Depressed about sex of unborn baby

[nutcracker]

A friend of mine is very concerned about her sister who is expecting her 3rd baby. She has 2 dd's and longs for a ds. At her scan last week she was told that the baby is almost certainly a girl.
My firend said that since then her sister has been very deperessed and getting her to talk about the baby is very difficult. My friend is worried that her sister will now reject or have alot of trouble bonding with the baby when it arrives.
I just wondered if anyone else had experianced this.
I have never been bothered either way about the sex of my children. I have 2 dd's and when pregnant for the 3rd time i really didn't mind what i had.

oh and please stop "funny things kids say" threads- even the title makes me shiver. I can't even look at the threads on the same page util that title's moved down the page.

See ridiculous. All the threads would be headed "nice weather today isn't it?"

If you read the posts carefully no-one is saying anything other than it can help to put problems in perspective by looking at other worse situations- that in itself is a good way of dealing with difficulties. Maybe is IS easier to do if you continually have access to difficult situations- maybe thats why its easy for hmb, for me and for aloha (after all I think if I'd spent yesterday meeting a woman who's son had muscular dystrophy I wouldn't have got quite so stressed at the screaming in Tescos).

No-one is saying you're not allowed disapointment, or to feel sad or to feel you have a problem. Little problems can often be successfully banished though by putting them in their place.

I have just found this poted on another gropu that I drop into. It was on a thread called 'What is the meaning of Life'. The post had been started by someone who was having a hard time at work and was very fed up.

I've posted this because it helps me. Not because I'm having a go at anyone, or anything like that. It just makes me see that love helps you to conquer anything.

'Every so often I accidentally fall into a thread leading to a bottomless pit of despair, populated by posters whose cups are always half empty and have sprung a leak. It's Mothering Sunday this weekend, not a great day for me and my wife. The day after is my son's birthday. Those of you who followed the happiness thread will remember me telling you all that he died suddenly in August 2000 at the age of 11. He would have been 15 on Monday. We will visit the cemetary and place some flowers on the grave. Sunflowers, if the florist has any. Then we will sit and reminisce. My wife will cry a lot. We will try to imagine what he might have looked like now, how tall he might be, how he sounds - his voice might have broken. We will remember him giggling; an abrupt rising pitch crescendo of laughter, suddenly collapsing into a squeal of delight. Then we will reaffirm that we have no regrets, only that he is no longer with us. Every day he was with us we treasure. His picture is with me always on key ring, on my desk and burned into my soul. And despite feeling there is a hole in my life the size of a cheeky-faced boy, my cup is more than half-full. Without darkness, you cannot know light; without pain, you cannot know joy. The knowing is your choice. Have a good day on Sunday. '

Now, that gives the flavour of what I was trying to post. And this was not posted to make anyone feel bad about anything

Adding my bit too....
Before I was PG with DS3 I wanted another baby so desparately it's all I EVER thought about. That baby had to be a girl, I wanted to be PG so that I had a girl and it HONESTLY didn't cross my mind that it could be a boy until I was PG.
It suddenly dawned on my when I was about 8 weeks and I was quite shocked at myself that I hadn't thought of it before. It's very odd, I'm sure you'll agree.
We decided not to find out the sex at 20 weeks, but it was such a different pregnancy to DS1+2 that I was convinced it must be a girl.
Anyway we had to have a another scan at 36 weeks to check the kidneys were ok (they were) and I had decided that I really wanted to know, I just couldn't wait the last 4 weeks. I woke up that morning and thought to myself " all this time I've thought it's a girl and it's not, there's a boy in there" Low and behold at the scan later that day there was no mistaking what was in there, a little brother for DS1+2.
As Dh didn't want to know I went it alone(he came in after the sex was revealed) and came out with such a beaming smile that he guessed it was a girl because I was so happy. He kept saying "that grin gives it away, I know it's a girl just by your face!" obviously he doesn't know me quite so well. I was grinning like an idiot because I was so pleased with myself that I 'knew' before the scan.

I managed to keep the secret for all of 40 minutes before he badgered it out of me, and yes he was shocked that he's 'mis-read' me.

Anyway DS3 IS the cutest baby EVER in the history of mankind (honestly he really is ) and I am soooooooooo happy and in love with him that the desparation for a girl seems ridiculous know.

What I trying to say, although in a rather long winded way is like many have said once the baby is born it will be loved and cherished like the others and there (hopefully) won't be problem

HMB sending lots of love to you and your family.

