Gender "disappointment"

[minesadecaf]

Is that even the correct word? Aibu to not understand this?

My friend gave birth to a beautiful healthy son a few days ago. This is her dc2, a second boy. She didn't find out the sex during her pregnancy for the reason that she'd be disappointed to be told if it was a boy and would rather hold on for a surprise in "the hope" of the baby being a girl.

Now he's here and he's amazing! Friend is happy he's healthy of course but she's noticeably upset/gutted (not sure which if either is correct way of describing her emotions but I hope it's clear enough) that she hasn't had a little girl. Frankly, I just can't understand it so how can I "comfort" her? I want to send a congratulations card but all the "it's a boy!" messages seem weirdly inappropriate. I'm out of my depth here.

Now I should add that I'm a mother of two girls whom obviously I adore but still, I just can't imagine being despondent about not having "the right one".

Aibu??

Nothing wrong with my comprehension Jacques, I wasn't commenting on your post, in fact I didn't read your post. I was speaking about those posters who berated other posters for commenting on how gender disappointment was ridiculous but you carry on

Gender disappointed is real and it doesn’t mean she’s not grateful for her son. She will adore him but doesn’t mean she can’t grieve the daughter she doesn’t have. Be kind.

if women want to post about their disappointment on a public forum then posters have the right to comment about how they feel about it.

The woman hasn't posted about it on a public forum, her "friend" has. I hope to gods the woman herself is not a mumsnetter reading this thread.

Op, I think you have some cheek. You out up a post about your 'friend ' on a public forum. At a time when all her emotions are all over the place, no doubt in a few days she will feel awful for ever feeling disappointed about her beautiful baby but could you imagine how she would feel if she realised that you put up a post in the pretence of trying to help her. Yeah right and it's the posters that are cruel. You should get this post removed, congratulate your friend and offer to help in someway,( cool meals, babysit) that's what real friend do

C8H I know that but there has been several threads about gender disappointment (all boys) recently but I agree with your comment.

I odnt think you should have a baby if you are desperate for a girl or a boy because it's 50 /50 that you will be disappointed and that is not fair on the child. Anyone who has a healthy child is very lucky. They are all individuals and the sex of the child is probably the least interesting thing about them

Coming to terms with never having a daughter isn’t the same as coming to terms with never having children.

This. In spades.

200+ comments and for a lot of them, I have no words. How can people be so cruel?

You knew this was going to happen,

I think you need to stay away from your "friend" because you clearly arnt. You didnt post this to help your friend, you posted this to feel superior towards her, now people have agreed with you your calling posters cruel? How bizzarre

Round my way we call people like you snakes

I had only boys and one struggled to survive because he was born so premature. Once you have been through months of watching your child on the knife edge of life and death, gender disappointment seems like quite an indulgence. Yes, I know everything is relative and people are entitled to their feelings. But I have no patience for that one.

Oh ffs everyone is being so busy 'not judging' these days that utter self absorbed psychbabble like this is actually seen as 'ok you alright hun - tilted head and confirmation that this is ok' ..

No it's not ok , if people with 'gender disappointment' couldnrustle up a sodding brain cell between them they would work out that when having a baby its ALWAYS going to be an50/50 chance of getting one sex or the other , no matter how many crystals you rub - or ungent milk of a lactating yak you smear across your bump !

Just take a trip to the fertility boards or a wee read of two heartbreaking threads over the las day , of parents bereaved of their babies in the first hours of life. Then give you head a wobble - vigorously. Jeeeez .

If nobody can express any hurt because someone has a different experience, then that’s an awful lot of things one can’t discuss isn’t it?

The woman hasn't posted about it on a public forum, her "friend" has. I hope to gods the woman herself is not a mumsnetter reading this thread

Not RTFT but has there been doxxing on here then? Because there is nothing identifying in the posts that I saw. It’s not exactly outing information.

@durgasarrow
My thoughts are with you- I'm sorry you had such an awful experience and I totally understand why you feel that way.

I understand fleeting gender disappointment but long lasting "devastation" at having child the "wrong" gender is baffling to me. Part of me does feel like, if you arent prepared to have a child of either gender then maybe you arent mature enough to deal with pregnancy/ having kids in general.

I also think if youre going to tell everyone about your gender disappointment you need to be very careful about who your audience is- you never know whom might be going through infertility and its deeply insensitive to be whining about your healthy baby boy to someone who is struggling to even conceive.

Coming to terms with never having a daughter isn’t the same as coming to terms with never having children.

Of course.

No one said it was.

It’s its own experience and it’s legitimate to feel bad about it. If anyone suggested it was analogous to not having children, that would be appalling.

Because there is nothing identifying in the posts that I saw. It’s not exactly outing information

If I were a mumsnetter having given birth very recently to a boy in this situation, trying to find some help with dealing with the feelings, I think I might just recognise the "friend".

Its not about other people recognising her (although they might) its about a distressed new mother coming to a "support" site and seeing the crap posted on this thread. Its been top of the trending list pretty much since the OP posted it.

