My Boys

I apologize for an unplanned hiatus. It hasn’t occurred for any particular reason, though I am coming to appreciate that being five (now six) months pregnant is generally the reason for everything I do (or don’t do).

The headaches have been less burdensome lately. The avoidance of them still occupies most of my existence. I have had to work fewer hours and more of them from home; I have to eat so often I am actually running out of things I desire to put in my mouth; I avoid committing to social events in advance because I am never sure when a migraine will strike me. But doing these things, and sleeping more, and practicing biofeedback, and taking caffeine supplements twice a day, definitely seems to be helping. A couple of weekends ago I had a migraine that lasted almost three days, and last night I woke up with one, but that’s now the exception, for which I am grateful.

I guess the biggest news lately is that we found out we are having a boy. It was the strangest sensation, finding this out at this point, especially since we chose to be surprised with Henry. I knew in my heart of hearts that I would need some time to adjust if it was not a girl, only because I do not plan to be pregnant again and I now know how wrenching and complicated an adoption would be. Without ever seriously reflecting on it, I apparently have spent my entire life assuming that I would one day have a daughter. I’m one of three girls (plus an older half-sister and half-brother); Matthew is the only boy with three younger sisters; it just seemed to go without saying that at least one of our children would be female. (We now know that it is possible some of our planning could have led to having two boys, but that’s not something I heard about until after we’d conceived this time). It was never that I didn’t want sons, it was just that I’d spent most of my life imagining raising a daughter.

But when the technician announced it was a boy (and trust me, we have the baby porn on the fridge to prove it), I didn’t feel disappointed that THIS baby is a boy. All of a sudden, I was absolutely in love with this little guy inside me, and couldn’t imagine him being anything other than what he is – an apparently healthy, very lively (he's kicking my bladder as I write this), baby boy. I can truly say that I am excited and happy about it. And although I have no regrets about not finding out Henry’s sex until delivery, I do find it easier to bond to this baby right now knowing what he is. I also think it is helping Henry grasp the reality of having a sibling, which was one of the reasons we thought finding out early would be a good idea.

Yet I still have to cope with the fact that I am, most likely, never going to be the mother of a girl. That is still such a foreign concept to me. I love the idea of having “my boys”, love the challenge that presents, especially since I go into it with fewer preconceived notions about what it will be like than I would have if I knew I was having a girl. Rather than feeling daunted by my own experiences growing up as a girl and anticipating going through those with a daughter, I feel I am entering uncharted waters and I am thrilled by all the possibilities that presents. If I had a daughter, I know I would have to grapple with all my built-in expectations – that she would love pink and dress like a princess and want to paint our nails together and become boy crazy in kindergarten (like I did) and never really stop, and fight me over all the ways an American girl can grow up too fast – first bra, getting her ears pierced, wearing a bikini, lacquering her face, first dates, being on the phone forever, wearing hot pants and miniskirts, all culminating in that inevitable day when she screams “I hate you, Mom!” Not that a son can’t scream the same thing, but there is something about a mother-daughter relationship that makes such fights downright poisonous. A daughter knows how to wound a mother in ways I find myself doubting a son could. But then, that’s my point – I am sure my sons will find ways to cause me pain when they are teenagers, but since I can’t right now conceive of exactly how, I don’t plan to spend the next ten years worrying about it.

This is all another reason why I would be hesitant to adopt a daughter. As much as I have taken advantage of modern medicine’s abilities to help me conceive, I always had a limit to how far I would go, and I think the reason is a mix of fear of asking the universe for too much, and also a sense that I wanted children to somehow appear in our lives, rather than be orchestrated. Adoption appealed to me if it was the only way to provide Henry with a sibling, and since it did offer a choice, I was prepared to take it and add a girl to our family. But I think deciding to do it primarily to satisfy my own desire for a daughter would be burdening a child with too much expectation. I find myself every day thinking of things I won’t do now – be a girl scout troop mother, have someone to go shopping for bathing suits with, someone to introduce to Steel Magnolias and Pretty Woman and The Little Mermaid and Anne of Green Gables and Little Women and all the girly movies and books that shaped my girlhood…the list goes on and on. And none of it would ever be guaranteed to happen, even if I did have a daughter. It wouldn’t be fair to expect a child to meet my vision of one half of a mother-daughter relationship. (And I have no idea what personality this next son will have, which also kind of supports my point that all these expectations are something I need to confront and then let fade into the new reality that will actually unfold).

Anyway…perhaps a bit too much introspection for one day. All of this is playing in the background of my mind, but in the foreground is my continued joy in Henry, my excitement about meeting this new member of the family in a few months, and the renewed passion I feel for my relationship with Matthew and this next adventure we are going on together. He and I spent the past weekend at a hotel outside the French Quarter, trying to reschedule that vacation that got scuttled by Gustav. And it was wonderful – after all these years, we never run out of things to talk about or ways to interest each other. We both are finding it exciting to think that, after years of thinking we would have three kids, we are now about to open the door to the last child and that means that eighteen years from the first week in February, the door will begin closing again, leaving us alone together. Well, alone if you don’t count the collection of motorcycles I predict he will begin acquiring right after the last kid ships off to college.