Yes, you read it right…I feel like I am in mourning to some extent. For what you ask? For the baby, I will never have. Now, before you say anything I DO have children…four amazing little boys to be exact (though my oldest is 13 and taller than me already), and I am pregnant with my fifth. But we will never have a daughter. I was never pregnant with a girl, I didn’t miscarry or lose one, but I still feel that loss. With each pregnancy, there was that 50/50 chance that we would have a little girl, and each time I found out the sex of my baby my first reaction was happiness, that things were going well. That I was doing fine, but then that moment of sadness would set in. That realization that I will not have a little girl.

Perhaps, this time it has hit me harder because I will not be having another baby. Truth be told, I NEVER envisioned myself wanting a large family. I don’t know if my husband did either, but I LOVE the chaos of my home. Granted there are days it drives me crazy, and I let my boys and my husband know it, but when they aren’t around I feel lost. R was out of town last week, and on Thursday ALL the boys were in school. I dropped our youngest off at preschool around 8:55, five minutes later I was home, and by 10 am I didn’t know what to do with myself! The house was quiet, too quiet-all my little ones were in school. R wasn’t in his office working, so I couldn’t even walk in there and bug him…I felt lost. And that is when I realized my life feels most complete when I am surrounded by, what I like to call, controlled chaos. Back to my vent here, At the same time I am reaching these conclusions I realize I am about to hit my mid-30’s. A part of me feels better than I did 10 years ago. I love my husband more today than I did yesterday. My boys are all doing well and I am happy, but I also feel the little aches that come with age. Most notably with this pregnancy. It isn’t as easy as the other ones were, I get tired quicker, cranky quicker, and while I know every pregnancy is different, there is little doubt in my mind that my advancing age has something to do with it. And so I know in my heart that I am done. Selfishly, I don’t want to be parenting a teenager when I am 55….I want time alone with my husband, so I made up my mind that this will be our last baby. R is cool with that as well! And this is why a part of me mourns for the little girl I won’t ever have. I will never struggle to put ponytails in a three year olds hair, I will never tell my 14 year old that she does NOT need 100 dollar jeans to look good, I won’t ever sit in a store while my 17 year old tries on dress after dress in preparation for her prom, I will never hope that my little girl will one day want to wear my wedding dress, and perhaps most poignant of all, I will never go through a pregnancy praying my little girl is ok, giving her advice, reminding her that I did it five times…I KNOW what I am talking about. And while all of this fills my head at times, the picture I mourn losing most of all is seeing my husband holding a little girl…dressed in pink, with his beautiful blue eyes, and my lips. I realize that the pictures of him holding our little boys are just as precious, just as sweet, but there is something about a big, strong man being reduced to mush by an 8 pound little girl that is very hard to let go of.

My two older boys are starting to become interested in girls, and A has always been a ‘chick magnet’ (as his aunt jokingly calls him), so one day I might have daughter in laws to fuss over, perhaps a granddaughter or two (maybe three or six…) but I admit that I mourn for the little girl we will never have. At first I felt guilty for feeling this way, I have beaten myself up about it, most tellingly when R was gone, but now I realize…it’s ok. Probably even normal. It doesn’t make me love my boys any less, it doesn’t make me a bad mother, but I do think this is something many mothers don’t want to admit. We don’t want to talk about it….so I gave myself permission to be ok with my feelings, to even cry a bit and write about it here. And now that I have ‘voiced’ it, I can tell you I already feel better. I feel a bit healed, if you will.