I have to admit I find it difficult to get ‘gender disappointment’ as a concept. I know it’s real and I know how hard it is for those who suffer from it. No it’s not rational, it’s something out of the control of those women who feel that way and telling someone to get over it or that they need dropkicked in the face Is like telling someone with depression to ‘cheer up it might never happen’.

I had a friend desperate for a daughter pregnant at the same time as I was with DS1 and she truly was devastated to have a boy the day after me. And while I tried to be sympathetic, lost in love with my own little son, I just couldn’t understand. How could she feel anything but elated with everything about her beautiful baby from his tiny toes to the peach fuzz on his head? That time she appeared to get over it very quickly, she was an adoring and brilliant mum to her baby son and whatever private disappointment she might feel, you’d never know seeing her interact with him.

Then, when she was pregnant again 3 years later, she refused to admit of any possibility her second wouldn’t be a girl even though I’d had a second boy myself just a few months earlier and there were several mums in our circle with two of the same sex. Nope. Couldn’t possibly happen to her, she deserved her girl, hadn’t she earned it this time? I wasn’t the only one around her who was worried about was almost an obsession. She refused to find out the sex at the scan which might have helped her come to terms with having a second boy by the time he arrived but instead she went into full on pnd exacerbated I’m sure by the fact the baby was the ‘wrong’ sex. She wasn’t putting that on or acting like an entitled spoilt child, she couldn’t help feeling what she felt.

Again, I don’t get it myself but I don’t think it’s something that should be dismissed, minimized or sneered at as some here have done.

Of course infertility is infinitely worse than gender disappointment. Does that mean that people struggling with the latter deserve no sympathy from their friends?

I was very violently raped. I was still sympathetic when my friend was pick-pocketed.

That's because she wasn't 'suffering' from anything other than having a lovely healthy baby. The more this nonsense is indulged the more it becomes recognised as yet another thing to 'suffer from'

If ever there was an example of the snowdrop generation. This it !

If I were a mumsnetter having given birth very recently to a boy in this situation, trying to find some help with dealing with the feelings, I think I might just recognise the "friend"

Its not about other people recognising her (although they might) its about a distressed new mother coming to a "support" site and seeing the crap posted on this thread. Its been top of the trending list pretty much since the OP posted it

I doubt you, I or any other mumsnetter comes on mumsnet with the sole purpose of supporting strangers on the net.

There is nothing identifying in the post.

This isn't a big deal. Just send a card.

Two boys are friends two girls are friends a boy and girl won't be the same kind of friends. A healthy child is a blessing and she'll get over it in a few more days.

I doubt you, I or any other mumsnetter comes on mumsnet with the sole purpose of supporting strangers on the net

There is nothing identifying in the post

It shouldn’t be an exercise in comparative and competitive misery. Sure, there’s always someone worse off but it doesn’t mean we can’t have a bit of bloody feeling for someone going through a bad time even if their bad time isn’t as bad as our bad time. Jesus.

And Kittens I guess there must me be more than one snowflake generation since my friend was going through this more than 30 years ago so you know...

I honestly don’t get the “she should be grateful- some people can’t have kids at all” logic. Surely in that case the people who can’t have kids at all should be grateful that this is their problem and they are not dying of cancer or starving in a a war zone or whatever. There is always someone worse off than you. Feelings are feelings - we all have irrational sadness wars and disappointments and if she’s your friend you should treat her with kindness.

Of course infertility is infinitely worse than gender disappointment. Does that mean that people struggling with the latter deserve no sympathy from their friends?

I agree with you, and I'm saying that despite having been infertile myself. It's not insensitive to post a thread about gender disappointment; if an infertile person finds it offensive, she doesn't have to follow that thread, does she?

There are many issues that cause offence to other posters, but that's what you expect on a chat forum

Fuck me, there's a lot of willfully ignorant people in this thread.

You're allowed to feel disappointed something you imagined didn't come to fruition, that is not the same as wishing a second baby boy didn't exist.

I thought Ds2 was a girl, and I would have liked the experience of raising a daughter. When I found out DS2 was a boy at 22 weeks, I was equally overjoyed that he was healthy but at the same time grieved for the daughter I would never have. I was never disappointed in him either, he's nearly 6 and still comes into our bed every night and I still wake up to him nestled up under my chin like he did as a newborn.

Now aside from the fact that post-birth hormones are the cruelest head fuck known to man, how shit is it that you can't fathom that she isn't disappointed in her new baby, but that she's struggling to let go of the vision she had in her head.

To explain just how fucked up preference is for babies, I have my two incredible boys, and if I were to have a 3rd baby, I'd want another son, not a daughter. I wouldn't be disappointed in a daughter but I'd love 3 boys because that's how I imagine myself as an older woman, with her 3 strapping lads towering over me. So you see, you can't police what you imagine your future to be, our brains don't know between what is real and what is imagined so of course a vision you have in your head will always need to adjust to something new.