Gender disappointment

I had never heard of gender disappointment. Until I experienced it first hand.

When I was pregnant I was convinced I was having a boy based solely on my desperate want for a son. I had always envisaged having two brothers, I think in part because I am not stereotypically “girly” by nature; I have no interest in hair and makeup or shopping, and I’m not very good at any of those things either! On reflection this thought process is ludicrous, as though I wouldn’t be able to encourage other qualities in a daughter?! But I just didn’t want to have to grapple with the endless pink and patheticness that enshrouds society’s representation of girls.

Ultimately, I didn’t want to raise a girl in the world we live in. Life’s harder, more dangerous, more challenging for girls. They have pay gaps, and work/life balances, and have to be worried about the seemingly mundane activity of walking alone after dark. All male issues, but all the burden of women. I didn’t want to bring a child in the world to face all that. It sounds so dramatic but it really worried me.

Matt was away when I had my anomaly scan, so my mum made a note of the gender and wanted to make us a little cake for when he returned. The anticipation was so exciting, we cut into the cake and… I burst into tears. I hadn’t even realised myself how much I had wanted a boy until the moment I found out Alice was a little girl, and the physical reaction was heavy. The entire experience was completely ruined for poor Matt, and I was beside myself with emotion.

Almost instantaneously, guilt hit me, and the tears became not just about the gender, but at frustration with myself. The baby was well and, having had a miscarriage the previous year, I felt repulsive to have experienced this disappointment for what was a perfectly healthy baby girl. I felt awful thinking of people who cannot conceive a child, who endure loss after loss, who experience complications. And I was crying because I was having a daughter. I was so angry with myself for not being able to snap out of this negativity, so worried that I would be jinxing my pregnancy through being so ungrateful.

And then, just at the right time, I stumbled upon The Unmumsy Mum and the relief was intense. She had written of how she longed for a daughter, and the disappointment she had felt when she found on her second pregnancy that they were having another son. She spoke of the negativity she felt, the guilt, the unhappiness. I couldn’t believe someone else was feeling the things I thought only I was going through. It had felt like a dirty secret to me that I couldn’t admit to anyone, so to know I wasn’t alone softened the unsettling feeling in my gut. It was made so much harder by the common thought process that girls want girls. I was expected to be pleased to be having a daughter which made me feel even worse.

Once we knew the gender, for a long while it felt like a real cloud over the pregnancy for me. I convinced myself that the doctor was wrong and that I would be having a boy. I couldn’t stop thinking about it and it truly felt so intense that I almost felt like I was mourning the loss of the child I had created in my mind. In retrospect I am so relieved that I found out the gender before I gave birth to be able to mentally prepare. My labour with Alice was a difficult one and I didn’t instantly feel bonded with her at all. In fact, initially I felt like we’d made a mistake and there was no way I could look after this child that I had no immediate instinctive bond with. I wonder how my mental health would have been affected if I’d be dealing with those emotions and the raw reaction of the gender disappointment at that time. I feel that combined with the post birth hormones I would have spiralled downwards.

I appreciate it is difficult to fathom if you haven’t experienced it, but the disappointment and ensuing guilt consumed me. And even now when I reflect back on it, I can’t believe how intense and raw those emotions were. Now, as time tends to do with most things, these thoughts and emotions seem ridiculous. But at the time they were so very real. Now that she is here, a living and breathing perfect little girl, I cannot believe I ever wished her to be a boy. The intimate bond we have together is so intense and she is a true extension of me.

Here I am today reflecting on that time and wanting to laugh at my past self for allowing something I couldn’t change to consume me. And for the first time since I started writing my blog I have felt really nervous about posting this. Gender disappointment isn’t really spoken about, acknowledged or validated in anything more than a light-hearted jokey manner, when actually at the time it was a heavy acknowledgment to come to terms with. And as my children have grown, and continued to be healthy and wonderful human beings, my retrospective guilt has become even worse. But to me it has felt an important experience to share, to know for others going through that initial shock of emotion that it is normal. I have no advice on how to overcome it, and I can imagine there are many occasions where people don’t, and learn to live with that, but for me I am so grateful for my wonderful children, with or without a penis!