled to any gifts, but were fortunate enough to have almost everything we need purchased for us. I've seen a lot of posts on here asking how to get people to buy off the registry or posting about how no one purchased registry gifts so I thought I'd share our experience. Having a baby is expensive, especially if it’s your first, like it is with us so I just wanted to give my two cents on how I believe we were able to get registry items.