Gender worries after stillbirth

[hoppyfarmer]

Hello ladies, this is my first ever mumsnet post...here goes.
I have a 2 year old daughter and I had a son in August who was stillborn at 37 weeks. We have been doing really well but I do feel sadder in the run up to Christmas I must admit. If we didn't have our daughter I don't know where we'd be, she's just amazing.
I had to have an emergency caesarean to deliver our son and ended up having a fair bit of surgery to repair a rupture in my womb as well from where he got stuck, so we have to wait until March before we can try again and I will have another caesarean at 37 weeks as I'm not allowed to labour.
I know it's quite common for people to want a different sex when they have another baby after stillbirth but we really want another boy and I'm almost frightened that it'll be a girl.
Has anyone felt the same? I've spoken to friends and family and they say things like "you'll just be glad for a healthy 10 finger 10 toes" and I am sure we will but if it's not a boy I'll almost feel like I've not fulfilled my purpose - don't take that as me being filled with guilt or low confidence though, I am not.
If I hadn't had surgery then I think we'd be trying again now but at least I can have a few sherbets over Christmas - every cloud and all that...
xx

I can defenitely relate, and please please ignore anyone's opinions who haven't had a stillbirth or lost a child.
If I were you (and I was a few years ago, and I wish I'd taken this advice myself!) use this time to go to counselling and talk talk this through as much as you can. I didn't and it came back to bite me when I was pregnant again. It also massively affected my first child (also a girl, she was a little older), and to be honest it affects our second girl now as she sometimes says she wouldn't exist if our boy had lived. We just keep reassuring her that that's not true!
it's horrific and I am so sorry.
But I really recommend counselling now, before you try again x

Our first DD was stillborn at 40+10 I conceived reasonably fast afterwards and ended up having another girl. We really wanted a boy as I irrationally convinced myself I wasn't able to deliver a healthy girl, I felt the opposite to you and was terrified that by having anot her baby of the same sex that people would forget about her and think I'd replaced her.

I had counselling after my stillbirth and again during my second pregnancy and it really helped me to deal with all of the issues I had around it all. It's tough to find people that you can actually talk openly about it all with as most people don't know what to say. If you had a bereavement midwife they should be able to offer you some support but there are plenty of charities out there that offer free counselling.

Good luck

Agree with earlgrey, if you can get some counselling in now to help you talk through these kinds of issues it can only help in the long run. Our son was born v. premature & died at a few days old. I had a hard time dealing with my subsequent pregnancy and it was made much worse for me by the fact she was a girl. I'm very comfortable with it now but I wasn't for a while. I think it's a very natural reaction.

Good luck with your recovery & Im sorry for your loss

Thank you EarlGrey - I do have someone I talk to at SANDS and he says gender worries are very common. I just wanted to find out about other people's experiences. We would be delighted with a healthy baby but our preference is a boy. Because of my surgery and needing a caesarean again next time I think the next baby will be our last so it makes us want a boy even more.

No experience of this - I respect earl greys comment, can't give a view, so I'm sending you a virtual hug, just to let you know that someone else cares. 🐥

molly sorry 😞 it's rude of me to be dismissive.
It's just that the OPs friends saying she won't care as long as it's healthy really hits a nerve.

Thanks ladies. I'm meeting my midwife tomorrow to catch up and for her to meet our daughter. I was in hospital a week and she looked after us a lot and we just struck up a friendship. It's probably frowned upon that we've stayed friends but she won't be part of any ongoing care. She isn't my assigned bereavement midwife either so I could get in touch with her I guess. We only met her for 10 minutes to do the post mortem forms before we went home as she was on annual leave whilst I was in and she seemed a bit too fluffy for me but in that 10 minutes she had no time to gauge our characters.
I do talk about our son and how I'm feeling, to my husband, to friends, family, SANDS, my GP etc, but most of them don't know how it feels to lose a baby. Sadly some of my friends do but their experiences were different. Our baby just stopped moving at 36+5 and the PM said he had a very long cord and a true knot in it, but that isn't 100% why he died. Everything else came back normal for him and me though so we aren't going to be treated as high risk next time, I'll just be under a consultant for peace of mind.

Earlgrey, no need for apologies. I think you are right. In order to offer an opinion, I think you need to have been close to someone who has experienced this. Stillbirth is so upsetting, so cruel. I just wanted to offer a little kindness without a viewpoint.

I was the same in that I was a little worried about gender. We lost our second daughter at 22 weeks. When I found I was pregnant after her I was worried about it being another girl in case people thought I was replacing her or something (obviously they wouldn't but I wasn't exactly logical at the time)

As it was he was a boy, we sadly lost him at 14 weeks but we found out (after a harmony test) at 12 weeks the sex. Those 2 weeks I felt very relieved that it wasn't a girl.

My 2nd baby was stillborn at 26+ weeks, a little boy. It was such a devastating shock, and we had another very quickly because I knew that if I didn't do it straightaway and I thought about it, I would never have taken the chance of having to go through it all. We had 2 DD's in fairly rapid succession, and I can honestly and truthfully say that from feeling their kicks at about 16 weeks, I felt a deep bond and didn't care what sex they were. In fact I used to get irate when people asked me, and just said truthfully I don't care what they are as long as they are born alive.....blunt but true. Now I have 3 daughters, I have a funny sense of peace knowing that he was my only son and I don't know how I would have coped if I had had another..... oddly enough, having my first grandson was quite a tough thing to deal with. I was there when he was born and holding him for the 1st time broke my heart - I cried with utter sorrow as well as joy, and having him has really shown me the things I missed out with my own son. My daughter asked if his middle name could be that of her brother, and that's lovely. It's bittersweet. My only advice is that you must keep talking, people can be unintentionally quite dismissive of pregnancy loss and I didn't talk about it enough - it well and truly bit me on the backside when my youngest was about 3. I had a terrible bout of flu and sank into a very deep depression that thankfully my GP recognised and I had counselling and anti-depressants for a short while.

My 4th baby, a boy died at 37 weeks. I already had a DS and two DDs so he was going to make our family complete with two of each. I became pregnant again 9 months after he died and at the scan we decided to find out if we were having a boy or girl so I could be prepared either way.

If I was having a boy I worried he would be seen as a replacement (by me and others but mainly others) and I would forever compare, I thought if I was having a girl it would be easier but then I would always want another boy. It was so difficult to know how I felt about it all, the new baby was a boy and I cried at the scan and afterwards.

In the end, once I was used to the idea, it felt right that he was a boy. This is just me and some people will think it's wrong but I did think of both my baby boys when he was born and had cuddles. It helped me to think I was cuddling our baby who died but I never thought about our new baby as a replacement.

What I did find hard was that I compared my pregnancy at every stage, I would probably have done that if he had been a girl too but it felt constant. I agree with others about counselling and talking, there are so many issues to deal with during a pregnancy after the loss of a baby and only you know how you feel. Others can offer help but must not be allowed to dismiss how you feel, it is such a traumatic and difficult time.

I am sorry for the loss of your so and wish you a quick recovery, you must push to be classed as high-risk - your son died so you should automatically be no matter what the PM said. Our PM was similar in that there was no definite answer but likely placenta failure, I was high risk and had lots of extra care and scans so make sure you agree this with the consultant from the start.