Its a girl!- bugger

[HotPie]

So I am 19 weeks gone with baby number one and just found out its a girl. The baby in my head was a boy. We were going to play lego and climb trees and get muddy together.

I thought at first it would be ok, after all its up to me and my partner how we raise her, but friends with girls have said I may not be able to avoid the pink princess stage, my mother in law is intent on dolls and frills and the other "mothers of girls" are drving me crazy with talk of "cuteness"

I have no interest in "sweet little outfits" or those flowery headbands (how weird are they) or playing with dolls and I dispise the kind of girl who plays "dressing up as princesses" just as much as I did when I was a little girl too. I am so scared I am going to get a pink loving girl and that I will dislike my daughter.

I feel like a terrible person, I know how lucky we are to have a ( hopefully) healthy child on the way. Please someone tell me about their mud loving daughter.

But the child won't come out making conversation! They won't be making academic or scientific comments for years yet. And of course you can still be academic and wear pink and tan.

I was am scared that I wouldn't know how to look after mine and that I wouldn't instantly love her, but she is not like any other person I've ever met in this world. It's so so different.

"have you never been scared of having a child so different from you that you just can't connect with them?"

I'm sure a lot of people have had these fears at some point but I work in school and all children are different. Your child will be different from you, of course she will but you will love her with all your heart because she will be the most beautiful thing you have ever clapped your eyes on from the moment she is born, even if she had a green head and warts.

HotPie, we're all making it up as we go along, regardless of how many children we have/contact we've had with kids, because they're all little unique people with different needs and thoughts and ideas. Your daughter will think you are the best thing ever and you will feel the same about her, and I say this as someone who assumed her bump was a boy and was handed a beautiful girl.

Beautifully put, NumberTwoDue.

Salad

I can have a coversation at some level with anyone, even if its just small talk, but I was hoping for a bit more than that with my child. A conversation with someone you have nothing in common with is easy, I agree. A connection is a bit harder.

I have some frends who are already mums if thats what you mean by mum friends, I wasn't really planning on trying to make any new friends just on the basis that that they were mums too though. Why would I want to do that? Is it necessary?

But you're right, I was overthinking, much calmer now.

Well, you might want to mix with people that have children the same age as your DD, for her to make friends, but I guess that it's not that necessary. She'll make her own friends by herself once she's at nursery or school.

Yoni,

Well my partner is the one thats going to be staying at home with her, so maybe something more for him to think about.

And thanks Yoni for your support

Goodness OP, do you really not have any friends who aren't scientists? Can you not, for example, imagine having an interesting conversation with someone who is, say, a history teacher or having a laugh with, for example, a secretary?

And why do you assume that women who care about spray tans and nails are also scared of mice and don't know the first thing about DIY?

I'm sure most of us on this thread understand what it is to wonder about what your unborn child (particularly your first) will be like. Many will also have had gender preferences to some degree or other - but to dismiss an entire gender (your own!!) on the basis of some vapid, marketing-induced stereotype, really? Really?

Anyway, I hope this thread has reassured you that boys and girls do not always conform to the stereotypes you are so afraid of. I suppose only time and personal experience will convince you that will love your own child regardless of whether they share your personal interests, values and, dare I say it, prejudices.

I don't think I ever said I no non-scientist friends. I said that I was one and that I might find it harder to connect with someone who was more into arty stuff as it is not an area I am passionate about or can really talk with someone about. But yes, I do find that I get on better with people who are academically minded.

Do I assume people with spray tans don't know about DIY? You're right it is a generalisation, but also one backed up by meeting plenty of women with spray tans. I fully appreciate its a generalisation though and that there are bound to be plenty of exceptions. Just like I once met a really charming lovely guy who was also a member of the BNP. Difficult to get my head around that one but it did happen.

And I was very clear I wasn't dismissing an entire gender. I am sure I have said lots of times that I have plenty of females friends ( more than half non-scientists by the way) and that prior to allowing silly conversations to persuade me otherwise, I was not concerned that having a girl would automatically mean she would be a girly girl I had nothing in common with.

