"The only thing that matters is a healthy baby"

[confuddledDOTcom]

I thought I'd spin this off from the other thread and see what others thought about it.

I really loathe and detest that phrase. As someone who has lost a baby and has had premature babies who are both affected by their prematurity (my partner has two other children, the eldest has a heart condition) I'd rather someone said they'd really love to have a girl or a boy than say "the only thing that matters is a healthy baby" surely the only thing that should matter is a living baby?

What does that make my girls or my stepchild? They're not the healthy baby that's the only thing that's supposedly all that matters. How about children with physical disabilities, SEN or serious health complications? I wonder what those people who only want a healthy baby would do if they have a sick or disabled child.

Whereas saying "I really want a boy/girl" is a valid preferences, you can have one or the other and it's not a health issue, ones not better than the other, they're just equal preferences. It doesn't suggest the person doesn't care about their child if it's the "wrong" sex.

What really annoys me is when people say "how dare you have preference? Think of the women who've lost children" No, please don't think of me. I've lost a baby and still had a preference each time! How dare you verbalise my thoughts on my behalf?!

I should add that my children are not a disappointment and I don't get upset because I think people are suggesting it. I just think that phrase is worse than a sex preference and I get annoyed at people verbalising on my behalf.

I think two people picked up on "only thing that matters" part of my OP.

Genuinely, I am not taking anything personally (apart from verbalising on my behalf!) I wonder what someone who says that would think.

I've seen it on MN when someone has posted they want a boy/girl and been told off because only thing that should matter to them is a healthy baby and to think of told that people who've lost babies. This is where it annoys me more than someone using it as a polite "shut up" when asked what they want.

I know my baby will be early, I'm 32 weeks and right in the middle of my previous two children. I have had all the steroids already and I hope that I get enough from the pregnancy and the steroids that she comes out of this as healthy as possible. It's not the "only thing" that matters though, I have less than 20% chance that she will survive pregnancy at all so I'm hoping to have a baby at the end of this. Knowing she's coming early means I know she will possibly have some problems but we'll deal with them.

To use someone else's example, I hope my friend doesn't get cancer but it's not "the only thing that matters is my friend doesn't get cancer".

And no, deep down I don't know that I'm unreasonable. Again, you're verbalising on my behalf. Nice.

I agree with all the posters saying YABU. I see your point of view but actually think you're being over-sensitive actively taking a polite phrase and picking it apart to find fault and meaning that doesn't exist. Chill your boots.

x-posts. I type slowly.

Well maybe it shouldnt be the only thing that matters, but "the thing that matters more"?

I see what you're getting at but some of those threads are form people who cannot see further than the gender of their child and are getting seriously het up over it.

To turn it around gender is not the only thing that matters.

However, I hope things go well this time.

All anyone means when they say "the only thing that matters" is that compared to the child's health, the gender is completely unimportant. And that is true. You are reading too much into perfectly innocuous words.

I know what you mean. It's the appropriation of a normal wish- a healthy baby -used as something to whip people with any other form of preference. And reducing it down as far as it's ALL that matters.

Plus they're using your life, your experiences as 'fact' to continue this berating of people with a visceral reaction to the gender you are presented with.

Georgimama said what I think much better than I did!

I really don't understand your point, it's quite convoluted.

You aren't being unreasonable but I do think you are reading too much into the "healthy baby" bit.

I've had two losses and people did ask me about my preference in my third pregnancy. Some of them would follow it up by answering their own question for me by saying "but the only thing that matters is that it gets here safe and healthy isn't it."

I'm okay with that because I think both the person speaking and myself were well aware that they really meant "gets here alive" rather than "in perfect health with no disabilities."

But if they had said "gets is alive" even if we were both thinking it I would have been upset. During our second loss, when we knew our daughter was going to be premature, the doctors did talk about severe disability if she survived and the unspoken feeling between us was that we could cope with disability as long as she just didn't die. We'd already had our stillborn son by then and so alive was all that mattered at that point.

So I do know where you are coming from. But I think the phrase "healthy baby" is so often used in place of "living baby" not because people don't want or wouldn't love a baby that wasn't in perfect health but because it's a more gentle phrase to use for some people.

Like you, I don't want to be thought of as someone less fortunate or be the pooper at the party when people are talking about their preference to one sex or the other while they are pregnant.

I don't think having a preference is a bad thing but I don't think the "healthy baby" comment is a bad one either. I think we all want our babies to be as healthy as they possibly can be and not because they will be any less loved or wanted if they are born with less than perfect health.

Anyone who has a premature baby or a baby with a genetic condition knows that those babies aren't going to be in perfect health but even so we still want them to be as healthy as it is possible for them to be under the circumstances they are facing. And we still love and want them just as much. I hope that bit made sense and didn't offend.

But why say it in response to somebody else's preference? Because usually when people start threads about gender disappointment/preference, they're upset. They don't need a verbal whipping, a comparison to a different part of having a baby or to be told their feelings are important.

It's be a miserable forum if we just spent our time coming up with bigger concerns in order to belittle the feelings of others or invalidate them in the same way. A gentle push towards focusing on other things is fine but 'no, your feelings are invalid and here's why' is so lacking in empathy it makes me cross.

I completely understand where you are coming from OP and no, YANBU...

Ditto boysrock

I hope everything goes well. Sounds like the last thing you need is this kind of upset. I just hope you have your feet up!

I don't think we should outlaw phrases like "I see what you mean" in case they offend blind people. I don't think we should get rid of "can you give me a hand with this" in case it offends people with limb deformities.

