Oh Boy...

We as a family recently celebrated the birth of yet another baby in our family. Another baby girl. And all of this, of course, brings up memories of not too long ago in my life (she turned 6mo yesterday! holy cow!). And after much pondering I came to the conclusion that I am capable of many things in this life of mine, but I do not however possess the ability to birth a boy.
I am the oldest of three girls, who's mother is the oldest of three girls, whose mother is one of six girls. I have ONE male cousin and I'm still not convinced that he looks enough like his parents.
This being my family's history, when pregnant with a child that I was not going to find the gender of, I prayed it would not be our curse.
I will, someday, freely admit to Mara that I was not prepared for her. I should have been. When your child puts on half hour shows for your coworkers in utero and didn't seem to sleep much on the inside, one should take notice and hopefully not be so surprised when their newborn is doing a Wiggles rendition at 3am, but alas, I was not prepared for her.
So what have i gained from this experience - that I will find out the gender on my next child moments after conception, and try my hardest not to fantasize that child into anything other than what the Good Lord has made it. (for further readings on the issue, see the posting a few months back where I speak of screwing up the first one...)
At first I didnt quite understand why she was such a shock to me. I mean I took the classes, read EVERYTHING I could get my swollen hands on, and we even had what I would call a "wonderful" birth. And then it hit me. I was not prepared for HER. along with admitting that I was not ready for her, I will have to let her know it was largely because the whole time she was in my body, I thought she was a boy.
This too was something I didnt understand about myself for the first few months after adjusting to (no sleep, leaking from every orifice... I mean) having a baby. Why did I want her to be him? Was it because i wanted to prove the "curse" wrong -sure. (I remember telling my Grandmother, one of the many people completely irritated by us not "find out" that she didnt want to know what our baby was, she just wanted to know it was a girl). But overall, what I told people was that I wanted a boy first because I like the dynamic. M is the oldest and I think that had a large impact on his sisters. I would have killed to have an older brother. Some one to protect me, some one to be the oldest so I didnt always have to, some one to have friends for me to date as a teenager, you know, the important stuff ;) That is why I wanted a son first. I wanted him FOR HER. I wanted to have a boy, not even so much to have a boy, but for my (Lord willing) other children to have an older brother.
But clearly God didn't think that Mara needed an older brother. She will be fine. Because, really, I turned out pretty BA.. so you know :)
SO to bring the story full circle, our sister thought she was having a boy the whole time she had her daughter in her belly, and I've yet to ask her how she felt about being wrong (snicker snicker) but I can say that I did have my own voice echoing in my head when thinking of the lil goober that would make me an aunt - I didnt care what the baby was, I just wanted it to be a girl.
that being said, I only have one thing left to say-
mothers of sons-


eat your heart out

much love
~mother of Mara