As long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted a daughter. I always knew I wanted kids, and I always knew at least one needed to be a girl. This need got stronger when I went and married a guy with only brothers.
With our first pregnancy, we didn’t try for a specific gender. We just tried for a baby. I hoped it would be a girl, just to get that out of the way, but knew there were more kids coming along, so didn’t stress too much when our ultrasound revealed our first baby was a boy.
With number 2, we got more serious. We both wanted a girl (though I wanted it more than DH). We bought, read and followed the methods in How to Choose the Sex of your Baby by Landrum Shettles - intercourse timing, supplements, etc. And low and behold, on our first month trying, we succeeded in getting pregnant. (This was quite a shock, since it took 8 long months with our first.)
Then the hope set in - hope that it was a girl. The pregnancy was way different from my first. I craved different foods, the heartburn was way worse, and the biggest change - I was so sick. I was nauseous, I lost weight, I threw up. A lot. Didn’t take long before I was convinced that this baby was a girl.
Fortunately, I have a friend who is an ultrasound tech, and she gave us an ultrasound at 12 weeks to determine the gender. Ultrasound at 12 weeks is hardly foolproof, but it looked like a boy. I was crushed. Devastated. I cried. And I googled. I discovered 2 things - one, a whole lot about early gender ultrasounds, and two, that feeling disappointed was totally normal; it even has a name - gender disappointment.
For the next 8 weeks, I obsessed. I looked at those grainy ultrasound pictures again and again. I took every “guess the gender of your baby” test I could find on the internet. I believed the ones that said girl, and discounted the ones that said boy. I looked at other early gender ultrasounds. And I kept on throwing up. Finally, our 20-week ultrasound arrived. I’m not sure how I slept the night before. The tech was easily able to see the gender of the baby - a boy. No mistaking it.
It probably took me another few months to really get over the fact that I was having a boy. For many weeks, I barely thought about the baby I was carrying. I thought about the next one. The one that would be a girl. I regretted getting pregnant so quickly, since I learned many more methods to influence gender than I knew about before. I still dreamed about a little girl. And then I’d look at my son, and think about how wonderful, how special he is, and hate myself for not wanting another son.
Finally though, I got over it. I finally accepted the boy that was growing inside me, and still making me nauseous at 25, 30, even 40 weeks. Shopping helped too. It was pure torture to go into stores and see mountains of cute girl clothes, only to find very few cute boys clothes. But we found them, and very slowly, I started getting excited about having another boy.
Still, if one thing has kept me going, and allowed me to accept this baby boy, it’s knowing we will have a third. And that one will be a girl. Next time, we’re not leaving it up to chance. Next time, we’ll use microsort, which has a 92% success rate in producing girls. And if that still nets us a boy, then I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.
Note: For more information about gender disappointment, and influencing gender, both with at-home or high-tech methods, visit InGender.
Emschwar
Impressive, especially considering she only said “if I said this” and didn’t say she actually believed that was true.
Just curious, in those months you were trying to get over the fact you were having a boy, were you not rejoicing in the fact you were having a HEALTHY baby?