Where did the monster come from?

[Throwaway_panther]

Thanks so much Atomic, a great relief to read what you have to say, both about GD being natural (so we can stop beating ourselves up about it!) and about the fact that you had strong GD yourself and a preference with your first kid even. Do you have any tips whatsoever about how to feel closer/more connected with the kid you already have/are having please? I feel like currently I am more focused on my eventual sway than the DD I am already expecting, which doesn't feel very fair towards her - maybe I'll just fall in love with her once she arrives the way others say they did and I should just wait patiently till then? I don't feel crazy about the 'go shopping for baby clothes and you'll get excited' advice, I am not much of a pink-frilly girl, meh.

I was this person on here at exactly this time last year :P

Honestly, following HE stuff for a sway is only a good thing for pregnancy and breastfeeding, haha. So it's not a BAD thing to be so invested into a sway before you've even had your first kid, because you're not shortchanging her now. If you take care of yourself, you're taking care of your DD and that's about all there is to do when still pregnant! Even my mental anguish while pregnant with DD didn't seem to affect her as I was VERY concerned would happen -- she is very, very happy and people constantly comment on what a smart, aware, happy and "good" baby she is. And she's INSANELY attached to me, too. Which really was fortunate for me, as it helped me extinguish any and all disappointment with her. As others have said, bonding while pregnant anyway is... not always a thing! It's very common.

When she's here, you will discover a balance of sorts between the two!

And you also might surprise yourself with the pink and frilly... I am very not that. I didn't want to do that. I still have stuff gifted to us that I dress her in and get excited to match headbands and things. Who knew? But she's also still in lots of other not conventionally "girly" things all the time. And I can tell you that, based on her personality, she is very unlikely to be the "very girly" stereotype, either. She's very active and "sporty" even, I'd say, at this young. Very interested in reading and exploring and animals and mischief and so on.

But, I was like that myself, and I still enjoy makeup every so often and I like dresses and what not. We're not all black and white. There's gray everywhere

[ChezIBY]

Panther,

You're bloody amazing!! (Also, you're me, aren't you? Jokes aside, it sounds like we have a lot in common, the overachieving since an early age, becoming obsessed about getting things 'right', coming from a GGG family - I'm just happy to report that abuse was not a part of my childhood and.. it's incredible how calm you are, discussing this, you sound like you've worked through a ton of things - wish I could give you a hug though <3) And you're so funny too, I literally burst out laughing at your phrase 'you don't seem quite as... unhinged' OMG, ROFL!!

It's very reassuring to read what you've got to say about how you felt once your DD was born, particularly reassuring given that I feel like we have a lot of common traits I am so sorry for your losses too, yeah, I saw that in your signature earlier Why does this have to happen... you're so resilient! How are you feeling now? Are you going to have to take a break before TTC again? I'm sure you'll get there Panther, but yes, it seems like life is throwing you a lot of hurdles - you seem like the kind of girl who is ready to keep on fighting though, that's great (and sways blue I guess )

The origin of GD - multi-faceted, like you said I guess. I started this thread because (genius that I am ;p) I was like, 'haha, we can pinpoint where this comes from and then we'll have everyone feeling better in a moment!' except that, yes, seems there isn't just one reason for everyone, seems it varies in degrees of impact and personality has an influence.. I'll have to go over what people said and think on it again. But one thing is sure - no quick fix here!

But I am SO happy that I started the discussion because people's ideas and stories have been great, and I agree with you that talking about it opens up a lot of new angles.

Crossing my fingers for your future TTC attempts - it's just great how accepting and mature you are, how you've worked through all this stuff that has happened to you, and it sure sounds like you are a wonderful mom and ready to give your kids just what kids need - loving and accepting them unconditionally, the way they are! Bravo, it is VERY hard to get through something so unfair that happened when you were so young and not hold a grudge on the world and 'get back' at your own family or other people.

Oh yeah - don't you worry about scaring me about childbirth, numerous are the women at my work who have already tackled that task Since I told everyone at work I was expecting, every woman I know and don't know has found it her duty to have a chat with me detailing the horrendous experiences she/a friend/a neighbour/Aunt Maggie had in the delivery room. It's so nice how folks can be supportive! I might have disappointed many a soul with my lack of appropriately horrified reactions though...

[ChezIBY]

I was this person on here at exactly this time last year :P

Honestly, following HE stuff for a sway is only a good thing for pregnancy and breastfeeding, haha. So it's not a BAD thing to be so invested into a sway before you've even had your first kid, because you're not shortchanging her now. If you take care of yourself, you're taking care of your DD and that's about all there is to do when still pregnant! Even my mental anguish while pregnant with DD didn't seem to affect her as I was VERY concerned would happen -- she is very, very happy and people constantly comment on what a smart, aware, happy and "good" baby she is. And she's INSANELY attached to me, too. Which really was fortunate for me, as it helped me extinguish any and all disappointment with her. As others have said, bonding while pregnant anyway is... not always a thing! It's very common.

When she's here, you will discover a balance of sorts between the two!

