With baby B's impending 1st birthday - just one more week! - I've been doing a lot of reflection on my pregnancy, birth, and first year with him. In general, I've just been thinking a lot about my beautiful little brown-eyed, blonder-by-the-day-haired boy.
One thing in particular is I’m realizing how incredibly silly my fear of having a boy was.
Don’t get me wrong. I never had gender preference. To be honest, that is something I don’t understand. J and I wanted healthy babies with each of my pregnancies, the gender never mattered. If we’d had two girls or two boys, we’d have been totally fine. We wouldn’t have been sad, or let down, and we wouldn’t keep on going in hopes of a different gender.
But still, having a boy terrified me. To the core.
Girls I know. I “get” girls. Plus, I know myself. I know how strong, intelligent, resilient, and confident that I am. And although Miss H is the spitting image of her papa, she is me through and through.
Boys…are completely foreign to me. Aside from my bothers and my dads (yes, two!), I don’t know anything about boys. And quite frankly, although I love my brothers and my dads dearly, they’re not exactly the kind of men I want my son to be like. J is the first man I’d ever met that I could say, “Wow, this is what a real man is supposed to be like.” Now don’t get me wrong, J wasn’t always Prince Charming. He has a history (like us all). He wasn’t always this amazing. He’s been very forthcoming about his past. But the man he is now is the exact kind of man I want my son to be.
But how do you raise a boy to be like that? I mean, J wasn’t raised to be how he is. It took a long time (there’s a reason he didn’t get married until he was 39!). How do you get that awesome result from the beginning?
And I was terrified I would treat my boy differently. That maybe I’d love him differently.
I come from a family where the boys and girls were treated ridiculously differently. I greatly feared I’d do that with my children. And not in the “All children are different and thus you must do some things differently depending on their personalities” way. But in the “Well, you’re a boy and you’re a girl, so…” way.
I remember holding him when he was barely 24 hours old and just sobbing. Of course, looking back I know the PPD played a huge role in this all too. I said to J then, “What do I do when H has a ballet recital and B has a soccer match on the same day at the same time? If I go to H’s recital am I doing it because I’m punishing B for all the preferential treatment my brothers got? If I go to B’s match am I doing it because I know H is like me and she’s tough, and she’ll live even if I’m not there?”
Of course, J was calm and amazing and said, “Whoa, there, Ki. You’re getting ahead of yourself and over thinking this. You could be in the same situation with two girls or two boys. And if it ever occurs, we will make the best decision based on our children. But let’s worry about that when we get there.”
But I couldn’t shake it. For days, maybe even weeks and months, I’m not sure, I wondered if I’d love baby B the right way. If maybe I loved him too little or too much. If maybe I coddled him too much or not enough. If maybe I expected less out of him than I did H simply because of his gender.
The beginning was hard. Painful, even. And all because my baby had a penis. It seemed so wrong.
I don’t know when things changed exactly. When I stopped thinking such crazy things. Probably about the time I was healing from the PPD.
Now I look at that amazing, brilliant baby boy of mine and I can’t believe I had so many fears just because of his gender. I can’t believe I questioned the kind of mother I would be to him. That I questioned if my love would be “right.”
I treat him no different than my girl-child. I certainly love him no differently. He’s a wonderful little ham that keeps me on my toes just as much as his sister. He’s got his daddy’s laid back personality, and that dare-devil streak that both our kids were bound to inherit since neither J or I have any fear. (If you ask Miss H what she’s afraid of she says “Nothing!”).
Baby B is perfect. He completes our family. He completes my heart.
It seems so silly now to have every worried. Even for a millisecond.
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