Please help me grieve my gender disappointment

I know there is a whole gender disappointment private support group, but I just really need to 'talk' this out now- I'm ready to burst into tears- instead of waiting to join! :redface: I'm sorry if this is the wrong place, mods, please advise.

I found out we were having a boy at our 20 week scan because I knew I had my heart set on a girl, and I wanted the time to adjust if it turned out we were not having a girl. And I did adjust, really well, and now I absolutely adore my boy and am so glad I have the experience of having a boy. And I know how lucky I am just to have a healthy, happy child.

But yesterday, my heart just kind of developed this great big crack and I started weeping stupidly all over the place and I can't seem to stop. It was, of all things, over a truck. Peter came home from my mum's with a new truck, a big yellow thing with a scoop and enormous tires that makes a great big noise when he pushes it over the floorboards. He loves it. Loves, loves, loves, loves it. He also had a book about tractors. He had to have it with him in the bath, and take it to bed with him. What I am getting at here is, he is a real boy. Loves machines, noise....all those boy things. And the more he grows up into being more and more boy-ish, I feel like the more he is drifting away from me.

Now I know he loves me hugely, and he will be my little man for a while longer yet. But slowly, inevitably, he is moving more towards his daddy, and more into a world I can't fully be a part of. And that is how it should be, I wouldn't stop him being a boy for all the world. I don't want to hold on to him, to emasculate him in any way at all.

But I grieve for the little girl I wanted. The one who could play dress ups and dollies and like pretty things. The one who I could go shopping with and have lunch with and teach how to be a woman.

It doesn't help that my two oldest friends have girls. I am so afraid of growing older and watching them do girly stuff with their daughters and feeling so, so, so left out. I know I can have a great relationship with my son, but I can't have the kind I would love with a daughter (the kind I have with my mother). I know there is no guarantees of that relationship even if you do have a daughter, but at least there is the possibility.

There is no biological reason we couldn't have another child, but there are a lot of financial, emotional and practical reasons why we don't want to. But this grief for a daughter is almost enough to take the risk- and yet I know it is not a good enough reason in itself to have another baby. So I really want to try to deal with this grief, but I just don't know how.

I guess I fear being alone. My DH always talks about all the things he and Peter can do when he grows up, and they are such boy things. And I feel like all my friends will be off doing girl things with their daughters. And I will be....alone.

Sorry for the ramble, and thanks if you have read this far. It feels good to reach out on this issue.

will pm you - but send you prayers now..

:hug: I felt exactly the same way when I found out DD2 was a girl. I needed to find out at the scan coz I needed time to prepare myself for another girl.
I prayed right up til the minute she was born that she'd be a boy :(
I can't help you with your grieving. Just give you more :hug: & tell you its ok to be upset. & just understand.
:hug:

I just wanted to send you big :hug:
I'm the opposite, I always wanted all boys. I never imagined myself with girls, it just wasn't in my life plan. And now I have 2 of them.
I wish I could give you some wise advice or words of wisdom, but I can't.

Hugs hun I hear you!!

I thought all thru preg 1 that he was a boy and I was right, 2nd preg I was hoping against hope it was a girl but felt deep down we had another boy which we did.

I have had tears for the what ifs, tears looking at pics of friends DD's, tears looking in catalogues, tears reading BB BA, But you know in then end I always come back to fact I love my boys they are happy and healthy and alive.

I am here to talk to when ever you need.

xoxo

Hello, I really want a boy and a girl and I am sure I will be disappointed if I don't end up with at least one of each. I do not have a great relationship with my mum so it took me right up until my 2nd mc last year to 'really' want a girl desperately. You wont be left out though when your DS grows up, he will have girlfriends and than a wife who will just LOVE to have a MIL to go shopping with and have lunch with etc... Lets face it having a nice MIL is pretty fantastic rather than the traditional pain in the neck type of MIL. And who knows you may even find it's a wonderful bond you will create as that kind of in-law exceptance is really important. I know it's a long way away but look forward to good times like maybe a grand daughter to spoil rotten, rather than the things you wont have. :hug:

Boys never not want their Mum. I have 5 brothers with families of their own and my Mum is still an important part of their lives.
Don't forget that it will be you who takes him to kinder, primary & secondary school, Uni or driving him to work before he gets his license and it will be you he calls when he wants to talk things over.
Teach him from a young age what fun it is to go out for milkshake/coffee together and that can be something that continues for many years.
I love seeing guys out for coffee with just their Mums or Dads with daughters. Maybe I am just a softie :)

:hug:

I could have written that myself !
I have 3 boys and i have noticed in the last 18 months how much more they do with DH. They used to be mummies boys. I miss them !