I was also never concerned I wouldn't love my child, just that I wouldn't like her or have anything in common with her.

But you are right, I am sure I will find that my fears are foundless.

My 6 year old cousin likes moxi dolls pink stuff dresses and high heels. He saves up his pocket money for dolls and such like and I'm sure he would love to be a princess.

Just to put another spin on it

OP - seriously? You though that having a baby meant producing a mini-you? You're expecting years of fascinating conversation and you got all het up about this?
I really don't know what to say.

Oh no, hang on I do. It will of course be shitty and manipulative but tbh I think you need to hear a bit more of that in the hope that it might sink in.

I have two friends who will never have fascinating conversation with their daughters because their daughters died in the womb. They will never know who they would have been. You say you know how lucky you are. You don't. You have no idea until a tragedy like that touches your life. i don't know how lucky I am either. But what I do know is that I have cherished and admired my daughter's unique personalities from the moment they first looked in to my eyes and if you don't get a grip on yourself you're going to miss that. you're going to look past your daughter for the person you thought you wanted and you will do terrible harm to both of you. So just stop.

If anybody is reading this who is ttc and is nodding away with the OP. Just remember it's a new life you're trying to bring in to the world. A new person. Not a piece of clay or a cut and paste document. You don't know what you'll get and if you can't deal with that you need to not do it.

HotPie, you will find yourself on a very steep learning curve to keep up with your child's interests, whatever they may be.
For example, I have had to acquire a sound knowledge of every engine and truck in Thomas the Tank Engine, the names and behaviours of a variety of dinosaurs, the words to "Monkey Puzzle", Brownie badges, ORT reading characters and the life histories of every character in In the Night Garden.

They are not things I am interested in, I do not naturally have these things in common with my DCs. They are, however, things my DCs have been passionate about. Because it is important to them, I take an interest. And I find it fascinating watching their communication skills, language skills and their ability to argue, explain and negotiate mature and develop through exploring subjects they are interested in.
Unfortunately, sometimes I just start to enjoy the subject, only to find they have moved on to the next thing .

You're right, that was shitty and manipulative

But you are also right about me misssing out on the person she is because I am focusing on the person I want her to be and I will do my very best to do as you suggest on that.

I don't really connect with most of my family and the people I grew up with. I love them, they are my family, but we have nothing in common, and not much to talk about. I had to move away to find people who "got me". I am/was scared it will be the same with my daughter, and knowing she was a girl sort of made me think of her as a person, past babyhood rather than simply "the baby" and all of the brothers girlfriends, partners sisters and friends wives I have tried and failed to find common ground with over the years.

Sory Pip, hopefully you realised that wasn't a reply to you

HotPie - Thinking about this a bit more - there have been plenty of threads on how a pregnancy these days seems to be a very public matter, where you get all and sundry telling you that you should/shouldn't be doing/eating/thinking/planning this, that and the other. It can be very daunting for first-timers (and even for second-timers if they're surrounded by bossy, opinionated people).

It kind of throws you off-balance, makes you doubt yourself, puts concerns in your mind that wouldn't have otherwise occurred to you. It's as though they've taken a little bit of your relationship with your daughter away from you even before she's born.

You've had a bit of a bashing here, which is a pity in some ways, but I hope you've got enough from the responses to be reassured that your daughter is no more likely to be a "sparkly-girl" than you are, or, indeed, than most MNers are. (Most of the pink/sparkly/frilly people, I would guess, are on that other forum.)

But just to reiterate: Don't let your MiL indulge herself by buying loads of pink&frilly stuff. All the initial choices are for you and your DH to decide.

Eventually, your daughter will develop her own mind about those sorts of things. But, by then, you'll have shown her the moon and the stars, and how plants grow, and watched worms and bugs, and looked at pond water under the microscope. She might well choose to do all that while wearing a frilly dress and pink wellies, though, but by then that'll be her choice.

one of my nephews loves peppa pig... and pink things! despise a child like him too would you?

geez... just be bloody happy you can get pregnant!

Ah ok. Well some people will be superficially closer to family than others but at bedrock the ties that bind are maybe stronger than you know. My sister and I have very different interests but when backs are against the wall etc we're from the same tribe and it's unbreakable. My oldest daughter and my husband were once in WHSmith and both paused by the same display of coloured pens in a big fan. Dh realised she was seeing exactly the same pattern as he did and liking it just as he does (stationery geeks!). My middle daughter and I will cry in exactly the same places watching films. My youngest daughter walks around the house with a book in her hand and tries to read whilst getting dressed - just like me. This is not because they are mini versions of us. Their personalities are very different from us and from each other. But they belong to our tribe and we can see that kinship in them all the time. In their behaviour and in their eyes. Just like they see themselves in us. Knowing you belong together is about much more than interests and DIY ability . So what I'm saying is marvel in your daughter's personality and in both the similarities and differences you see between you because they won't actually pull you apart. It's a way of being better together.

Thanks Alci, you are right of course. I have let myself get stressed out because of other peoples involvement, I was fine with it till I announced it and got all of the comments back.

InLoveWithDavid, helpful, really helpful. Thanks so much, I really appreciate your thoughts on the matter, I now feel suitably ashamed and wll buck my ideas up immediately. I had never thought to be grateful about my pregnancy! What an incredibly original thought and so eloquently expressed too. I am in awe.

Oh lord, OP, do drop the sarcasm.

Honestly (and I hesitate to say this to a pregnant woman) you are going to need a thicker skin and a sense of humour.

I could add, as I'm sure other posters are itching to, that even a conversation with your child isn't a given, let alone the choice of topic. Of of mine is autistic, which has been something of an eye-opener. As it happens, he is verbal, but not all of his classmates are.

And then there's the teenage years when you have no idea what they're talking about anyway...

None of this is meant to be harsh. I didn't judge you on your first post. But you do rather keep on digging!

In the OP's defence, I think she's saying that she's concerned/fed up about the expectations put on girls and mums' of girls, and I can see her point: girls are everywhere portrayed as pink and sparkly (just look at the clothing sections in most stores). She clearly doesn't like that idea and was looking for reassurance that it's possible to buck that trend. Nowhere did she suggest that she wasn't grateful or didn't want the baby.

OP - I think this is a totally reasonable attitude but I hope that once your daughter is here you'll see how you were worrying over nothing. Nobody is going to force you to dress your daughter in any particular way (just smile nicely when the MIL presents you with pink things and forget to use them...) and by the time she's old enough to decide for herself, you won't mind anyway.

FWIW I really didn't want a girl when I was pg with #1 (who turned out to be a girl!) since I know how horrendous other teenage girls can be. Doesn't mean that I didn't love her with either fibre of my being, including when she was on unknown gender: it was just something I needed to work through.

Piprabbit, things I've recently had to express a pretend interest in include ukelele solos, the junior branch of the LibDems, and Hornby point motors...

Hotpie

I'm going to ignore all the bitching going on.

I totally get you. Both times I honestly can say I was devastated when I found out I was having a girl. I just had no idea how to deal with it and having had a terrible time growing up I wanted sons because I wanted things to be different for my children, I didn't want them to go through what I did.

But yknow what, my girls are 8 and 13 now, and yes we have had sparkly and Barbie and you name it, but they're actually good fun, intelligent, love making things, think in quite a "masculine" way. Because I forgot that while they are very much their own people and might like a bit of sparkle I could fill them with values and teach them that there is more to life than high heels and that as women they should not accept any limits any more than if they had been born the sons I expected.

I can't imagine having two more intelligent, interesting people as my children to be honest. But if you told me before I had children I would have two daughters, I would have been terrified.

Making things - I meant Lego/meccano/models, not crafts although they love them too.

You cant stereotype. Pointless. Children are little people, with diverse tastes.

My DD loves pink, loves dressing up, loves anything 'pretty'....but she is also a sturdy, active little thing - she loves her scooter, rough-and-tumble play, swimming, being in the garden digging for worms.

Let your child become who she is. You're going to love the bones of her.