This story could begin in so many places.
It could begin in 2000 at Interlochen Arts Camp when the dozen adolescent girls who were under my care pooled their meager resources together for Counselor Appreciation Day, offering me a card and a beautiful bouquet of flowers to \”Mother Katie.\” I was gratified and humbled by the touching words they\’d each written in the card, thanking me for being their temporary mum while away from the guidance of their own.
It could begin in January when an inaccurate ovulation test led to pregnancy #3 a month ahead of our plans, well before I could try any of the unscientific methods than can theoretically increase the odds of having a girl. I went to Washington D.C. for the Women\’s March carrying this tiny secret with me, hoping that the unexpected timing meant that I was growing feminine energy within me – a girl who was beginning her life in a most powerful way.
It could begin when, upon learning about my pregnancy, someone said flippantly, \”It\’ll probably be a boy. It seems to take three boys before anyone has a girl.\”
It could begin on April 24th when the ultrasound technician announced to Dan and me, \”Looks like you\’re adding your third boy to the family.\” Part of me couldn\’t believe it; part of me was entirely unsurprised. All of me began to feel a ripple of grief that erupted into a flood of tears as I stood alone in the restroom minutes later. Dan met me in the waiting area, took one look at me, and enclosed me in arms of empathy. I stood there, tears running down my face, feeling absolutely devastated, both by the news and by my reaction. I had just seen my beautiful, healthy little boy\’s image on the screen and heard his heart beating. I was acutely aware of how fortunate I was and how ungrateful I was being. I have friends who\’ve lost babies in pregnancy or birth. I have friends who\’ve almost lost their own lives during childbirth. I have friends who are struggling to conceive even one baby. And yet…
I so greatly wanted the experience of raising a daughter. I wanted to put to use my own experiences of being a woman to mentor my own little girl through the ups and downs of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. I craved the mother-daughter relationship. I wanted to add a strong woman to this world. I wanted to give my boys the sister they desired, to give Dan a daughter, to give the grandparents their first granddaughter.
Someone said to me, \”You won\’t have to worry about buying more clothes or dealing with hair!\” But I wanted those things. I wanted the possibility of wedding dress shopping and guiding a daughter through her own pregnancy, fully realizing that my hypothetical future daughter may have wanted neither of those things. But the possibility was there.
I know a few people who have no daughters, but at the moment my brain discounts them. Instead, I keep seeing families, familiar or unfamiliar, who have a son and a daughter, or two daughters and a son, or two sons and a daughter.
Dan and I had found a name for our future daughter before we were even married. The name relates to our first days together, bringing our family full circle in my mind. Perhaps this certainty of a name makes the reality even harder because in the days following the ultrasound, I felt like I was grieving a real person instead of the dream of one. The first week was hard. I cried on the drive back to work from the ultrasound, purposely avoiding everyone and grateful that I had no more student groups that day. I cried in my office every day that week, grateful to be able to hide away between literacy groups. I covered my tears with sunglasses after picking up the boys, but my intuitive oldest knew.
\”Grown ups cry sometimes, don\’t they, Mama?\” he asked. I was at a crossroads. I could be offhand or honest. I chose honest. I admitted that I\’d been crying because I wanted to give him a sister.
He replied, \”Don\’t worry, Mama. I\’m going to ask my secret magic fairy friends to give us a little girl.\” My sweet, sweet boy. I\’m raising a good one there, and yet I still awoke in the early hours that night and the next, unable to get back to sleep as sadness and guilt churned inside me.
I took a deep breath and confided in some friends. I was afraid that others would think me selfish, but quite the opposite happened. These friends understood. These amazing women who themselves have all experienced the much greater grief of miscarriage, stillbirth, or infertility gave me their full support. They told me it was necessary to grieve. They helped me find the positives in being a Boy Mum. One individual in particular had just completed a second unsuccessful round of IVF. I had no intention of showing her any negative emotion, but she happened to be a part of a conversation in which someone else asked me if I knew the sex of Baby. Later, she asked how I felt about it, and my voice cracked in response. I felt awful to be showing my sadness in front of a woman whose grief is so much greater, and yet her grief made her one of the most understanding. \”I get it,\” she said. \”You had a dream of what your family would look like. Whatever the reason your family won\’t fit that dream, it\’s hard.\”
Gender disappointment is one of those parenting topics that doesn\’t get discussed openly. A midwife friend of mine has had no clients express gender disappointment to her, and yet she reassuringly said she\’s sure others experienced it. She encouraged me to write, both for myself and others. And so…
The tears mostly dried up after the first week, but they surface again every now and then. At prenatal yoga a few weeks ago, I was comfortably in pigeon pose when a classmate needed the instructor\’s help because she was uncomfortable. \”She\’s really pushing down,\” the woman commented, speaking of the baby inside her. Such an insignificant comment, and yet reclined in savasana minutes later, tears seeped onto my eyelashes. I quickly wiped them away, bottling up the sadness, but then at the end of class, the instructor came over and said, \”Do you know the old show \’My Three Sons?\’ I was thinking about you during savasana…\” and the floodgates opened again. A few days later, I was driving to the first midwifery appointment following the ultrasound when I received the news via text that a good friend of mine had just given birth to her second, a little girl. On the radio at that moment played Coldplay and the Chainsmokers\’ \”Something Just Like This,\” and it seemed like a personal soundtrack. I wanted something just like that, a little girl to introduce to the world. The tears swam in my eyes, but they stayed there this time. I\’ll still have those moments. Like any sadness, the feelings of disappointment can rise at any time, triggered by the most seemingly insignificant comment or situation.
It\’s hard when I overhear colleagues discussing how grown men put less effort into supporting aging parents than grown women. It\’s hard when so many of my female students say with disappointment, \”Oh. I wish you were having a girl.\” It\’s hard when a relative says, \”I was afraid that would happen,\” upon hearing I\’m having another boy. It\’s hard when someone says, \”Are you going to keep trying for a girl?\” when Baby is still growing inside. It\’s hard when someone says, \”There\’s a greater plan,\” when my belief system doesn\’t adhere to that. But it\’s easy to love my boys, to love who they are, and to appreciate who they\’re helping me to become.
I have the privilege of raising three little boys into empathetic men. I can\’t imagine life without the two little boys who are with me Earthside, and I know I\’ll have just as much love for the little one who grows within me. I love him already, love his kicks, love the roundness he\’s given my belly, love the potential he has to grow into whoever he may be. I know I would have done an awesome job raising a little girl, but I know I do an equally awesome job raising little boys. One day, I may get to experience a different kind of mother-daughter relationship in the form of a daughter-in-law, a granddaughter, or another little girl who needs me. For now, sons are my reality, and I\’m so fortunate be their mum.
To Palimpsest 