My Confession.....

I have a confession to make.

September 28, 2007 - We received the PGD testing from the IVF lab. One healthy embryo - hooray! It's a Boy! I felt I could 'relate' and 'bond' with a baby boy much easier than I would a girl. Perhaps it was because of my relationship with my mother. I favored my dad when I was little. He was the big, strong, calming presence in my life as a child. He loved me unconditionally, and I knew it, always. Not to say my mother didn't love me - she did. But, I had a deeper bond with my dad - period.

Also - I'm a bit "macho." I work out, am an over-achiever in a men's field, and I am very no-nonsense. As a child, I used to ride dirt bikes, climb trees, pull the wings off of flies, poke eyeballs out of the fish my dad cleaned, and sometimes pop their stomachs open to see what their last meal was. More snips and snails than sugar & spice. I wanted to please my dad at all times. I saw femininity as 'weak' - maybe because my only female role model accepted her poor treatment by her family as 'deserved'.

My mom had a teriible family growing up. The only acceptance and love she received was from her alcoholic father, when he felt like using my mom to hurt his wife. So, my mother grew up being resented by her 3 siblings and her own mother, for receiving the only affection her father ever doled out. He died when she was 15, and she never acknowledged the true situation. She parented me, her only girl of 3 children, resenting my relationship with my father, with whom she could never truly be satisfied. She probably never really liked me. I believe it's because my dad loved me. I was competition for his attention.

Here's the confession:

At my Nuchal exam in January, I was told, "It's a Girl"! My response? "Oh Shit." My husband laughed and said "I'm going to tell her you said that" with a grin. I cried just a little bit on the way to the car. We had already named the baby boy after my dad, and I was fearful of having a girl. I also felt like I 'lost' a little boy, by hearing now that it was a girl. When we left the hospital, we got to the root of the issue ~ I was worried that my daughter would find me intolerable and prefer her father. My husband made me see that my mother never accepted me for who I am, because she was jealous of my relationship with my father. I would not be this way with my own daughter ~ it was not possible, he said, because I love you completely and unconditionally, as I will love our daughter. It took me a few days, but I mourned the loss of my fantasies of a baby boy and gradually became excited about the arrival of a baby girl. I embraced the fact, and went a little crazy in the nursery - which is a story for another day.

My baby girl has been gone for 1 month and 1 day. I feel terribly guilty about my response to learning that she was a girl, not a boy. I feel like a piece of shit for saying 'Oh Shit' and for worrying that my husband would love her more than he would me. I feel horrible that I had this precious little girl inside of me, and I was scared of her. Scared of being marginalized in my own family ~ ignoring me at the dinner table in her teens, preferring her father to her mother as a baby. All those reactions that I had to my own mother - I feared in my own child. It was short-lived - but I still feel guilty. After all, my daughter did not live to hear me explain myself when she was a teen. She would have laughed at me and told me it was okay, because she loved me. I would have already known that, and told her so. I would have told her that I had loved her from the moment she was conceived, and would have shown her her first photo - the 8-celled embryo (blastocyst) from the IVF lab, which I kept. I would have showed her every minute of her life, that she was wanted and loved and cherished. I know I would have. But I never got the chance.

So now I sit at her grave, and tell her to please know that she is, was & always will be, loved and wanted. Through my sobs I tell her that I miss her and will never stop missing her until we are reuited in Heaven someday. I cry and beg her forgiveness for my reaction to learning she was a girl and not a boy. I beg her to forgive me all my complaints during pregnancy - because I would do it all again and again and again if I could have her back in my arms, safe and alive. I beg her to forgive me for not knowing she would die in my womb - for I believe I should have known that her heart would stop. I beg her to forgive me for her death. As her mother, I feel responsible for her death - no matter what the doctors say. I tell her over and over again, how I had never seen a more beautiful baby girl. I tell her that I could never picture her when she was inside of me and how I wondered what this little miracle would look like. She is the most beautiful person I have ever seen in my life, and I tell her that, when I sit at her grave.