A Leap of Faith
Three years ago today I found myself sitting in a darkened exam room, clutching an ultrasound image, crying. Crying so hard the ultrasound technician excused herself to "give me a moment." These weren't tears of happiness or relief, but of a disappointment I was unable to contain: I had just been told that I was having a boy.
What kind of horrible mother are you? you're probably thinking. I wondered that too. For three-and-a-half years I had struggled to have a child, and out of that struggle came a miracle. Yet here I was feeling like what I had graciously been given wasn't enough. I didn't just want a baby. I wished for a daughter.
I had some reasons for feeling this way, flimsy though they seem now. First, I don't know (or care) much about things little boys are typically interested in -- dinosaurs and dump trucks and sports, bodily emissions and pratfalls and comic books. What would my son and I bond over? How would I ever connect with him?
Second, I already have two men in my family -- my brother and my father -- and I don't really like either of them. What if my son and I clashed constantly, or worse, our relationship landed somewhere between disinterested and dysfunctional?
Lastly, it was important to me to have a namesake for my mother. Physically I was incapable of passing on my mother's genes. Any child I raised would not inherit her long eyelashes or unbreakable fingernails or blood type. But I could pass on her name, and in doing so keep her memory alive for both myself and future generations. Someday my little girl could ask me how I picked her name, and I could tell her all about the grandmother who died before she was born. If I never had a daughter, how would I enable my mother's spirit to live on? How would I create the mother-daughter relationship I never had, and longed for so desperately, without a daughter?
None of those fears came to pass, of course. I gave birth to a handsome baby boy, and in his two-and-a-half years we've bonded over the shared love of dogs and books and carbs. I connect with him because I am his mother, and I know him better than anyone else does. I love him fiercely even on the days I don't like him much. And we still named him after family: his father, and his father's father.
When my husband and I began discussing having a second child, I was reminded that long before infertility and the stress of parenthood I had pictured myself with two children. Enough to make a nice rounded family, but not so many that my husband and I were outnumbered. One of each. A boy and a girl.
The struggle to get pregnant and stay pregnant with a second child propelled me, finally, past the point of demanding that this childbearing thing happen according to my grand plan. So when the time came for an anatomy scan of baby No. 2, I hoped for a girl but accepted that I'd be happy with whatever we got because we were lucky to have any children at all. When the ultrasound technician said, "It's a girl," I found myself crying again -- this time overflowing with happiness and gratefulness. Despite all the difficulties we had faced, in the end we were going to have the balanced family we had always envisioned.
Because I am me, and my anxieties are never far from reach, it wasn't long before worry set in. In wishing for a girl I had only thought about my needs and desires. But what about the son I already have? Maybe I've been hoping for the wrong thing. What is best for him? Would he be closer to his sibling if it were a brother instead of a sister? Is he destined to have the same empty relationship with his sibling that I have with mine?
More than that, how in the world am I going to raise a daughter? For years I've ached to have the mother-daughter experiences I missed growing up due to mental and physical illness, poverty, and other heartbreaking circumstances. But now that I am facing my daughter's much-anticipated arrival in a few short weeks, I find myself without any frame of reference or positive role models of how, exactly, to be a good mother to a little girl. What do I say, what do I do, so that my daughter doesn't suffer the same scars that I have? How do I become the mother that I needed but never had?
"Sometimes your only available transportation is a leap of faith."
What kind of horrible mother are you? you're probably thinking. I wondered that too. For three-and-a-half years I had struggled to have a child, and out of that struggle came a miracle. Yet here I was feeling like what I had graciously been given wasn't enough. I didn't just want a baby. I wished for a daughter.
I had some reasons for feeling this way, flimsy though they seem now. First, I don't know (or care) much about things little boys are typically interested in -- dinosaurs and dump trucks and sports, bodily emissions and pratfalls and comic books. What would my son and I bond over? How would I ever connect with him?
Second, I already have two men in my family -- my brother and my father -- and I don't really like either of them. What if my son and I clashed constantly, or worse, our relationship landed somewhere between disinterested and dysfunctional?
Lastly, it was important to me to have a namesake for my mother. Physically I was incapable of passing on my mother's genes. Any child I raised would not inherit her long eyelashes or unbreakable fingernails or blood type. But I could pass on her name, and in doing so keep her memory alive for both myself and future generations. Someday my little girl could ask me how I picked her name, and I could tell her all about the grandmother who died before she was born. If I never had a daughter, how would I enable my mother's spirit to live on? How would I create the mother-daughter relationship I never had, and longed for so desperately, without a daughter?
None of those fears came to pass, of course. I gave birth to a handsome baby boy, and in his two-and-a-half years we've bonded over the shared love of dogs and books and carbs. I connect with him because I am his mother, and I know him better than anyone else does. I love him fiercely even on the days I don't like him much. And we still named him after family: his father, and his father's father.
When my husband and I began discussing having a second child, I was reminded that long before infertility and the stress of parenthood I had pictured myself with two children. Enough to make a nice rounded family, but not so many that my husband and I were outnumbered. One of each. A boy and a girl.
The struggle to get pregnant and stay pregnant with a second child propelled me, finally, past the point of demanding that this childbearing thing happen according to my grand plan. So when the time came for an anatomy scan of baby No. 2, I hoped for a girl but accepted that I'd be happy with whatever we got because we were lucky to have any children at all. When the ultrasound technician said, "It's a girl," I found myself crying again -- this time overflowing with happiness and gratefulness. Despite all the difficulties we had faced, in the end we were going to have the balanced family we had always envisioned.
Because I am me, and my anxieties are never far from reach, it wasn't long before worry set in. In wishing for a girl I had only thought about my needs and desires. But what about the son I already have? Maybe I've been hoping for the wrong thing. What is best for him? Would he be closer to his sibling if it were a brother instead of a sister? Is he destined to have the same empty relationship with his sibling that I have with mine?
More than that, how in the world am I going to raise a daughter? For years I've ached to have the mother-daughter experiences I missed growing up due to mental and physical illness, poverty, and other heartbreaking circumstances. But now that I am facing my daughter's much-anticipated arrival in a few short weeks, I find myself without any frame of reference or positive role models of how, exactly, to be a good mother to a little girl. What do I say, what do I do, so that my daughter doesn't suffer the same scars that I have? How do I become the mother that I needed but never had?
"Sometimes your only available transportation is a leap of faith."
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