And you also might surprise yourself with the pink and frilly... I am very not that. I didn't want to do that. I still have stuff gifted to us that I dress her in and get excited to match headbands and things. Who knew? But she's also still in lots of other not conventionally "girly" things all the time. And I can tell you that, based on her personality, she is very unlikely to be the "very girly" stereotype, either. She's very active and "sporty" even, I'd say, at this young. Very interested in reading and exploring and animals and mischief and so on.

But, I was like that myself, and I still enjoy makeup every so often and I like dresses and what not. We're not all black and white. There's gray everywhere

I know, you're me and I'm you, right?? This is amazing

I'll have to look up some of your old posts from last year and read through them

Oh, and if you can believe it - I've also ALREADY gone over how I'll lose any excess weight gained on the HE diet - I am also rather fit and skinny as it is, and bent on staying that way, I'm bent on being the Mom with the family of my dreams AND the body of my dreams.. Gawd, we're nuts, aren't we?

I've kept on exercising during pregnancy, stuff approved by the doc, so a lot for the arms and legs, sparing the tummy obv - and am very proud about people praising me about how fit I am staying at this time and how I am consequently energetic etc. I bet you were like that.... and are like that

Weight lifting is authorized for blue swayers, score that

Pink rubs me the right way, but.. after reading everyone's posts and feeling a hundred percent better I found myself looking at little headbands with flowers, like sunflowers and stuff I thought they were real cute! I hope I have such a great connection with my DD, like what you've got

[ChezIBY]

that was my question, which you partly answered in the end - are you planning on trying for a girl again? And how do you feel now that some time has passed, does the GD change over time or is it a constant?

[Lindzter]

Such interesting and varied reasons for experiencing GD, thanks for sharing everyone.

For me, it's several things. I have two amazing boys, I grew up with two brothers, and my husband has two brothers as well. It just feels like our family is missing the energy and presence of a girl at this point. We get together with the extended fam and the lack of women or girls is almost comical. So there is that weighing on us.

I am actually really close with my mom and have almost like a friend relationship with her at times. I always casually assumed when I thought about having kids that there would be at least 1 girl in there somewhere. Now I am getting into my late 30's (I'm 36) and realizing it might not ever happen and I might not have that dynamic with a daughter like I have with my mom and I feel incredibly bummed about missing out on that relationship. Of course I have a special relationship with my boys too but it will continue to evolve and change as everyone gets older. I see my husband having buddies to do "guy stuff" with for the rest of his life, and I want that buddy to do and talk about "girl stuff" with too...


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[subban]

The thing that hits me while reading this thread is that a lot of us really seem to have similar aspects in our personality / character. For me, as pointed out before, setting goals and achieving them has been my objective since I was a kid. GD has been the one thing that I felt I had no control over: despite how hard I would work to achieve my goal, at the end I was not the one to decide. I must say that I had really bad GD. When I compare to my friends that have same gender family, no one had it as deeply as me (or it was never discussed, I certainly never mentioned it, I was way to ashamed).

Looking back I can definitely say that GD was a big part of my like for 10 years. I still wonder how I will look back to those years because it seems that all this time I was just waiting and working toward getting my daughter. The last two years before she was born, I was so obsessed by the HT process we had finally engaged in that it seems like I don't remember anything I did during those 2 years. I must say it feels pathetic as I had a career. A DH and 3 adorable DS to fill my life.

Now that she is here, I feel like I don't know what is my goal anymore and I feel this big hole in my life. I'm happy it's over but it makes me realized how all my like was centred around this project.

GD is so underestimate and I feel so deeply for anyone that is stuck with this *%^>. ❤️


3 beautiful boys (10) (7) (4) and our HRC HT DD (2016)

[ChezIBY]

I think you're on to something with this: '(or it was never discussed, I certainly never mentioned it, I was way to ashamed)'. Here we're all really honest, but you know what it's like 'in real life', so I would not be at all surprised if many people hide their feelings about GD (and heck anything else) from those around them including significant others and close family/friends and even from themselves.

It's this way about almost every other subject that matters - statistically, half the of the married couples living in Paris end up breaking up. Yet, except for very close friends confiding things, I never seem to see it coming. There's so-and-so married to so-and-so, and they are the happiest couple ever, and every time you meet up they are telling you about their great vacation and their new home and their future plans, and then some time later you hear they've both gotten lawyers and dividing their assets :/
Why the appearances, why do we feel we have to keep them up and say/do 'what we are supposed to'?

It's obvious why in this case of course - like you said, GD is kind of taboo I guess, of course you'd never have spoken about it - imagine if you had gone on and confessed as openly as here what your feelings were, I can just imagine the horrified reactions and lectures on 'be thankful you have a healthy kid, what does it matter what gender it is'. ;p

I'm real glad for you that your long journey is over though and kudos on sticking it out Don't worry, I think it must be natural to feel some emptiness after pursuing a goal for so long and with so much energy! You'll probably relax over time, enjoy the family you've fought so hard to create and also get excited about new goals, personalor professional, don't you think? Give yourself time, you've worked so hard!

