On having a girl

On Friday night, I allowed myself to buy my first little girl outfit for this baby girl I'm carrying. Well, "buy" isn't technically correct since I had a coupon that said "$10 off a purchase of $10 or more" and the outfit cost $10. But anyway. This was something. I let myself do it.

It's a little dress. Black with little white dots. And a tiny white cardigan that goes over it. The dress and cardigan each have pink trimming and a pink bow. And the cardigan is embroidered with a pink heart.

Yes really. I purchased this and brought it home. You have no idea what convincing I had to do to get myself to do it and think it was ok. You have no idea the number of little girl outfits I rejected because they were too girly to be starting out with. I even had to tell myself Jeremy would not think it was weird or odd or inappropriate for me to bring this outfit into the house.

I'm having a girl. As I mentioned in another post, I couldn't tell anyone about this without at least getting choked up for the first few days. And I assume all that emotion and weeping was about joy. I've tried sorting out the exact nature of my feelings with little success.

There's some relief. As in, I'm having a girl so I'm relieved I don't have to "keep trying for my girl" by having child after child after child until she comes. (But there's that sister question--no! I will not think of it now!) There's some just plain excitement--this will be new and different and fun. Right? There's the niceness of being able to tell people it's a girl and get their excitement for me instead of potentially having to deal with their Pity or efforts at reassurance or whatever. Yes, that's more relief I guess.

And don't forget fear. The fear is fed by comments like, "you're going to have to learn to do hair, you know" and "girls are SO much harder!" and "get ready for the drama," and " girls are way more expensive. You have to buy earrings and hair bows and all that stuff." I think about this stuff and the phrase that keeps coming to mind is be careful what you wish for... I walked into a shoe store the other day and saw all the little girl shoes. Could a little girl get by on one or two pairs of shoes like my boys do? Doubtful. I walked past the Justice clothing store for girls in the mall--full of fluorescence and glitter and just uh, loudness, and uh, fashion. And I thought. NO! I want nothing to do with this!

One answer to this is that my daughter need not be the same as every stereotypical girl out there. She will be herself and she will also be the product of her household full of brothers. But this sounds as if I'm kidding myself into thinking "not MY daughter" when I know perfectly well that fighting it won't help.

It's not just that I'm afraid of all this girliness. I had 5 girly roommates at a time in college, remember? So I can handle girliness. I'm more afraid of what I won't be able to give her. Not knowing how myself, I can't teach her how to properly apply her makeup. That's one example, and perhaps a silly one, but it represents this ineptitude I see in myself that I know I must fight to see differently.

I'm pretty sure God knows what he's doing. He'll send the girl I need as a daughter, the girl who needs me as a mother. And I'll be enough. I'll have to remind myself of that every day, just as I have to when I think about parenting my sons. But I will be. So I'll work through the fear.

But beyond all that--fear, excitement, relief, novelty--I have felt something else. I wonder if I can write about it here. I don't think I can (as I've tried and not gotten it right for the last 15 minutes). It's a kind of joy. But other words I associate with this feeling are fulfillment and gratitude at being understood. I'm afraid I can't do much better than that at explaining. But I'm sure you've felt it sometime. Or you will. It's nice but it's big, a feeling that doesn't fit inside me. Overwhelms me.