Hey ladies. 👋🏻

My saga in trying to get ahold of my NIPT test results has been well documented in this group, so I won’t go through it again, other than to say that whilst I had been told my baby was perfectly healthy, I had to wait longer to know the gender.

After waiting 5w4d since my blood draw I’ve finally found out we’re having a girl, and whilst I’m very happy she’s healthy I can’t shake off some gender ‘disappointment’ (not really the right word, please read on...) which I feel has only been compounded by how long I had to wait.

I had an extremely traumatic childhood, and I was the eldest of three girls. They also had traumatic childhoods and, due to my being 8 years older than them, I became a surrogate parent to them and tried to shield them. I was acutely aware of the abuse happening around us and I often put myself directly in the path of that abuse so as to protect them. My mother also struggled with having three girls as she saw us, especially me being the eldest, as competition or as tools to manipulate my father with. So we were never close. Now, in my adulthood, both my parents are not in my life anymore and neither are my sisters, who could never understand why I struggled with depression (I’m recovered now), resented me when I was mentally unwell, and never quite believed the stories I told them about what it was like when they were younger. They were too young to remember everything I had done for them before I left home (I left earlier than was legal, aged 14, and social services never cottoned on because I went to school as usual and no-one ever reported it, but I found my own way). I obviously did a good job of shielding them, and we never bonded again once I started shattering their illusions of what it was really like growing up in that household (I waited ‘til they were adults to tell them, but after I left home my father became a millionaire and they were seduced by the money to rewrite history along with my parents, money I never accepted or asked for a penny of, and I learned, over time, that the whole family denied I ever existed as I would not let them forget the sins and stains that existed in their so-called perfect life). Eventually, we parted ways too.

So when I found out I was pregnant (ftm), I immediately gravitated to wanting a boy. It seemed like a way I could avoid confronting all this trauma, as I never saw any little boys getting abused (though of course I know it does happen 😔). Now, however, I know I cannot avoid pushing through this pain as I know a little baby girl is coming.

So my ‘gender disappointment’ is a lot more complicated, and really only down to this needing to confront whatever residual trauma I have left. It’s more like ‘gender angst’, not disappointment. I just hope she and I can learn to be allies and that I won’t be confronted with so much pain again. I’ve been told many times that babies have a way of showing you the things you have yet to resolve, showing up the cracks. How true that is.

I’ve been thinking of giving her one of my middle names to help bond me to her. I hope I never see her as a threat or as competition like my mother saw me. I really don’t want to disappoint her/myself, and I hope that the universe hasn’t sent me something I can’t handle.

I’d love to hear from other mothers who possibly went through something similar (doesn’t need to be so dramatic!) with their first child, and I hope everything turned out ok with them between mother and baby!

Love to all 🌸