Writing Down My Daughter

Having a girl has always been my great dream. I always thought I would have a girl first, a firstborn daughter like I was to my mother. Instead I had a boy. For awhile he was my everything. Then when he was 1 ½ I found out I was pregnant again. My hopes for a girl returned. One of each and our family would be complete, I thought. But, as fate dictated, I had another boy. Initially I was disappointed but soon the overwhelming task of taking care of two children under the age of 2 ½ buried my desire for a girl.

Over the years I’ve always answered the question whether we were going to have another child and try for a girl with an emphatic “No!” My husband and I like the one child per adult ratio. But this year when I turned 40 something happened. My body began to fail me. I was plagued with illness, fatigue, irregular menstrual cycles, intense PMS, and depression. I realized that I was entering perimenopause, the time when the body prepares for the cessation of menses. The time when fertility slows down and then stops.

I felt out of touch with myself and my body. I knew something was amiss but just couldn’t put my finger on it. The last four years of mothering had stomped on and trampled over the spark that was me. I felt like there was a foreigner stationed in my body and somewhere inside was a vibrant, energetic being waiting to be remembered. Ever since my 40^th birthday lost dreams and desires had come knocking on my door demanding to be let out.


One day I was reading a book by a mother/daughter team and the realization that I would never write a book with my daughter hit me like a ton of bricks and squeezed my heart so tightly that it started leaking from my eyes. I would never be a scout leader like my mom was to me, never take mother/daughter trips, never watch my daughter tap dance in a recital, never braid her hair or teach her how to put on makeup. I felt a real ache in my chest, a longing for something that was perhaps out of reach now that my body was preparing for the next phase of womanhood.

I sat with this feeling of loss, going deep inside to see if it was grieving that I was going through or was the desire to have more children really still there? When my youngest turned 4 in October I began to rejoice that baby time was done: no more diapers, no more nursing, no more naps or scheduling the day around naps. Soon he’ll be in school full time, I thought, and I’ll have more time for myself and my writing. I sold all the baby toys from our basement and began to look forward to my “freedom” and to getting to know myself again.

Then I was blindsided by this repressed desire for a girl child. I found myself in silent contemplation all the time. A mother/daughter bond is different than that of a mother/son. What would my life be like when the boys grow up and not need me anymore?

I have a good relationship with my sons and love them dearly. Nevertheless, it was with a tear that I acknowledged that my firstborn son might be the closest thing to a daughter I was ever going to get. At 6 he is sensitive and caring, more inclined to sit alone in his room and create with LEGOs or draw pictures than to play sports or cars or guns. He is like me when I was young - careful to follow rules and do the right thing. My second born son is all boy, and I, as the daytime caretaker, find myself playing coach to his baseball/football/golf player or the battle droid to his aggressive clone trooper. Not that he isn’t caring and sensitive, but he is not a constant source; instead he is like a hurricane, consumed by intense moods followed by a period of calm and then another storm.

I felt like I was split down the middle; one side of me was yearning to be done with the childbearing part of my life, while the other side was saying “Wait, don’t shut that door – what if I’m not done yet?”

Last night I sent a prayer out to the divine figure of the Mother Mary to help me know what the true direction of my heart was. All night long I dreamt and woke and dreamt and woke so I wouldn’t miss the message that I was sure to come. Then this morning after everyone had vacated the bed I had my dream. In it I was telling my friend Mary of my struggle with this crossroads. She told me to think long and hard about what it would be like for me at this time in my life to have another child. She told me “As your boys grow up and away from you there will be other options for you to connect with a ‘daughter’.”

I awoke with her words still in my ears and the knowledge that Mary had indeed sent me my message. With a sinking heart I knew that my decision had been made; it was what I had known it would be yet hadn’t had the courage to admit to myself. I would close the chapter on childbirth and instead redirect the energy to raising the children I have.

And so I grieve.

I grieve that my sons will never get to have a sister, but am thankful that they are close to their cousin Victoria who is like a surrogate middle child as she was born in between the two of them. She is a combination of the boys, at times so like my eldest that they’ve been called twins but with the stubbornness and spark of my youngest.

I grieve that my husband will not know what it is like to have a relationship with a girl child of his own. He has been steeped in testosterone his whole life: he comes from a family of two boys and now is the father of two boys. I would like to know if having a daughter would transform him into the protector my brother has become through raising his daughter.

I grieve for myself. It’s not so easy to be the only female in a household of males and I would have liked some company, a kindred spirit to help balance out the hormones. But in the bigger picture I’ve come to understand that while I was pining for a daughter of my own I was also yearning for the feminine both inside and outside myself.

I know that I will grieve and then I will get on with myself. I know that the end of my fertility is only a door closing on that part of my life; it is not the end of my ability to create. I realize that my daughter will come into being, although she will be brought forth through my words instead of through my womb. It is in this way that I will write my daughter down.