Sunday, September 30, 2007

Shake the Disease

I hate when I get like this. I've been perseverating, no obsessing, about having a daughter. I just can't stop thinking about it, but not in a good way. It's gnawing away at me.

At the grocery store today I chatted up a woman who's due with her second child in two weeks. She has a boy who's a little over two and is expecting a girl. I'm happy for her, but that secret, little dark part of me was angry, wanted to know why I haven't felt that joy of awaiting my daughter. Fortunately I got over that pretty quickly. Then when I was checking out, I talked to a woman in the next lane who has two boys who looked about 4 and 5, and a baby girl who was maybe five months old. When I asked her what she did to get her girl after two boys, she gave me this serious look and said, "You want to know what I did?" and told me that she had in vitro with sex selection. I thanked her for sharing that with me. I really admire her courage to tell me that because people can get so judgemental and, frankly, angry when someone expresses the desire to balance their family.

So today I've been obsessing about IVF and PGD. How would I get hubby to agree to it? (we discussed #3 last night while we were out to dinner; he expressed his desire for pink but steadfastly refused my suggestion that we get his sperm spun to tip the scales to the pink side. his comment: "you get what you get" ...easily spoken by the man with two sons. I highly doubt he'd be feeling so cavalier if we had two daughters) How would I explain this to people? Would I explain it to people? How would I feel knowing I tinkered with the Almighty's domain to get a daughter? What if something was wrong with her? Certainly I would feel that I brought it on myself and was simply being punished for trying to play God.

So what do I do? Any low-tech method to sway for a girl seems to work just as well as simply doing nothing at all. Part of me wants to let go and trust God since He has a plan for our family, but part of me is terrified of being overrun by a houseful of boys with no daughter to grow close to, like I am with my mother. Part of me wants to try every low-tech method just so I could say, "Well, I did everything nonintrusive I could to have a daughter" should I have another boy.

I also worry that all this worrying about a daughter means that I'm definitely having all boys.

I need to get myself back into therapy before I get pregnant again. I can't keep having this obsessive thoughts. I need to be present and enjoy my boys since they're only little once.

In more serious news, I got an email from the husband of a friend today. She's pretty sick but he had little details to share except she's out of commission indefinitely. I don't like the feel of it, but I do hope she's okay and is back to her old self soon. I really like her a lot; she's a great person and I always enjoy her company.

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