Jimjams, no it doesn't help, knowing others have it worse, because there is always the flip side of a lot more others who have it better! A group of us meet up once a year & between us we have a whole range of problems from mild dyspraxia through to ADHD, autism, epilepsy up to profound CP. It is nice to talk to these others, knowing they know, IYKWIM.

One of the other mums says it's nice to relax knowing that while her DS is rampaging we aren't looking at him & tut-tutting, but thinking "thank god mine's behaving today". My mum said "puts your problems into perspective" & it does in a way.. mine aren't as bad as the others & for that I'm profoundly grateful BUT, the other side of the wall there are families with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 NT kids who have no idea. Then I am one of these glass half empty souls.

Ahhh I understand now tallulah. Completely. This is why I don't do NT I only see one NT family regularly. For me, in my usual social mix my siutuation is a lot better and certainly not much worse than anyone I see.

Hell no if I spent my time in the normal world I'd be feeling very sorry for myself!

I haven't read everything on this thread, but wanted to add this - we went through 2 attempts at IUI and 6 attempts at IVF in order to get our dd. Until the 20-week scan, my attitude was just to be grateful to be pregnant at all and not to care what the baby's sex was. We found out then that she was a girl and, to my amazement, I found myself crying about it afterwards. I couldn't understand why. I am a feminist, I teach gender studies, for goodness sake. DH came up with a plausible explanation. He suggested that when you are expecting a child, you imagine it as a set of infinite possibilities in terms of its personality, its appearance and what kind of a person it will turn out to be. Finding out that the baby was a girl closed off some of these possibilities and meant that, briefly, I was mourning the son I will probably never have. These feelings soon faded, however, as I found it much easier to imagine the baby once I knew her sex. By the time she was born, I couldn't imagine her as anything other than a girl and would want nothing for her other than to be female.

This thread's so long and I just looked at it for the first time this morning so sorry I haven't read it all, just scanned (how appropriate!).
First, going back quite a bit I don't want people to read Welcome to Holland and think that's what its like to have a child with a disability, I think its trite and let's everyone off the hook by thinking its just different, not worse, OK not for everyone but for myself and most of my friends, by and large its worse. There's another called Welcome to Beirut, much more appropriate, you can imagine. Can't find it, I'll have a look if anyone's interested.
Second, I've got a 1 year old baby. I already have a son with severe autism and a MUCH higher risk of autism with another son, not just because of general statistics but because of family history. My Prof agreed that if I wanted to find out the sex and it was a boy I could decide not to have it and acceptable (psychological) grounds would be agreed. We seriously thought about doing this, there is no test for autism and if there were I would have had it and not had a baby if it too were affected. However, we decided not to find out and take our chances and love our child whatever happened. You can imagine the tension in the delivery room (c-section), there was a lovely nurse there who told us she had a 19 year old son with autism and she kindly squeezed my hand and said she knew what it meant. Well, out popped a girl, we were flabbergasted and, of course, happy. We would have been very happy with a boy but much, much less anxious and with clear and genuine less reasons for that anxiety. Having a SISTER with aspergers, a girl is no guarantee and there's still a higher risk of autism anyway if you already have a child with autism. So far she seems fine but who knows what subtle problems may be lurking so I do find it a little upsetting when people assume everything's OK, its a long time before we'll know for usre but she is definitely not like our son.
Third (god, this is getting long!), I'm one of 3 girls. My dad wanted boys but wasn't devestated, he just treated us like boys a lot. We didn't have dolls but cowboy outfits, lots of physical play like skates and bikes etc. We still all grew up to be feminine but we swear like troopers and like football. Ooooer, gender stereotyping, but we were quite unusual in those days.

Yes please post Welcome to Beruit. I LOATHE and DETEST welcome to Holland almost as much as I loathe websites that talk about little angles or special parents.

Is this is?

home.earthlink.net/~abaantonia/beirut.htm

f* yes that's my life. And isn't this line "You will know sorrow like few others and yet you will know joy above joy."- whilst slightly cheesy for me - somehow apt for this discussion

Oldiemum, I think though that so many of our assumptions about personality etc linked to gender are so inaccurate. My little boy tells me stories about the Moon and the Sunshine dancing together in the sky and can't kick a ball to save his life. Yesterday told me a tissue dissolved in the bath looked like tiny feathers and tickled his toes like fish - sorry to get soppy, but I'm not sure what someone who really wanted a boy would expect from their child - and wonder if they would get it from my son iyswim. Boys and girls don't come in standard formats, is what I'm trying to say. I'm not saying there is no difference, but the differences may be extremely subtle and fluid. For me, having a son is disappointing in that I do like girls' clothes better and have to satisfy my Monsoon baby cravings by buying for friends' daughters, but the emotional/imaginative/loving/gentle stuff I get in spades. But the footballing stuff? Nah.

