Pink clue in Herald solves couple’s baby-gender puzzle
A small pink square in the back of the Herald might have seemed like an error to readers, but for one couple it was their way of finding out they were having another girl.
Hamish and Karen Mullan wanted to have some fun when finding out the gender of their baby.
“We thought about how it would be a bit of fun to do something a little bit different. People just do cakes and balloons and I thought I work for the Herald so why don’t I put a small ad in . . . and reveal the colour that way to find out what we are going to be having,” said Hamish, an NZME account manager.
His manager thought it was a great idea so he made sure there was a space for his ad in last Friday’s paper in the amusement section which he oversees.
After Karen, 34, had the 20-week scan on Tuesday, the ultrasound technician placed a note with the baby’s gender into an envelope.
Before Hamish, 36, went home he handed the envelope to the Herald’s pre-press production team with instructions to place a pink square for a girl and blue for a boy.
At 6am on Friday the couple and their 3-year-old daughter, Imogen, raced to their letterbox so they could beat his in-laws, who live next door, and took the paper back to bed with them.
There on page 37, opposite the puzzles, was a pink square with the words “Congratulations guys”.
Hamish said the news they were having another daughter came as a bit of a surprise to him and his wife, who thought it might have been a boy given how different the two pregnancies had been.
But it delighted young Imogen. “She was pretty stoked.”
Mullan said they posted a note on Facebook on Thursday night telling friends and family about their unique gender reveal and had enjoyed hearing how even people outside Auckland had purchased papers to find out what the couple’s second child was going to be.
“My cousin and her local baristas had fun scrambling through the
Herald to find the correct page.”