“Aaaaaww its ok, you can always try again”, “Well, if the baby is healthy I guess it's ok” , “I can imagine how disappointed you must feel” or the worst one I have heard so far “I heard there is a treatment that can change the baby’s sex while still inside of you” Really?!?!?
These are some of the many lines I have heard from people when I tell them I’m having a girl for the third time. Yes, I’m the first one to admit I was thrown off myself when I found out, and so was my husband, but it wasn’t because we didn’t want a girl. It was because long before I got pregnant my husband and I knew for sure next time we would have a baby it would be a boy. The same way we knew for sure Krista & Sabina would be girls long before we conceived them. I got rid of all Sabina’s baby clothes because I wasn’t going to need them anymore. I started buying items that were gender neutral so they could all share, and whenever we would see cute baby boy clothes we would get them. We even had a name picked out long before the pregnancy happened! So, from the moment we found out I was pregnant we never really considered the fact that we might have a girl, we immediately started referring to the baby as a him and by the name we had chosen. Even Krista, my oldest would say my baby brother, and that is not something we told her to say.
You can imagine our surprise when my brother popped up a princess lollypop and not a cars lollypop at our mini gender reveal over lunch at our family restaurant. It’s a girl!! It took us some time to digest it, and to adjust to the idea. I was already struggling with the idea of being pregnant at all, and this added to my confusion. But it didn’t take us long and by the next day we were talking about all the wonderful things about having another girl. Girls stay closer to their parents we said, our grandkids will spend a lot more time with us.
Photo by: @Lilyro_
I don’t know what it is, I have heard it from Latinos, non-Latinos, man and women the same, but when we started telling people the news, I started getting so many negative comments from strangers, friends and even close family members. They viewed it as a negative, they assumed we were sad, disappointed and that we would immediately start considering having another baby. We obviously had to keep trying for the boy! I would say: “No, this is our last baby” and their face would look concerned for us " But you have to try at least one more time" they would say. At first I thought it would be something occasional but it has been a continuous pattern.
When they told me I should look into changing my baby’s sex within the womb I was baffled, did they really think I would consider something like that? I went off on them, I tried to lecture them about being a girl nowadays but when someone has those kind of opinions, is there really a point on trying to argue with them? I started realizing the kind of challenges my girls have even before being born. A lot of people still view being female as a disadvantage, or an obstacle in their life. I know for a fact this is not the case. I am so thankful my parents never made any distinctions because I was a girl, they raised me without highlighting that fact, and that only encouraged me to prove those people wrong. It only made me happier to bring in another girl into this world.
Photo by: @iampaulinalopez
My husband and I are determined to educate them, encourage and empower them as much as we possibly can so they can be part of the generation of women who are changing this archaic views. It inspires me to keep working on myself so that I can be an example for them. She chose us for a reason, she was meant to be part of our family long before we knew it and I finally know why. So, don’t you dare feel sorry for me, if anything I feel sorry for you, because you will have a very difficult time living in the future my girls will help construct, so get in with the program. And don’t you forget "Who runs the world? GIRLS!"
