Feel like my life isn’t complete without a daughter, please slap some sense into me.....

Yep. I have two friends whose daughters transitioned and another that looks likely to. I also have friends with girls who are not remotely interested in shopping or nails or anything like that. One of my boys likes clothes and teddies and painting his nails.

I have a daughter and 2 sons. The daughter is not a 'girly girl' at all, complete opposite actually. All those cute things I imagined we'd do haven't happened (and that's fine). I'm also no closer to my DD than I am my DS's. They're all absolutely amazing in their own ways. Having a DD will not complete your life, you have no idea what that DD would be like. The sex of a child does not determine the relationship you will have or what they will bring to your life .

Exactly. My daughter had a girl who transitioned

Omg thats funny as my Mum said I was the result of failed contraception. And my older siblings Boys were very much planned. I was the opsy! Conflicting feelings being told that.

No one should be self fulfilling the prophecy though.

I can understand as when I was carrying my twins I felt quite fearful of having two boys. When they announced the girl first I was relieved as then I didn’t need to worry what the second twin was (it was a boy).

But my girl (in comparison) is a menace (sorry! I do love her obviously), but she is infinitely more difficult than her brother. She’s got more sass and attitude than 10 of him, bigger tantrums, ignores me, rarely apologises, incredibly stubborn and head strong. Now I often wonder what life with two boys would have been like … lol.

You can’t live on other people’s stories, I get it, but my point is that you are grieving something that doesn’t and might never even feasibly exist, which is an utter waste of time and energy.

I think this is probably quite common. I suspect that lots of people who have three children of the same sex only went for number 3 to see if they would have a girl/ boy this time.

I hope that you are able to rationalise your feelings at some point. But you feel how you feel and there is nothing wrong with that. You are not the first, you won't be the last

You don't know uou would have got shopping trips and luches out with a daughter.
There are lovely clothes around for boys too.

You might get granddaughters one day?

I have 2 boys
Now 13 and 5. I lost 6 babies in 2nd trimester but they were all boys. I felt the ache u feel. I missed a daughter I didn't have. I loved my boys to bits but when I stayed awake at night ad feel my heart ache for that little girl I had never met. Like the wait for a soul mate before u meet the love of ur life. My 2nd son( 8th preg) was very hard and I had a heart attack after having him. Recovery took years followed by intense birth trauma healing.. I didn't even want to hear of the word pregnancy again.
Then came the day I puked at the hospital following a visit to my sister in law baby birth. She jokingly said take a test and I did. I was pregnant..oops.
I cried and cried and almost terminated! There's no way am going through he ache of another pregnancy loss.. the race to the birth. The sickness and the fulltime bedrest..besides the doctor said my heart can't take it and would liked not make it.tears followed by acceptance of a fate that I can't control but I have to accept. Weeks of depression, medication and letter writing to my kids as they will grow up without me. Days spent finalising my affairs knowing I won't survive either the pregnancy or the birth. Then came the 31 week and severe prodormal labour started. Contractions every half an hour for weeks. Intense labor pains all day. Hang in there..the doctors said. Give the baby one more day to cook.!! I listened to that sentence over and over again as I writhed in pain for days. Heavily medicated I thought I was gonna die and all my kids would remember is how much pain I was in. The one Saturday evening at exactly 37weeks my waters broke. Doctors in a frenzy! Call the cardiologists, anaesthists.. call the c section team. Get the fentanyl...get everything...I was in the labor room with my husband and one midwife while everybody rushed around to prep the theatre and me. My midwife was halfway through prepping the fentanyl syringe when I shouted ' baby is coming!!'
'No! Wait! The doctors are coming!'
' too late!' I shout. 'Catch the baby.. hubby help me turn and squat....SOMEBODY CATCH THE BABY!' I scream when I feel the head crowning! Am ripping apart, my heart is about to burst, I see stars and my vision tunnels as darkness sets...
I feel a gush and out comes baby into the hands of the midwife as the doors burst open and the trolleys and myriad of doctors in blues and white rush in.
'My princess is here...' i say before I pass out.
' it's a girl!' I hear the midwife say as black overtakes me

18yrs from when I first tried for my first my baby my princess made it to earth. A tiny bundle who came unplanned and unannounced into our life. A little girl who I thought I would never meet and would survive her birth came.the joy that filled my heart was like nothing else! The peace that i felt was like a reunion of my other half. My heart miraculously survived and when I woke up acted like it was never the problem.
3 months ago my dream came true. Now we wake up every grateful day and behold our severely colicky and refluxy princess pushing through. I comb her curls every morning and night and imagine the journey this little soul took to reach us. I see the love In her brothers eyes and the adoration In her fathers hands. She is beautiful beyond measure and the final peice of our puzzle. She filled the space we didn't know we had. I don't miss her anymore because she is here now

I've three boys & I've never had any particular desire to have a girl. So I can't pretend I understand how OP feels. But what I can say is that my sons are in their 20s now & we are still very close. They are wonderful, kind, loving & affectionate young men & I can't imagine that I'd have been any closer to a daughter.

