Help - GD over my little boy, couldnÂ’t feel worse

[Lauralau09]

I have a 13 week old DS who is gorgeous, a great sleeper and is an easy going, happy happy. He is enormously adored by our entire family as the holy grail grandson out of 5 grandchildren (DH was one of 3 boys with no other girls in the family that werenÂ’t married in, ever!). I love him enormously and he makes me smile every day.

However, I grew up in an all girl household and am a very girlie person. Growing up, my mum would always say I would have little girls and my bolshy sister would have the boys (she is very upfront about the fact she would hate daughters) and was convinced my baby would be a girl - so on some level I feel like I have failed.
I always envisioned my future with daughters and not sons. Nothing about the idea of raising a boy excites me and sadly, I see my future with him as long and boring, something I feel awful about and am hoping IÂ’ll be very wrong.

I am enormously jealous of my BILÂ’s and their all girl children and find spending time with them hard. I want to be playing with dolls, plaiting hair and buying pretty clothes like they are. I had a list of 15 girls names to choose from and we struggled to even pick 1 boys name.
Everyone around me seems to be having girls, 5 people this month in fact! I feel like an outsider and enormously left out. I am often asked if I wish DS had been a girl, which hurts too.

As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I had a gut feeling it would be a boy which scared me. I hadnÂ’t imagined my baby being anything but a girl before d(sounds so stupid) and had struggled to conceive (pcos) so just wanted to get pregnant first and not worry Too much about being wrong about sex of the baby. But I just knew it was a boy and from then on was worried how IÂ’d bond with him etc but kept telling myself I could be wrong.
I sent pictures on nun theory pages, all of which said boy and then 16 week scan and all after confirmed it. I spent hours googling if they could be wrong. I was heartbroken and cried a lot in the coming months. I never told anyone except DH who desperately tried to talk me round in a kind and gentle way.

I love my DS but it does not take away from my intense longing for a daughter. I often wonder on the hard days if I would feel happier getting up in the night etc if he had been a girl. I do believe it would have completed me. I wish he had been the DD I dreamed of but will now have to try to change my attitude about it, eliminate my fears of boys and enjoy him. I am so scared he will pick up on how I feel.

Any advice on how to get through this GD before he gets to an age where he would notice? ItÂ’s the last thing I want for my sweet boy.

[atomic sagebrush]

You will get through it by the time he's old enough to notice, this I promise.

Right now you are experiencing a massive change - you've turned your life upside down and I PROMISE even if the baby had been a girl you would be struggling, exhausted, wondering what you've gotten yourself into and so on. You would feel in many ways exactly the same, just without the element of gender disappointment/desire you're experiencing. Being a new mom is hard as heck, it's pretty much the hardest thing you ever have to do and there's not a lot of reward in it especially at first.

Little babies, while darling and lovable, don't exactly have an excess of personality, LOL. You barely know this guy yet! Over the course of time you are going to be shocked and amazed at how much you have in common with him, you are just barely starting off on a journey that is going to take you places you can't even envision yet.

My oldest sons are 27 and 24, and they are truly my best friends, incredibly supportive and so fun to be around and talk to. I'm not a super sporty or boyish woman, either (neither are they though!! many men aren't stereotypical burp-fart guys) I was just always able to share pretty much everything with my boys. There were a few things that we couldn't bond over like periods and fingernail polish, LOL, but on the whole we've always been able to talk about and share everything (and not in a weird way, either.)

It's just hard to see that when everything is about Thomas the Tank Engine. But it will come, I promise.

Hang in there. It gets better.

[Lauralau09]

Atomic, your words have brought me much comfort and much needed perspective through my GD. I have remembered them in the darkest times and they have made me feel better and for this I thank you.

Fresh wave of GD today with the newest girl born, I am finding it exceptionally hard to be happy for them and feel totally horrible for it.
Dreaming of my girl