What’s Burning Wednesday: Trying for a Girl?
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I remember waiting at a bus stop with Ezra, heavily pregnant with my second, when the lady standing beside me asked if I knew what I was having. 'Another boy,' I replied, smiling. 'Oh shame,' she said. I'd barely had a chance to register before she put her hand over her mouth. 'I'm so sorry, I don't know why I said that.' She was flushing. 'I've got two boys myself. I guess it's just people always expect you to want one of each.' Expectation is a strange and complicated emotion. I remember my certainty that I was carrying a boy in my first pregnancy. I felt it in my gut (must have been Ezra's soccer kicks) and when the scan confirmed it, I was filled with joy. Although I would have been equally delighted with a girl. The most important thing was that my baby was healthy. I was slightly more ambivalent the second time around. I wanted Ezra to have a little brother to rough and tumble with. But I also wanted a girl. I'm hardly a pink and flowers chick myself, but I did start fantasising about shopping in the pretty section. I imagined chick flicks and gossipy lunches when she was older - all that vaguely meaningful but essentially superficial stuff. When the scan technician pointed us to the screen and asked if we could 'guess' what we were having, my husband and I both started laughing. There it was plain as day. Another boy. It was such a sweet, funny and thrilling moment. After an anxious early pregnancy following a recent miscarriage, we couldn't have been happier. Our boy was healthy and, most importantly, alive.
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