OP, I understand. Your feelings are valid. In the real world you can adore your sons, share some interests with them and see them regularly into adulthood, yet still miss close female-female companionship. On these types of post there are always lots of comments suggesting your chances are not very high of getting on well with any daughter you had. I disagree and think the women I know who are close to their mums generally go on to have very good and fulfilling, if not always perfect, relationships with their own daughters. I think you would be a great mum to a girl. Don't try to push away your feelings by telling yourself you might have failed at the mother- daughter bond. That will just lead you down a path of feeling you somehow didn't 'deserve' a daughter, when really it was just the roll of the dice.
I think you're doing the right thing to acknowledge your feelings. I think having only sons is a different experience to having a daughter and of course there will be negatives to that, but I suggest you try to focus less on the things you'll miss out on and instead think of the reasons why having sons is particularly special. Every combination of genders in a family gives something different. Try to think that you'll never be a mum of 4 sons, or 4 daughters, or 1 of each, or but that mum of 4 daughters might envy you some aspects of having 2 sons. It's a lot to do with the numbers of children you have and their age gaps too. You have your own family based on those factors too and it's uniquely yours.

Even when I was deep in the pain of infertility I could understand this. It’s the same sense of loss for something you never had. The same pangs of unreasonable jealousy. A lot of people don’t understand that gender disappointment is not about the child you have, but everything about the child you ‘lost’. Yanbu.

It’s such a bummer to feel this way OP
Not slating your honesty just feel bad for you

No advice And hope someone else has

Aprilsinparis.. . Thinking of you and all who go through this. X

I desperately wanted a girl, to right the wrongs of my childhood. I had a little girl, but she died. I have two boys who are the most loving, caring, affectionate individuals you could ever wish to meet. If my daughter had lived, I wouldn't have had my boys, so wouldn't have had the love I now receive from them. I love them, and given the choice, wouldn't swap them for the chance of having my girl back.

Not particularly relevant but it reminds in a way of my Auntie's family. Her dad wanted a boy to carry on the family name. Apparently the mother cried when daughter no.4 came along because it meant she would have to have another. She got a boy with no.5 - but he never had any children so couldn't carry on the family name anyway.

My point is- things don't always go the way you think they will go. I hope you can find away to get past these feelings.

I think there is a lot of stereotypes about mothers and daughters. I have never once been to a Spa day with my Mum and I never want to. We just don't have the type of relationship where I would be comfortable with that. I can chat for a while about trivial stuff but I never really feel I'm me around her, just a watered down version of who she wants me to be. I hide the parts of my personality that I know she dislikes. It's as if there's a disconnect between us that I can never repair.

I so longed for a daughter so I could be the kind of Mum I always wanted, to heal my pain by taking her for days out and to experience things I wish someone had done with me. I realise now that was sentimental, selfish bullshit and I was making my child's life a replay of what I had imagined i had needed. But she is absolutely not me and all children just need to be loved and supported unconditionally which I did do, but I feel immense guilt that I was trying to right some wrongs through her. She is a very angry teenager now and barely speaks to me so I will probably end up with the same relationship with her as I do with my Mum. Except my Mum was selfish and ignored me.

What I'm trying to say is, things turn out the way they do despite our best intentions, people are just people - not a cure for our past hurts. I know you are not wanting a daughter purely for this reason and I totally understand your yearning. Just be the best Mum you can be to your boys, love them, enjoy them. You never know which way life will take you. You may get a daughter figure in your life, you don't have to give birth for that to happen. You sound like a good person.

*What chance do they have to grow to full, compassionate human beings when they are labelled uncaring as soon as they sex is known

So you think men do more of the caring work in the world than women? Really? Have you ever been on mumsnet before? Or met any man?*

Butterghost, your comment makes absolutely no sense in the context of what I said. You clearly misunderstood. I was saying the previous PP was sex stereotyping males as inherently uncaring.

I think you have to help yourself stop thinking about this. Whenever you find yourself wishing for a daughter you need to consciously put those thoughts aside and focus on something else. Have a plan for what that something else will be. Sooner than you think, this will become normal for you and your sense of disappointment will diminish. Dwelling on it is what makes it worse.

I understand - I have 3 boys, 8, 6 and 3. I was desperate for a girl third time, especially as I grew up with 2 sisters so have always been in a female-heavy family. When I found out number 3 was a boy at 20 weeks I was really, really disappointed. It's perfectly understandable, you're giving something up you had hoped for. HOWEVER, I bloody love my boys and now 3 years on I honestly wouldn't have it any other way. They are loving, affectionate, admittedly very high energy, but just brilliant company. Plenty of women have strained relationships with their mothers, having a girl is no guarantee you'll get that close mother-daughter bond. Try and focus on what lovely little guys you have, rather than what you haven't got, because it's unlikely the counterfactual would have been as rosy as you imagine.

What chance do they have to grow to full, compassionate human beings when they are labelled uncaring as soon as they sex is known

So you think men do more of the caring work in the world than women? Really? Have you ever been on mumsnet before? Or met any man?

Growing up my parents house was in a terrace. We lived between a family of 6 girls on one side and 6 boys on the other. Do not become one of those families 😀