Originally Posted by
begonia
Hey Bec! I haven't been on in ages but DH is out of town and I'm bored tonight so thought I'd check in on old friends :) I didn't even realize you were pregnant now, congratulations!! I am so thrilled you have one on the way!
Three girls was MUCH harder for me to wrap my head around than it was for DH. He wanted a boy. But he had accepted after DD1 that maybe that wouldn't happen for him, while I obviously (and, admittedly ... still...) didn't accept that as my path. I wanted all boys, whereas DH wanted one of each. So, the news that we would DD3 didn't get him all excited, but it didn't send him into total tailspin the way it did me. He struggled with the "never having a son" concept but he chose, much earlier than me, to celebrate the "I'm having a third healthy child!" concept.
So, admittedly, our DH's seem to be coming at this from a different place. My DH felt like he needed to do something, you know? Men, they want to fix things, not just let them ride out. He reached out and set up lunch with a friend (not even some of our closest friends) who has 3 daughters, just the two of them, to talk about how he's adapted to not having a DS. The other dad had experienced serious GD, gone to counseling, and was at a point of real comfort with his family makeup. His girls are 9, 6, and 3 now. Do y'all know any other 3 girl families? Maybe spending time with them - maybe even a Dad only meeting - could help him grasp that he's not the only man who never had a son.
That leads me to the other thing that my DH started to notice. Whether it was dad's of 1 girl, 2 girls or 3 girls or 4 girls ... there are LOADS of other men who don't have sons. Some very manly ones, LOL! Matt Damon has 3 bio and 1 adopted daughter, no boys, and he could easily win an arm wrestling match against many dad's with sons :) Plenty of successful men have only daughters, and if he starts looking he'll see that. I think for many of us with GD we are letting our children, and in this case their gender, define (or contribute to defining) who we are as men/women. As though being a dad of girls is somehow "less than" being a dad of sons. In America, everywhere you see ads it's the "perfect" family of mom, dad, son, daughter. So it's easy to see where those of us whose families don't match the "perfect" mold feel like we are different in an undesirable way. Once he sees that it isn't so very different he might feel better. I think the easiest way to see that is to look for those other families who don't have sons.
Anyhow, my DH didn't buy into swaying, at least not anything approaching an 80/20 business, so like I said ... he wasn't nearly as fussed as I was. And for me it wasn't even the sway that set me up, it was just my unshakeable belief that I was going to have a son. I felt it my whole life, how could it be wrong? :rofl: I went through a "blame" thing where I blamed myself, somehow I didn't do something right, blah blah blah. I still sometimes dabble in the what ifs, which isn't healthy or helpful, and it's part of the reason I don't come here anymore. But the fact is even if our sways rocked, even if we got those odds to 90/10, one of the 10%'ers got the egg. And FWIW I adore my lil' 10%er :bigsmile: I'll probably have gender desire my whole life, heck I've had it for 34 years already since I wanted DS not DDs, but that's OK. If it's the worst life gives me I'm a lucky, lucky woman.
I don't know if any of that will help as GD is such a personal experience ... but I sincerely hope you and DH get to a place of peace on this soon. Congrats again on being pregnant :hug2:
