I found out yesterday that we are having a girl.
I KNOW we are the luckiest people in the world to be having a healthy (touch wood) baby. I know there are millions of people who would kill for any kind of baby, most notably my best friend who has had a very upsetting miscarriage and now is struggling to get pregnant again. Needless to say I feel absolutely awful about these stupid and irrational feelings.
But I feel so incredibly disappointed and low. Despite the fact I was obviously prepared for this outcome. 50% chance after all!
But up until now I have thought of this baby as a boy. In my head it has always been a boy. Plus, it took me years to even be sure I should have a child and every time I thought about it, I thought about a boy and that was what made me think I probably should take the plunge one day. I have only ever seen myself with a boy. I have a wonderful bond with my nephews and have never managed the same with my niece. I know this is almost certainly just a personality thing but nevertheless after so many years bonding wit my nephew I saw myself even more as a mother of a boy.
This is not a 'don't like pink' thing. I am not un-girlie myself. This is about a lifelong history of screwed-up relationships between the females in my family, and bullying by girls when I was at school. My mum is a very difficult woman and I dread being like that to my daughter. My sister is almost even more difficult. She and my mum always had an awful relationship. My mum had a terrible relationship with her own mum and sister.
It took me 20 years to make good female friends; I am naturally more shy and uncomfortable around women.
In addiiton, there is DH. He always used to say (only semi-joking) that he would love a child but only if it was a boy. Before you judge him too much (I know that statement on its own sounds bad) he has his own good reasons. He has a hearing impairment that means, as he said rather sadly y'day, that he always thought he would be a better father to a little boy with whom he could run round and kick a ball and wouldn't need to be so verbal, neccessarily, to be a good dad. I know we might have had a son who wanted nothing to do with balls and running around (!) but that is unlikely as DH and I are both v active and love sporty stuff. On more trivial matters, DH is a HUGE sports fan, it is pretty much his main hobby and how he loves to spend time and I know how much he was looking forward to introducing that to his son. Again, I KNOW a son may not have cared about that and I know a girl may be the biggest football fan in the world but I hope you can see why that trivial sense of disappointment is there too.
I can't shake off all those off the cuff and silly (and unwise!) comments DH used to make in the past about wanting a boy and finding girls difficult (he also has a very difficult mother...)
I can't shake off the years-long image of me with a little boy :(
We may very well not have a second child, it's certainly not a probability and I feel I have lost something even if I never had it. I feel evil about thinking this as my best friend lost her baby and my feelings are not at all the same thing.
I said yesterday to DH that it is not that I DIDN'T want a daughter so much as I DID want a son. But I was up all night worrying about it and now I am not so sure. I dread my little girl turning out to feel the way about me that I feel about my mother. I am panicking that I won't know how to bond with her and that she will not be interested in me.
None of this helped by the (very well-meaning) sonographer who kept calling her a 'little princess' and saying she would be a Daddy's girl and I had better get used to being sidelined! Not the ideal thing to hear when you spent your school years being ostracised by a bunch of little cows!!!
Sorry - I know this whole post may be offensive to some people but if anyone has any advice on how to get my head around this, I would appreciate it so much. Thank you.