How to prepare for potential gender disappointment?

[pomeggranit]

I have my 20w anomaly scan on Monday and I want to find out the gender but at the same time I'm absolutely dreading it.

I know it stupid and as long as I have a healthy baby then that's the important bit but I've always pictured myself with a little boy and I know that if I find out on Monday that I'm having a little girl I'm going to be heartbroken.

I've tried telling myself all the good things about having a girl and I've tried daydreaming about having a little girl the same way I do about having a boy but it all feels so wrong and detached.

I'm certain if it is a girl I'll get my head round the idea before I'm due and I'll love her to bits once she's here but I've just had such a hard time with this pregnancy that I want something to go right and I want to finally be able to enjoy it.

Has anybody else been in this situation? How did you prepare yourself for the scan?

@Pinkblueberry fair enough and everyone is different. I think for me it came from a place of feeling that I would be completely out of my depth with a boy, I have a sister, not close to my dad and most of my cousins and their kids are girls so I felt like I had to have a girl or else I wouldn't be able to cope. But when we found out he was a boy I actually looked at the reality of it and realised we'll be fine. We've been discussing our little boy for about 11 weeks now and I can't wait to meet him.

To be so focused on what genitalia a child has to determine how excited you'd be for their arrival just horrifies me.

@Pinkblueberry I think a lot of people think it's likely they'll have one or the other because there is a strong leaning in their family. In my case, there are mainly girls in my family and mainly boys in my partner's, so we jokingly saw it as one of our genes "winning out". Obviously there's every chance it could be the other sex but if you've got generation after generation of all boys you'll probably think it's likely it'll be the same for you, whether true or not.

Why don't you just not find out. Trust me, whatever it is, you will love it, and then you don't have to feel disappointed.

@Pinkblueberry I agree. Other than my dad I didn’t have any male role models or figures in my life. Other family members were all female I only had a sister and all my friends only had sisters too. I didn’t really relate to boys or like them much as a young girl. Even as an adult Ive never had close male friends really. Still understood it would have zero bearing on the sex of the children I’d end up with so there was no point having a preference for something I couldn’t change.

I had 2 boys incidentally