Agree 100%. If my mother was looking forward to a daughter that played with dolls and liked to dress up in frilly pink numbers I must have disapointed her.....thinking about it I am sure that I was a huge disapointment to her. And she was so much more fond of my brother it was untrue!

She, and all her sisters who all had girls, would sit with us and tell us how 'loving' little boys were, so much more than girls!

I think that I was so determined not to care what sex child I had.

hmb I am sitting here blubbing at your last post:9 I cant even read the rest of the thread now!

message withdrawn

But this woman isn't posting! I've said I wouldn't have posted a comment if she had been. And no-one has said she is seriously depressed, and if you look at what I've written I've mentioned in the absence of other issues. Serious depression would be another issue obviously.

I can't not say what I think in case someone reading this thinks the same way. That would get ridiculous- that would be like asking all "funny things kids say" threads to be banned from mumsnet at they upset me. Which of course would be ludicrous.

fio2, that is sweet of you, but don't worry, it doesn't upset me! I got used to it all a long time ago.

And my mother did love me, she just loved my brother more. The whole family prefered boys over girls and stated it, often. Even in her dementia she would coo over my ds while ignoring dd. It was just the way she was.

Great line once when I went to visit a bf who was ill with scarlet fever. 'Don't come back here and give that to your brother!'. Amazing, and she never even thought it was odd.

I was, I think, a constant disapointment to her. Even when I married, doing the conventional thing, she was deeply irritated that dh and I had an equal pertnership. She never understood that.

hmb I was talking about the letter from the Dad about his son, I am just that slow and disorganised I didnt refer properly, sorry. Sorry for all the shit you are going through, I do understand. I hope things do get better for you or at least stay stable xxx

i wrote a long post but deleted it, dont want to get involved but I am sure people will know my feelings on this anyway

meant to say jmb my dad and his family were exactly the same about boys and it is not nice

Oh, that posting. I blubbed over that one as well. But it summed things up so beautifuly. The man who posted it must be one hell of a dad.

I know I said I wouldnt be back here but it's like looking at a car crash...

JimJams, this is hardly the same as the "funny things kids say" thread because those don't make any digs at you or others in your situation. I do feel that this one actually makes digs at me by association because I DID post here about feeling the same and this was clearly there before people started making "FFS get a life" type comments.

I can't believe that after 3 years I can be made to feel s**t about this. I look at DS2 and feel guilty for ever wishing he was a girl.

to summarise

a) people are perfectly entitled to get upset and feel regret for whatever reason they wish

b) in some cases this will be over something easily recognised as serious- for example having cancer, having a child with muscular dystrophy

c) in other cases this will be less serious - eg being unable to find a matching handbag (or in my case being given a set of false nails that looked like pigs trotters 2 days before my wedding)

d)whatever the reason for the upset and regret being able to put the disappointment in context will make it easier to deal with it. This is true for whatever the regret- although some disappointments will be harder to do that others (I would imagine for example thate everyone would find it harder to get over a child dying that havoing a boy rather than a girl).

e) some people are unable to do that (eg becaus seof depression or whatever- thinking the woman on child of our time here). However it should be recognised that even if it isn't someone's fault that may have an effect on the other children -and this is where this issue becomes sticky (child of our time seemed to suggest that the mother's dperession had affected her child- rather unfairlry I thought).

f) we are all going to have different views on what is important which will be shaped by our life experiences (which I why agreed with scummys post on this).

G) The views on what are important may well change according to the shit life throws at you. Which is why I think that having a healthy child can never be a bad thing, but maybe why others think there is a better way to be healthy.

'we are all going to have different views on what is important, which will be shaped by our life experiences' scummy's point that jimjams agreed with. I agree too.

I would have loved a girl. I will always miss the daughter I don't have. My life experience? a very close and happy relationship with my mother. I am not shallow, not depressed, just a fact from my past. I don't dwell on it.

Who is saying this woman will dwell on her 'problem' in years to come? she is depressed now - no crime in that. I think sympathy for the here and now of her situation has been bypassed, no ones fault. It just happenend. There is a separate discussion going on here IMO. It's called 'what's really important in life'. Very moving posts. Wish someone had started another thread for it.

Dead on Tigermoth.

I agree with every word of that Tigermoth. Thank you.