baby GIRL ruiz

Yup.  Jon and I are having a girl.  And when I found out I cried.  In fact, I was pretty miserable for an entire week.  How unbelievably spoiled and selfish of me, right?

Apparently it's a real thing for future parents to be a little put out by the gender of their child if they had high hopes for the opposite.  It's called "gender disappointment."

Anyways, in retrospect, I knew I would eventually have a daughter.  During my last pregnancy, the baby was diagnosed with Turner Syndrome, or Monosomy X.  This is a disorder where the pair of sex chromosomes only have one X chromosome (Boys = XY, Girls=XX, Turner's Syndrome X_).  Babies that make it full term with Turner Syndrome are ALWAYS girls, sterile girls, but girls nonetheless.  Shortly before I lost that baby, I found an article that really resonated with me by C. Jane called "The Hourglass Theory."  Essentially she shares a theory of the ability of a soul to be in transition between Heaven and Earth.  Whether it's true or not, it felt right to me and I loved it.  So when the time came to say "good bye", I knew it was really more like "see you later."  Which is why I knew I would eventually have a daughter.

Well, when this little girl of mine was confirmed, the tsunami of 25 years of my own gender disappointment came crashing over me.  Yup, you read that right.  I have struggled my entire life to be content with my gender.  Now, don't go jumping to huge conclusions.  I have always liked boys.  I've never wanted to change the body I was given.  But, dang, I just plum hated being a girl.  

So, a time of my life that should have been filled with excitement and shopping for adorable baby girl clothes was spent being super emo and writing out quotes like this one from "The Great Gatsby:"

I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl.  She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept.  "All right," I said, "I'm glad it's a girl.  And I hope she'll be a fool - that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."

Just real uplifting stuff. 

There were other reasons too for my disappointment.  I grew up in a family of three girls.  Who wants to have a girl when girls are all you've been around?!  And then there was the name I had picked out for a boy that had to be put on the back burner.  Oh the shame!  And then there was the undeniable fact that I am just obviously more well suited to raise a son.  Right?  And I had co-workers telling me my food cravings were indicative of a boy.  And my sister-in-law told me she hoped I'd have a boy so my nephew could have a boy cousin.  And all of this was ruined.  It was just a horrible, horrible time in my life.

DISCLAIMER:  I really hope you realize that I'm being totally sarcastic and mocking myself right now.  Although all of those feelings were really REAL for a week, I am completely past them now and excited to raise a daughter.  However, remember how I have depression?  Seemingly silly things have the power to cripple me when I let them.  And I definitely let this become a much bigger deal than it was.  Depression isn't a static thing that you either have or you don't.  Although I may seem like I "no longer have depression," it is a dynamic part of me that has the power to rear it's ugly face when I'm weak enough to let it.

So, what the heck do I mean about disliking being a girl?  Well, at a very young, susceptible age, I became keenly aware that the role a woman plays in society does not merit the same kind of worldly glory men are lauded for.  And since I was an ultra competitive kid, I wanted to be esteemed as important.  Like Nacho Libre says, "I want just a little piece of the glory!"  It irked me that everywhere I looked and everything I heard made it clear that a woman belonged in the home, or that there were jobs appropriate for a woman to pursue, or that girls couldn't play football.  And this was my mind frame at the green little age of merely 9 or 10.  And it bugged me and made me irritated to be a girl.  But I could be a tomboy and hang out with boys and that made it okay.

Then came the changes that made it impossible for me to deny the fact I was a girl.  I sobbed inconsolably for an entire day and wouldn't utter a peep about what I was upset about the day I.... well.... yeah.  Then at school the boys I grew up with, my buddies, suddenly became more interested in flirting with girls and the fact that I was a girl playing sports with them at recess just got... well, awkward.  These injustices brewed an anger that only intensified my disenchantment with being a girl at the young age of 12 or 13.

Last came the curves and the changes to my little stick of a body.  My metabolism slowed down.  It eventually became obvious that I couldn't pack food back like I used to.  And all because I had this cursed female body.  This was the last straw.  This is where I decided to take a stand.  There was no way my gender was going to dictate this part of my life, there was no way I was going to blossom into a woman's body.  And so from age 16 to 22 I waged a vicious war, pitting my mind against my body.  You can't eat that!  Great, you've done it, you ate as much as a small elephant today.  You only ran 10 km?!  You're so useless.  I honestly believed that I was destined to become what my skewed mind saw as "fat," because I was a girl.  And it made me furious.  So I fought and I fought hard.

Well, at this point in time I'm happy to report that I'm in a much better place than I ever have been with my gender.  But it has taken years and it hasn't been easy.  I can't think of a more fulfilling job for myself than being a homemaker and mother.  I have a healthy body image.  But I still live rather disassociated from the fact that "I AM A GIRL."  I just choose not to think too hard about my gender and what it means to me and it keeps me happy.  But that didn't protect me from all of these old emotions and grievances being washed up with a vengeance when I found out the gender of my child.  After growing up with all these negative emotions surrounding the fact that I was a girl, it made me incredibly sad to think that this innocent little baby girl could be coming up against this same kind of adversity.  I didn't want to bring a girl into this world just to have her be as inconsolably disappointed with something irreversible like her gender.  Not to mention the fact of bringing a girl into the world at this time where promiscuity is praised and immodesty is attractive.  A world where social media brings a whole new meaning to bullying and judging and jealousy.  A world where "thigh gaps" and "bikini bridges" are highly sought after accomplishments.  Oh glory how I could go on.  It's tough to be a girl today, isn't it?  So aren't I a little justified to feel scared to have a girl?

Whether I'm justified or not, my feelings have definitely improved.  I'm excited to be a mother and I'm especially excited to have a daughter.  In fact, I had a dream where I had another ultrasound done and the technician said, "Oh wait!  Actually, you're having a boy," and I was actually really sad.  I want to have this girl and I want to raise her to be a strong, intelligent, morally steadfast and hard working woman, because Heaven knows that the world could use more women like that.  Although I've struggled with being a girl, it doesn't mean that she will or has to.