I bet you’re hoping for a girl this time.

Emma Hopcroft - 23 Nov 17

So the chances of being born are almost insurmountable. Out of the sheer enormity of  sperm that a man produces, one of these sperm successfully merges with one particular egg- and hey presto you made it into the universe! In fact if you google it, the hard stats include figures being thrown around such as a 1 in 4 trillion chance of being that embryo that hit the jackpot. Imagine if you will, a bird soaring high in the vast sky space above the Atlantic ocean. Now imagine a child at a birthday party in a small leafy village in the north east of England. The child releases a pretty little helium balloon. The wind catches that balloon at just the right speed, just the right moment and this feeble little balloon makes it all the way across the skies of England. It travels far west now and collides with our soaring bird. An existential meeting, the odds of which are about the same as your Father’s sperm and your Mother’s egg making the biological magic happen!

As a community nurse I am fascinated by the complexities of the human body. The sheer feat of engineering that are our circulatory, skeletal and muscular systems.  They all work in harmony,  like a fine tuned machine that not even a master craftsman could emulate. The eye- comprising of, retina, optic nerve, sclera, conjunctiva, iris, cornea, ciliary body, to name but a few (butt clenching moment when I hope my anatomy and physiology has stayed with me from University). This is just one little eye, built up of so many structures and working parts, working tirelessly to enable us the gift of sight. That split second that it takes to flick your eyelids open in the morning and let the world flood in. The way we process light, and dark, shapes, angles, distance, objects , both moving and stationary. All processed in a split second, without even thinking about it. I often think of the Human body as google world maps.  Starting as a vast image from above, a tangled and abstract image of colours. Browns, and greens, light and shade, undulating and vast landscapes, moving to crowded and hemmed in areas. With each click of the mouse (the technical kind) the map becomes clearer, areas more defined. The sheer details become apparent and overwhelming.  An arterial system of roads and river-ways, leading to bigger seas and oceans. Complicated buildings huddled together, the spaces and roads around them perfectly choreographed.

And fascinatingly enough, there’s still so much we don’t know! Take the kidney for example- one of my favourite writers Dr Gavin Francis tells us in his book,  ‘Adventures in Human Being’, that the true function and nature of the kidney was not discovered until the early twentieth century. Such are the complexities of our major organs; the brain, liver, lungs, and heart that medicine is ever evolving, and to work in such a field is to commit to life long learning. Humans have been on this planet for about 2 million years. Dinosaurs ruled the earth for about 170 million years. The world is a big place. There is still so much, we are yet to discover.

A lot can go wrong too. In my day job I’m faced with endless conditions and diseases, some treatable, some not. Some survivable, some not. From Diabetes, to cancer, heart disease, peripheral vascular disease, venous leg ulcers, arterial legs ulcers, asthma, breast cancer, urinary tract infections, kidney disease, diabetic neuropathy, epilepsy, dementia. Some helped through lifestyle, and some just the unfortunate luck of the draw. My job has given me a zest for life, an appreciation of all things anatomy and a gratitude to our amazing bodies.

You can imagine my disappointment then, when pregnant with my second child, and all I ever seemed to hear from the world at large was whether or not this time I would get a girl and be ‘lucky’ enough to have one of each!

Now I understand that most of the time, these comments are just commonplace pleasantries that come with an air of playfulness, and on the whole people are kind and always well intentioned. I just wonder where has this sentiment evolved from?

I also get that it is part of all our human nature to just want a little ‘mini me’- perhaps a reflection of society as we are today, or perhaps that comes from something more primal. Maybe it is connected to some evolutionary trait related to survival of our species- I’ll let you decide the reasons for yourself. I also realise that whilst taboo, gender disappointment is a whole other issue entirely- and would always want to be mindful of the feelings of everyone. Life, and especially our souls are not black and white, I know.

But for me as a mother, having gone through miscarriage, and then almost 2 years of trying to conceive, I was just thrilled that we were able to give our first born son Sebastian, a sibling he so desperately craved for. Having seen friends go through untold misery in relation to their children and issues with conceiving, as a community nurse seeing  the end of life happen almost on a weekly basis, I was just absolutely thrilled to have seen those two lines on the test.

Then, when my second son Ralph was around 15 months old- I was so very thrilled to have discovered another 2 pink lines . But of course those comments came flooding out of people, that verbal diarrhoea, that no matter how hard they tried they couldn’t control. More than an impulse. It was an automatic reflex!

“Oh are you trying for a girl this time?”

“No, just trying for a baby” I’d reply, with a wry smile, trying my best to sound breezy and not at all impolite.

Nine months later at 5.45am Heidi was born at home, into the arms of all who love her- but the world’s verbal diarrhoea relapsed and was worse than ever,

“Oh bet you’re so pleased you got a girl”

“Well that’s it now isn’t it, your complete.”

“Oh a girl! perfect family”

Would I have received such comments, had I had a third baby boy? Maybe, maybe not. As I say, I can take these comments with a pinch of salt. At the risk of sounding totally trite, it’s really just all about love. Love of your children, love of your body, love of all that is life.  Sometimes I think we just need to take a moment out of life, sit down with a cuppa, look out of your window (with your cornea, and optic nerve and all the rest) soak up the world and appreciate how wonderful life is and how lucky we are to be here- whether you are pink or blue, whether your children are pink or blue.

I’ll leave you with a poem I wrote late at night, whilst pregnant with Ralph. I was feeling a little sensitive after we had been through so much to get to this point.  I guess I was wanting the universe to appreciate the bigger picture, and maybe it was even a reminder to myself, to remain humble and eternally grateful for winning the biological lottery.

Think Pink 

Even the lines on the test were PINK,

Reminders already of what I knew they’d say

Already taking up room and this need to think

My only concern, that this baby is well,

It’s heart, lungs, it’s tibia, and fibia,

Yet they love to fill my head with their mindless trivia.

I need only think of the fruit of my womb,

This wonderful, delicious little being,

My only religion,

I am awake, truly awake from a crumbling tomb.

“Are you hoping for a pink one this time?” they’d say,

I’d shy away,

Shy away from this incessant question,

“My baby!” I wanted to scream,

My baby is in there,

I do not know, nor do not care what appendage my little one might hold in there,

No I do not know, and I do not care

Ideas, and ideals, and old wives tales,

They’re all too happy to share.

Women’s plights, and equality fights

Pink equal to blue, is that really true?

For those with one of each will tell you,

Will truly attest, how they are so very #blessed.

This little tiny fluttering chamber,

Felling those kicks and quickening,

Sinew and bone,

Tracks and trails of arteries and veins,

Of rotator veins,

Of capillary beds,

Anvil,

Styrup,

Hammer,

Ears and eyes and frenulums,

As exact as pendulums,

Each little fold and twist and turn,

So perfectly choreographed.

Lanugo and vernix,

Such wanting,

Such waiting,

Such worrying,

Such preparing,

Such readiness,

All comes down to this,

Such wishes and hopes and dreams, and aspirations,

All held dear for our tiny little tale,

And then a stranger suggests,

They hope this time, it’s not male…

Emma Hopcroft

A busy mama of 3, a military wife and a nurse in my local community. I have a love of words, and occasionally a love of writing them down, when I can snatch myself a few minutes and get off the hamster wheel for a bit!

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