Likewise, in response to the question "do you want a boy or a girl?", saying "the only thing that matters is a healthy baby" seems a perfectly reasonable response, even if it doesn't cover the eventuality of the baby being unwell or stillborn. This is not to belittle your own experience.

What SoH said. Its reasonable in some contexts, such as a woman having a moan about being on bedrest for a number of weeks before delivery, or a woman being frightened of a planned cs because it would be dangerous to deliver vaginally but when its in response to someone saying they would like a particular gender, or even that they have no preference but want to find out the gender at the 20 week scan, its just a passive aggressive way of saying 'my priorities are in order, yours are screwed up, you care more about gender than health'. Gender and health are not connected. If someone asks me if I prefer tea or coffee I wouldn't respond by saying either, so long as I don't get diagnosed with a terminal disease. People would find me odd if I did.

They're not saying "the only thing that is important is a healthy baby" and therefore "an unhealthy thing baby is unwanted/unimportant".

They're saying it doesn't matter to me whether the baby is a boy or a girl because I don't mind, I just hope my baby will be healthy. Not because they will discard an unhealthy baby, but because they want their baby to be healthy for the sake of the baby. You're adding an implication that it isn't there.

a quote from a tv show sprang to my mind that i heard when i was pregnant with DD really got to me.

"when your mom was pregnant i didn't care if you were a boy or a girl as long as you were healthy. then after a while i didn't care if you were healthy you were mine"

"If someone asks me if I prefer tea or coffee I wouldn't respond by saying either, so long as I don't get diagnosed with a terminal disease. People would find me odd if I did."

Well no, but the equivalent response would surely be, "either, but I hope it's tasty". It's not a perfect comparison though, as you want the tea/coffee to be healthy for your sake but you would want a baby to be healthy for it's own sake. And no one is suggesting you will send back a baby!

OP When I was pregnant I didn't really mind what I had, but I found myself saying "I don't mind, as long as it's healthy" for the reason you gave above. I had a slight preference for a girl, but really I didn't mind.

If you do give a preference people will often tell you that it doesn't matter as long as it's healthy so I would give the stock response to stop people saying it for me IYSWIM.

YABU - of course people hope for a healthy baby! Finding out a child has SN or a physical disability is not the end of the world but it's hardly news you would hope for, is it? From your own perspective or the child's.

Clytaemnestra, the equivalent isn't "either, but I hope it's tasty". Taste is related to the tea/coffee question so it wouldn't be odd to mention it in your reply. Health has nothing to do with preference for gender or preference for tea/coffee so its equally random to mention it in reply. A preference of having a boy or a girls does not imply you don't care if your child is healthy or not any more than preferring tea of coffee implies you don't care about your own health. Its just a preference, often a very weak one, sometimes not even a genuine one. There are 2 options for gender, boy or girl. There are not 3 options, boy girl or unhealthy.

I agree with the OP. Maybe those who are upset by the phrase do take it out of context or do read too much into it... but they're probably also the ones whom circumstance has forced to confront the implications of the phrase.

I've always known that I wasn't a healthy baby. One of my earliest childhood memories is a one of my mum's friends saying 'oooh I'd love a girl but of course all that matters is that he or she is healthy' and sitting there wondering whether I'd have been better off not born. If a loved and cherished 3 year old can draw such a shocking implication from such a remark (I was never unwanted, and never made to feel unwanted), I think there's on onus on the speaker to reconsider her choice of words...

I'm sorry for your loss, and I certainly don't wish to 'verbalise on your behalf' but if you post in aibu then you'll get people's thoughts, no?

I think you are reading too much into the phrase. As someone who has a DS born extremely prematurely and a DD with various chronic health conditions, actually if I have another baby, my 'only' hope is that they be born healthy, which obviously assumes they will make it through alive (not a given at all in my case either). All else is secondary, which is not to say that I am somehow devaluing my existing children - I just would not wish their experiences on another child of mine.

Surely all that people are doing with the phrase is acknowledging the magnitude of your loss, by comparison with which all else palls - effectively it's a figure of speech, not a genuine belief that nothing else on earth matters at all! I don't see how any offense is implied. Would you prefer that they rabbit on and on about how they hope they are having a girl while your own child's life hangs in the balance? All they are doing is setting up a scale of concerns, with your traumatic experiences at the top. I'd certainly prefer that to the other alternative. Currently, for instance, I'd wish my bloody nct group friends would stop going on to me about how hard it is that their 2nd baby is 40+1 or whatever and showing no sign of arriving - how traumatic that must be

If someone is trying hard to empathise with my situation, I try to cut them some slack, even if they are clumsy in the expression. Save your ire for the genuinely crass and thoughtless?

You are taking the phrase very literally. I don't think people who say it mean it to be taken so literally.

If you often do this you will soon find yourself becoming very upset quite frequently. Language is not so precise and we say things we don't literally mean all the time.

Try not to be so upset OP. I think some of the people who have said this to you might be upset themselves if they realised you had placed this interpretation on it. I know I would.

I can sort of see where you're coming from but YABU and reading too much into a throwaway phrase. I've not really heard 'all that matters', when people asked me for the 10th time each day whether I had a boy/girl preference I used to say 'don't mind, I just hope it's healthy' and I think this is the more common phrase. Just because I wish for healthy babies myself and for others doesn't mean I don't value unhealthy babies, just that it is preferable to be healthy.

I'd still love my DSs exactly the same whether they were boy/girl or healthy/unhealthy but I genuinely only had a preference for healthy.