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.

Well, ok. How are you going to administer said reality check? Phone the woman and say "oi, grow up! Get real! Go visit a cancer ward!"? Methinks that wouldn't actually help much.

Give the woman a break, she's pregnant, she's allowed to get upset about anything she wants!

Lou33 - She wanted to get pregnant and was happy about it until she had the scan and was told it's a girl.

Fd - I hope so

zerub, really agree with you...however getting upset because her unborn child is not to her liking is okay but very sad

I am with the 'healthy' baby brigade ..... but didn't used to be ...
I was disappointed that DS was a boy and it took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that the girl I was expecting didn't happen.
When we started trying for a second baby I did all that 'trying for a girl' thing ... having sex at certain times etc. When I fell pregnant I was convinced my baby was a girl. Then I had a miscarriage.
It took a while to fall pregnant again and by that time I was so desperate for a healthy pregnancy and baby that I dispensed with the notion of 'trying for a girl'. When I did get pregnant again we were going to find out the sex because I wanted to 'get my head around it' if it was a boy .... but in the end I asked myself what was important ... a healthy baby or a girl? So we didn't find out and I went through my pregnancy thankful that it was healthy ... I really truly didn't mind - as long as the baby was healthy and the birth wasn't too traumatic and that I didn't end up with PND again ......
So I understand your friend's wishes for a boy but from my personal experiences the health of the baby should be more important ...
Not sure if that makes sense .....

at my twenty week scan I was told my baby had a very serious heart defect - something that would have required at least three open heart surgeries before her first birthday and if she survived to be a teenager - a heart transplant. This was my first pegnancy......

At that stage - the gender was totally irrelevant. I was upset - as you can imagine - but never depressed... dh and I just read up on what we would be facing and decided our baby would be born - we would deal with each thing one day at a time.

A matter of weeks later we were told she definitely had a heart condition ( from a fetal cardiac scan) but that it was something just as serious but not as prolonged in terms of care - one lot of surgery 'should' be sufficient. I was also informed that the baby would be 99.9999999999% born with Down's syndrome - again a little shock - but again - nothing we could ont handle. This baby was very much wanted - again the gender was irrelevant.

Well we decided during an anomaly scan to ask if they could tell us the gender - and they said tentatively a girl... well i was pleased - only cause I felt I was having a girl and we had chosen a name....

well dd was born - yes with Down's syndrome and of course the heart condition which saw her spend three weeks in SCBU and then have two open heart surgeries within three days of each other at eight weeks old and some complications which saw her return to ICU twice.

Finally two years later she had the all clear regarding her heart - just like a 'normal' one.

I have since found out I am pregnant again - the gender is the last thing I am worried about. Having said that - I will not have having tests to determine whether my next child also has down's syndrome despite an increased risk....

Sorry to those who think this is a bit harsh - but when you have seen parents cope with such terrible health issues in children and seen tiny tiny babies having heart/ lung srugery - getting depressed over a gender is just ridiculous.

It is time to get a grip and focus on the fact that another child is joining your family - regardless of gender...... yes it might be nice to have what you hope for - but sorry life is not like that - sometimes you get lucky - sometimes you don't.

And for what it is worth - I am the luckiest mum in the whole world with the most amazing daughter.... and yes I do feel for parents who do not have the joy of caring for a child with ds.

I have said that i agree with you all haven't I.
I am just telling you what happened thats all.
I didn't mean to upset anyone

As I said at the beginning of this thread, I desperately wanted DS2 to be a girl and yes, when I found out 2 days before his birth that he was a boy, I was devastated. I was desperately unhappy and had to hide the reason from DH because he did not want to know the sex.

Quite frankly, I find your comments about needing a reality check insulting. Of course I know how lucky I am to have a healthy child or even a child at all - I'm not stupid. Feelings aren't rational, they don't listen to sense. Would you tell someone with PND to cheer up, they should be grateful to have a child at all? No, I don't think so. You'd offer sympathy for how they are feeling and support and wait til they got over it. Nutcracker's friend's sister simply needs to come to terms with the fact that she's not getting exactly the baby she wished for. I don't love DS2 any less than DS1, I wouldn't love him any more if he had been a girl - I got over it pretty much as soon as he was put in my arms. I bet this woman loves her DD3 too when she arrives.