[ChezIBY]

Such interesting and varied reasons for experiencing GD, thanks for sharing everyone.

For me, it's several things. I have two amazing boys, I grew up with two brothers, and my husband has two brothers as well. It just feels like our family is missing the energy and presence of a girl at this point. We get together with the extended fam and the lack of women or girls is almost comical. So there is that weighing on us.

I am actually really close with my mom and have almost like a friend relationship with her at times. I always casually assumed when I thought about having kids that there would be at least 1 girl in there somewhere. Now I am getting into my late 30's (I'm 36) and realizing it might not ever happen and I might not have that dynamic with a daughter like I have with my mom and I feel incredibly bummed about missing out on that relationship. Of course I have a special relationship with my boys too but it will continue to evolve and change as everyone gets older. I see my husband having buddies to do "guy stuff" with for the rest of his life, and I want that buddy to do and talk about "girl stuff" with too...


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Don't know what your particular circumstances are, but 36 is not too late is it? I'm the third kid in our family and my Mom had me at precisely that age

Something else that I noticed and you'll maybe agree - it's the difference between gender desire and disappointment, already undelined by the forum moderators - some people seem to have a particular yearning for a certain gender while others are worried about having a gender for specific reasons (e.g. difficulties they went through at an early age) so they want the other one 'by default' - so it is slightly different I think.. you can see it in the reasons listed on this thread.

[atomic sagebrush]

Gender disappointment for me comes from feeling like everyone else gets what they want, why is it so hard for me? I always wanted both a boy and girl, but know that if I had gotten three girls instead, I would have been ok. Not having a girl though has been so hard for me. I feel like less of a woman having two boys as though that makes me more masculine or something. I love all things girly, so buying boy clothes and toys, while looking longingly at all the pretty girl dresses and dolls makes me sad. I have so many dreams of things I would love to do with a daughter, whereas for a son there was no specific dreams in mind, just thought it would be fun to have a boy. If I don't have a girl, I'll have to watch everyone else do the things I dreamed about doing, and feeling like I'm missing out on so much. There's some people I just feel have a "charmed life". They get everything they want without trying or even caring. When they get pregnant, they would be happy either way, but I just know they'll get the perfect girl/boy combo. So it's the feeling of why can't everything in my life be that easy? I try to step back and remind myself that I'm very lucky to even be able to have children, and I still have a chance of being able to have a girl


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This plays a huge part for me as well (the feeling like everyone else gets at least some of what they want fairly easily and I have had to fight tooth and nail for it). I wish it didn't, but it still messes with my head sometimes. Literally everyone I know IRL just has a boy and a girl. They have happy families with loving parents and money (not only are they making good money, but their parents will just buy or give them houses and cars and trips to Vegas and shit) and perfect houses and fantastic clothes and go on all these vacations and all look like they are having way more fun than me and they are like 27 years old and I just think how can I be approaching 50 years old and my life sucks THIS much? It's so unfair.

Granted, I've had kind of a bad week this week so please excuse my rant but I"m really feeling pretty shitty about it right now.

Sometimes it felt like my parents were on a mission to make me completely insane, moving every year and expecting me to be perfect at everything all the time and that they didn't care about me at all for anything other than what I could do for them. My husband is not kind or supportive and sometimes seems almost to take delight in my unhappiness.
Total strangers online are pretty much always nicer to me than my so called loved ones. We're poor because my husband lost his job for no other reason than just sheer dumb luck - not because he did anything wrong, he was a hard worker, everybody liked him, it was just his shift that happened to get cut, of course. I was born ugly and had to have facial reconstructive surgery and painful braces for 4+ years to look normal and that was after years of vicious and constant teasing. I have these weird mysterious health issues that no doctor can ever figure out. I have allergies and migraines and a heart problem that make me miserable. I did finally get a daughter but it was after 4 boys for 20+ years and only after I had to do all this work and research to get her and I'll be dead or elderly before she's even grown up. I could go on for like 4 hours writing all this stuff down (like I said, having a pretty bad couple of weeks)

I know logically and rationally there are people who have things way worse than me, and I count my blessings all the time, don't get me wrong but MAN sometimes it just really, really sticks in my craw watching these people who have never had 1/110th of the life challenges that I have met, kicked the butt of, and overcome, just get handed whatever they want. Rant over

[coralsky]

Aw atomic, I want to send you the biggest virtual hug... you're right, life can be so shitty and unfair sometimes, and I'm so sorry you're dealing with all this..
It is tough seeing others having seemingly 'perfect' lives I totally agree. But I am willing to bet that those people do not have 1/100th of your compassion, determination, strength, or beauty- both inside & out. (I've seen your family picture, you are ALL beautiful, and suzie is a vision of her mom! )
Not to mention that you have pretty much single-handedly and anonymously helped thousands of ladies all over the world achieve their dreams. How many other people can say that? That's pretty extraordinary. You are wonderful. An amazing mom, and a beautiful person, don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise. We all love you ❤️
Feel better soon xxxx