The day it hit me really badly was when DH took DS#1 and DS#2 to the supercross motorbikes and DS#3 and I stayed home. I cried like a baby after they left. It suddenly occured to me that i will never have that. I wont be able to do girly things with a daughter yet DH has 3 boys to do guy stuff with. It hurts so bad !

Does'nt help that my close friend has just had a daughter after 2 boys....

All i have ever wanted is a daughter !

Dont get me wrong - i love my boys with all my heart but i cant stop thinking about the daughter i really want.
I am really struggling with this at the moment too - me thinks i should join the gender disappointment group too !

:hug: you are definitely not alone in this one !

xoxo

I have five girls and one boy, the last one. Through at least a couple of pregnancies with the girls, I thought that I was having a boy, and yes, I was disappointed. I wanted the chance to raise a man! I wanted to know what it was like to have a son. I really wanted that experience. So I think I kind of understand, although I'm sure it is different again for you.

I think as a society we tend to believe in the old saw, "A son you have til he gets him a wife, a daughter you have for the rest of your life," but I'm not sure that's true. I have a friend whose boys are so anti that stereotype it isn't funny, and I have no doubt they will be cuddly and close with her until the day she shuffles off this earth!

I've also seen so much variation in my girls that I cant' expect anything of my relationship with them. I've got one who is totally slugs and snails and puppy dogs' tails, another who is All About Daddy... it may be that even if you'd had a girl, it might have been nothing that you expected!

...and yet I can see that as they hit puberty, they identify more with me and I can see that dh feels hurt and left out, and so I have a glimpse of what you are feeling.

Are there other young girls in your life whose lives you can be a part of? Can you be an "auntie" to someone else's little girl, just to explore that older female/younger female role?

I'm sorry you are feeling so sad... I guess it's an important thing to work through. Don't be ashamed of your feelings - it isn't like you want to send your boys back!

Thank you all so, so much for your heartfelt, wonderful, supportive replies. I really am touched by how many of you identify with what I am feeling. I am sorry to all those others experiencing disappointment too.

I used to think that I could get over my disappointment by reminding myself all the great things about having a boy- and there are many, many things. In fact, I am surprised by how much I actually love having a boy. But I think only recently have I understood that while this approach is great, it doesn't actually deal with the disappointment, and I think that is why it has arisen again.

Thank you for all the hugs.

oh sweetheart :hug: gender disapointment comes in so many different shades and colours.

I totally get the closeness you yearn with a daughter...I yearn that relationship with my mother so much :(, even though we speak everyday its that intimate mother/daughter closeness that words just cant discribe that is missing. Its something that no amount of 'boys' you have will ever ever fullfill if you have it.

BUT in saying this....my little girl is extremely close to her daddy.....I dont exist when he is around but my boys area attatched to me like bad farts after anight on the beer ;). Its not the boy/girl defenition, its the one on one with the same sex...as you said helping your daughter grown into motherhood...only a mother can really comprehend that with her daughter.

:hug: hon....you never know how many 'pink' cloudes are on the horizon

No advice to give, but you need one of these

:hug:

Sometimes I think it is easy to imagine what it might be like to have what you don't..or aleast the possibility..I have 3 girls soon to be 4 and 1 boy , my man is a man..but he loves his mummy, the girls are all about daddy??? My oldest is 17 and she has given me a run for my money, I sometimes wonder if it will all work out and we will be close??
My DH comes from a family of boys and they all would have done anything for there mum, she has since passed, but on my DH insistence we visited every fortnight overnight, I did'nt mind, I was actually very proud that he treated his mum in that way.
Before you embark on another baby it might help to get some professional help...and work through how you are feeling...its certainly not wrong...but you also don't want your disappointemnt to grow out of control.
Good luck.