I don't think that anyone is upset. I'm not, I hope that no-one else is.

I realise that we run the risk of 'shutting down' discussions by thinking, 'Well at least we should all be thankful that we can have children'. Why should any of us worry about babies not sleeping when we want them to, or having temper tantrums? Bottom line is that I suppose that we shouldn't. And even those of us who have posted with such realtivly minor problems probably realise that. To the childless woman and broken night of sleep with a crying baby would seem like heaven on earth.

If we followed through the logic then mumsnet would stop and we aould all be bereft But the bottom line is that there are things that we can ask for help about, and improve out lot. Hints will help us to settle our babies better, or we will learn to help our children to control their tempers.

But there is no real help for your friend other than her to realise how blessed she is and /or to sort out why she feels the way she does.

Don't know if this helps. I have read through this thread thinking that I can't really contribute cos I'm not entirely sure what it is that I'm thinking. But maybe my two contradictory thoughts get to the heart of this ...

thought no. 1: On Monday I was pg, now I am not. I am not going to have this baby that we so wanted. I am very very jealous of anyone who is pg and is going to give birth to a living baby. How dare they get picky about it!

thought no.2: if/when I eventually do become pg and take a baby through to a live birth, I am very very scared about how I will feel about the baby if it is a girl. I have a gorgeous son. I do sons. I am really very scared of having a girl and very anxious about mistakes that I feel I could make. In the 5 weeks that I knew I was pg I fretted about this a lot.

Both of these feelings are equally strong for me right now!

Oh Fisil, now i do feel like this has upset you. I am sorry, that was not my intention at all.

FWIW i felt like you do about having a girl, about having a boy IYKWIM. I had 2 dd's and was very worried about having a boy. If you have a girl you will change your mind, honest.

Oh nutcracker, you haven't upset me at all. I was holding back from posting because it does all sound a bit raw, but I was just trying to be as open as possible about how I feel right now. Please don't feel bad - I was just being disarmingly open!

Fisil, hugs to you. This must be an awful time for you. I remember those awful raw feelings so well. Take good care of yourself.

I have 3 lovely kids: ds, dd and ds in that order. When dd arrived, I didn't know the sex of baby, but had a feeling she was a boy. When I was told I had a baby girl, I was gobsmacked! A few seconds later, I was over the moon. I was so pleased to have 'one of each', esp as I (wrongly!) thought, this baby was my last. Maybe I wanted a girl and I didn't admit this, even to myself. I should add that if baby #2 had been a boy, I have no doubts I would have loved him the same. Not sure what I'm tring to say here, but I sort of agree with WWW et al that it is okay to have a preference, but that to have any baby is an honour and something I will always be grateful for, esp as my brother and SIL are now being forced to consider IVF after an ectopic pregancy with serious complications.

Look tbh I wouldn't phone the woman up and tell her have a reality check, because if someone came to me sulking that they were having a boy/girl whatever they didn't want then I would have abosultely nothing to say to them. In fact people have come sulking to me about gender and I'm afraid the phone goes down pretty quickly.

I think it is perfectly normal to have a preference. I think it is perfectly normal to feel the way fisil does (both sides of her feelings). I think it is ridiculous to get upset to this degree over the "wrong" sex unless there are other issues.

if she is clinically depressed over it then I feel sad that she should feel that way. However most of the people I have come across are not clinically depressed they just haven't got what they want. Such as the vomit inducing woman spashed across our local paper who moaned how unfair it was becuase she had to pay lots of money for IVF to get her girl AND heaven forbid go abroad- because gender selection isn't allowed here, and oh dear poor old her only had 4 healthy boys. Heaven's above she could have spent that money on a holiday or something.

Oh well life sucks.

One thing I have noticed generally is that people who have the most to be grateful for are often the least happy with their lot.

I DO think that women like the one in our local paper- who truly see having the wrong sex as a disaster - have really got the balance wrong. Reality obviously does not feature.

sorry - that sounds a bit confusing- just to reiterate I duo understand completely what fisil is saying. m/c is horrible horrible horrible. The next line refers to the original woman.

Look if her girl baby is born brain damaged, missing a limb, needing an operation, after a placental abruption with an AGPAR of 0, after a car crash, after a lot of heavy bleeding in pregnancy, not breathing, whatever she isn't going to give a shit what sex it is. Full stop. That's the reality check that's needed round here.

I totally agree with Zerub and Soupster (among others). If nutcracker's friend feels passionately that she wants her baby to be a particular gender then that's how she feels and no amount of telling her not to feel like that will help, IME, though of course there are more important things as I'm sure she herself would acknowledge. We all operate in different contexts and yes, some of us have much more to deal with than others, but that doesn't mean that we don't all have problems within our own contexts that we are allowed to feel bad about. As Soupie said, feelings like that are often beyond our control anyway. I'm very jealous sometimes of my partner's bickering with his Mum- though he can find her a real pain the arse- because I never got the chance to have an adult relationship at all with my Mum and I wish she was around. That doesn't invalidate or dilute his frustration though and it would SO not help to say "Be grateful you've got a mum to argue with at all, Mr Scum!"
Btw, I was pretty adamant that I wanted girls when I was pregnant and was disappointed when 2 boys emerged. Of course the fact that they were healthy was the MOST important thing of all but that didn't stop me feeling as I did for a very brief time. Among other things (like ignorance of how fab and gorgeous boy children of mine would be) it was something to do with wanting to recreate the relationship I had with my mum, I now think. So these things may be more complicated than they appear, perhaps.

So sorry about your pregnancy ending, fisil. I didn't see that before. Lots of love to you.

Fisil, hugs to you

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The fantastic thing IMO is that we are not definedd by our gender - you can have a fierce girl and a sensitive boy - a gentle boy or a wild girl. I do wonder when people yearn for one gender or the other if they are not stereotyping their child before it is even born. My son loves cuddles, books, animals, imaginative play. He's a boy but firstly he is a person. I admit, I would like to buy baby dresses, but it's such a minor thing. I do wonder what people expect from a boy or girl that makes them yearn for the different gender - and how disappointed they would be if their child didn't match up to the stereotypes about that gender.

I think that's a really good point, aloha. One reason I'm very, very glad my desire for girls was thwarted is that it's challenged my unthinking stereotypes of boys spectacularly in some ways. If I ever have another one I'd be unconcerned about gender, I think.

I hadn't thought about it like that Aloha but I think that's why the whole thing makes me so uncomfortable (and it does). If someone could have the "wrong" sex what other expectations do they have? Top of the class? Career in the city? Heterosexual? Will marry into a "good" family?

At the end of the day you give birth to a new life. To be disappointed because they don't match your expectations/wishes is terribly terribly sad.

I think scummy's post was quite insightful as well. The idea that someone could be upset about gender is so far outside any context that I operate in that I cannot have sympathy with it. I just can't. It suppose it falls into the same category as finding it difficult to have "normal" friends. The worry about gender is so far away from what I would consider to be worth worrying about that I cannot take it seriously and I cannot sympathise with it. The reality check is needed as its so far away from what I consider to be reality.

Actually a friend did ring me about being upset for having another boy (kind of seriously upset I think) and I found it VERY difficult to talk to her about it. I did want to shake her really. Obviously I didn't ,I just changed the subject and then avoided her for a few weeks until she'd got her head round it.

I sympathise with Nutcracker's friends' sister. Like scummymummy, I wanted/expected a girl ? in my case because I grew up in an all-female household and am very close to my mother and sisters. Couldn't really imagine how a boy would fit in to all that. And I was initially disappointed/confused after the 20 week scan. Kind of 'how on earth do you look after boys? what do they do?'. But late pregnancy was a good bonding time. And the second ds was born I loved him desperately. I'm so glad now I didn't have my theoretical girl because then I wouldn't have my very real and very gorgeous little boy. Am still trying to work up the courage to tell my mother to back off because she doesn't know anything about raising boys, though