“Who’s supposed to be watching the little ones? Who let them nick the cheese? I was saving that for Mum!” my sister blurted out.
In our family, there was always this unspoken excitement when boys were born. We live in England, and for some reason, girls were often met with this quiet bias—it’s just how my parents raised us. I’ve got a younger brother and sister, and I could always tell how differently relatives treated us.
When my sister was born, Dad was proper gutted. Even though the ultrasound had said it’d be a girl, he clung to the hope the doctors were wrong right up until the delivery room. But when Mum fell pregnant with my brother? Oh, he was over the moon! Relatives congratulated them with this extra warmth, like it was some grand event.
“A girl? She’ll just marry and leave the nest. But a son—he carries on the family name!” Dad would say.
The difference in how we were raised was stark. After my brother came along, he never had to lift a finger round the house, never got told off for dodgy marks or messing about. Not that me and my sister were treated badly, but we noticed. He was absolutely coddled.
It made me believe every family secretly preferred sons. So when I got married, I carried that idea with me. My husband and I were close, really trusted each other. When he said he dreamed of having a son, I wasn’t shocked—it felt normal. When I fell pregnant, I hoped for a boy too. But at the scan, the doctor grinned and said, “It’s a girl!” My stomach dropped. How do I tell him? I was terrified he’d blow up, pack his bags, and leave.
Looking back, I don’t know why I thought that—my parents stayed together after having me and my sister. But I was crushed. The stress got so bad I ended up in hospital with threatened miscarriage. My husband was away, but when he heard, he raced straight to me.
He still didn’t know the scan results, and I had no clue how to say it—not when he’d wanted a son so badly. But he never even asked. Just fussed over me, asked how I was, promised to bring my favourite biscuits, told me not to worry.
After he left, I sobbed for ages. A nurse came in to calm me down, and somehow, between my hiccuping, she pieced it together. “There’s plenty of blokes out there,” she said. “Just focus on carrying your daughter—she doesn’t need this stress.”
Next morning, she cornered my husband, thinking he’d upset me over the baby being a girl. He walked into my room baffled. “Where’d you get that daft idea?” he asked. I spilled everything. He looked at me like I’d lost the plot. “Boy or girl, I don’t care. Stop overthinking it,” he said.
I tried to relax, but part of me wondered if he was just sparing my feelings. Then our daughter was born, and I saw his face—the tears. He was properly chuffed. Now I laugh at how silly I was. Thank God for that nurse, or I’d have stressed myself into a right state before labour even started.
