The Little Girl That Was

Roanna - 19 Dec 15

My name is Roanna and I’m 36 weeks pregnant.

I’ve wanted to write a blog for so long, unsure of how best to start. Eventually I decided to start with something I found very easy to express – how excited I was to be having a girl. A happy little piece, about how I know you’re not meant to have a preference, and how, of course, the most important thing is a healthy baby. But how I was still thrilled.

Something I wrote a few months ago, just after my 20 week scan, was going to be my opening:

I was convinced it was a boy. I had given up hoping for the little girl with whom I knew I would feel an affinity. I thought it would be a baby, that I could and would love. But a person from whom I would always feel a little distant, a little bit removed. Someone I couldn’t understand. Someone who would have a different body, a different mind, a different experience in the world to me.

But as the technician showed me where the open legs were, showed me the empty space, the nothing there, and told me it was a girl…suddenly everything was light. I felt in an instant, for the first time, that this was something I could do, and do well. My job is to help her navigate her way through the nonsense, and help her to be herself. I just want her to be happy, whatever that means to her.

So that was the direction in which my piece, and my life, was heading. Until today.

I went for a ‘36 week placental location’ scan.

“Do you know what you’re having?” the technician asked as I got on the bed.

“Yes”, I told her, “I’m having a girl, but if you could just confirm that would be great, as I’ve bought lots of pink stuff”.

It was a joke. She did some head measuring, some heart checking. We made chitchat. Then she went quiet.

“Did you say you know what you’re having?” she asked again, very casually.

“Yes…a girl” I instantly had a horrible feeling that I knew where this was going.

“Um…no” she said gently. “It’s a boy…I’ll show you”

She moved the wand slightly and what definitely did look like boys bits appeared on the screen. I started to cry. She carried on scanning. I cried some more, she kept scanning. She showed me the “penis and testes” (words I didn’t think I’d be hearing today) again.

Afterwards, in the busy waiting room, she returned my file to me – “here’s what we talked about before” she said loudly, in her best patient-confidentiality voice, pointing at the words ‘MALE GENITALIA’ she’d written on the notes.

I hit the ‘denial stage’ quickly. I decided that didn’t like the technician, and talked myself into not trusting her. She put too much gel on me, she pulled my jeans halfway down to my knees ‘so she could get to the head’. She didn’t seem to find scanning a sobbing patient awkward. She spent longer scanning me than anyone ever had. She did 4D when it wasn’t on the agenda. She made marks on the growth chart that only my midwife uses. Was she actually a technician, or was she really a crazy woman who’d tied-up the real technician in the cupboard and stolen her uniform so she could live out her fantasy? That would mean that she could be wrong… I pulled myself together and got through this stage quickly.

I feel like my life changed there and then. For the past 4 months I’ve been building a picture of my daughter. A little cherub, flat-chested and barrel-bellied in her swimming costume (this is the point in writing where I’ve started to cry). Holding her hand as she tottered along next to me in her dress with the pencils on, that’s hanging in the wardrobe on a pink hanger with all the other beautiful little outfits that I loved buying so much. The alpaca pinafores and tights. Pink t-shirts with bunnies having a tea-party. Leggings with mice on the knees. I’ve loved every hour and every penny gathering this stuff for her. Maybe this is a good lesson – against vanity, against materialism, against gender-conditioning. All the ‘bad’ things a ‘good’ mother shouldn’t do.

Ahead of my 20 week scan I took a balanced view – as long as it was healthy I didn’t mind. But I was so pleased when they said it was a girl. If they’d said it was a boy then, I would be excitedly looking forward to a son now. But for the last 16 weeks I’ve dreamt of my baby girl. Her plaits and bunches, her party dresses, her ballet leotards. Reading her Matilda (I even had the name on my shortlist, so much did I hope she would be like Roald Dahl’s courageous little bookworm). I pictured her growing up, helping her with things I understand, in a language I can speak. I know nothing about boys. I grew up with a sister. I’m not the kind of girl who has ‘guy friends’.

I can’t bear that other people will find it funny. She was mine. And she’s now she’s gone. People will think I’m stupid and ungrateful if I show them how upset I am. They won’t understand. She was everything. I don’t know this stranger inside me. I know I should be grateful for a healthy baby. If I had the choice between a healthy boy and a girl with health problems, of course I would choose the former every single time. But the fact is, until three hours ago, I thought it was a healthy little girl. I miss her already.

I can’t bear to look at any of ‘her’ stuff. I had brave, practical plans as I left the hospital to spend the evening sorting through every girly thing I’ve bought, putting it in different piles – returnable, donate-able, still-usable. Writing a list of new things I’d need. Browsing the baby name book, enjoying going back to basics.

I shouldn’t have placed so much on her tiny shoulders. Maybe this is the biggest lesson I’ll ever learn. My child should not exist to prop me up. I should count my blessings. Not make assumptions about who my child will be, and how they will live their life. That is not my right.

I was certain that I could raise an excellent girl. I still am. I don’t know why – I’m a mess myself. Surely you have to be an inspiration to them, and I’m not even tolerable to myself. I have no confidence at all in what it takes to raise a boy, a good man. I’m not comfortable with them, I have nothing in common with them. I have no interest in robots, dinosaurs, tractors, spaceships, football. There I go again, deciding for them.

At the moment all I can think of is the girl I’ve lost, not the boy I’ve gained. I feel she’s been snatched from me with no warning. She was so real, but she never really existed outside of my imagination. I failed in my first chance to protect her, the little girl that nearly was. Now I’ve got a plastic boy doll and they’ve told to get on with it and be happy I’ve got anything at all.

I know I’ll get used to the idea quickly, and love him with all my heart. And I’m horrified at what this is showing me about myself and my approach to motherhood. I know this isn’t the most endearing of ways to introduce myself to you. But I hope that you can see that it’s honest, at least.

Roanna

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