Sign up to Gransnet Daily
Our free daily newsletter full of hot threads, competitions and discounts
Subscribe
It has always bothered me greatly that some women do not value girls as they do boys. This has come to the fore at the moment as my dear little premature granddaughter is fighting to breathe while her mother just wants to go home and since she found out it was a baby girl and not baby boy that she so wanted I feel she has lost interest. My son is visiting her she is back on ventilator as breathing poor she is 7 weeks premature...33 weeks. 3 days old. Mother had op yesterday to rid her of retained placenta.. she just wants to go home. My son is trying to get her to express milk to keep flow but I think it’s an uphill struggle. Even after two scans that pointed to it being a girl (no willie) she refused to believe it. And then when my daughter told her mother in law the first thing she said was was it a boy or a girl and when she heard she said oh no poor L** I know she wanted a boy. I just want to punch them.
Thank you all for your thoughtful ANd often heart-rending stories. I’m afraid the news is not good. The baby has been diagnosed with a rare genetic disease, a form of muscular dystrophy, my son has learnt to put the feeding tube in her nose and she will be sent home next week. Absolute silence from DIL I just hope she is OK.
How is everyone doing now Op? Have they started to settle?
With paddyann too
I agree with March and summerlove
I am glad your GD is going better and concentrating what is needed for the current situation
I’d have done very similar to you paddyann
I’m a very private person, and process internally. Having extra people around, even those there for me and not baby stress me out.
DILs gender disappointment might seem like an over reaction, but none of us know how she is actually processing.
Poor wee soul and poor mum,its a horrible experience to go through and I wish them both a happy healthy future .
When I had babies in SCBU I didn't communicate with anyone ,in fact no one except my husband and I knew when I was in labour .Anyone who wanted to know how baby was called the hospital and they got the official line .Only after the first couple of weeks with my last SCBU baby did I speak to even my own mother about him .I didn't have the strength to bolster any one else's fears or tears so I just kept away .
Your DIL sounds as if she's doing the same ,she needs time to recover from the trauma of the early birth.the operation and the horrors of the SCBU wher an alarm going off can put you into meltdown in a second .Please be kind to her .Whatever you think of her at any other time or what you believe she thinks of you ,right now she only needs support ..from a distance while she fights the battle with her daughter .I'll keep my candle burning until she comes home x
I’m so very pleased your grand daughter is doing well, I’ve been thinking of her the last few days.
IMO I think you need to separate this issue from the other ones you've had with her.
Wanting a Boy after 2 girls isn't uncommon? I swore my second was a Boy due to being a complete different pregnancy and I told everyone that. DD2 is just as loved and wanted as DD1.
Your DIL wanting a Boy and what she's going through now I think are different issues.
If she was born 7 weeks early that wasn't a pleasant labour and far from the Labour she had in mind, strike 1 for PND.
She then had a retained Placenta. They are extremely dangerous and life threatening, so what's that? Heavy bleeding, vomiting, huge amount of pain and a blood transfusion? She could of died. Strike 2 for PND.
Her Daughter could die. Strike 3 for PND.
I'm not surprised she wants to go home. Her mind must be a mess at the moment and I'd bet my last penny she had PND or will have. She must be in a great deal of pain physically and mentally.
I'd personally, cut her some slack. Her husband will want to look after her and she needs to be looked after. I don't think this is anything to do with wanting boy, I think she's having the most difficult time in her life.
Hi all thank you for those of you that haven't attacked me, which hurt and made me lose trust in GN, but have supported, especially you Tillybelle.
I feel strong enough to respond now to those of you who are kind and understanding as at last the baby might have turned a corner.
Yesterday, following her lung collapsing a week ago, she has started breathing by herself. She is still very poorly, has been diagnosed as floppy, hypotonia, and to the cleft clinic for a gap in her gums.
I have heard nothing from or about DIL except she 'getting there'. She is incommunicado. I feel deeply for her distress and utterly helpless. Her dream of having a boy might be over and as deeply maddened as I am that she feels it so strongly, I don't deny it its importance to her.
To think for a moment we do not live in a society that values males more than females would be deluded ...as much as I rage. She is a very feminine woman and I think the height of her achievement would be to give birth to a male and she is deeply upset. It's not fair. But as we all know life isn't. For now there is the new baby ...and the story has hardly begun.
Tillybelle well said
Hithere
Your argument lacks logic.
The OP is perfectly entitled to come to this forum, especially as a Grandmother, to ask us for our views about anything at all. This is about her distress about her youngest DGD's mother not accepting her for being a girl. The mother's attitude to her other daughters is irrelevant. The problem is her feelings of rejection for her third child because she is another girl.
As Lisalou and Lumari point out, the OP's feelings are absolutely valid and worthy of our attention, whatever the issue or whether the extended family have a say. We are here to support our fellow Gnetter and give our views and feelings regarding the issues.
I do hope you will take on board what Lumari has said so well.
The fact that the mother loves her two other daughters is not an issue. The issue that arose was her rejection of her third daughter and the strong feelings that boys were better. This became the subject for us to discuss and try to understand.
I think you are struggling to justify your strong adverse comments about the OP. It would be better to leave the matter.
The overwhelming feeling here is one of concern for the OP, that she may not suffer and that the vast majority agree that the boy baby preference is ridiculously out-dated.
The above feeling is equalled by a strong concern for the mother, who may well be in a very disturbed state following the trauma of the premature delivery and the post delivery operation plus having a small baby in SCBU.
I did mention that there might be a reason coming from the mother's upbringing that made her determined that this child had to be a boy. It might be that she has been made to feel that not producing a son is something of a disgrace. I have experienced this as I have three daughters and I have met other women in my previous professional life who suffered from feelings of guilt and shame for not having a son. I think that she may well benefit from seeing a Counsellor.
We all desperately want to see a good outcome for this family, for the baby, the mother, father and sisters and then the grandparents.
Hithere, yes, the extended family has no say in the family but that does not mean that we can’t be upset about things we see - situations and behaviours of our loved ones.
Most posters here or any other forum are people venting their frustration about things they are powerless over and of course we only ever get one side of the story. That’s just the way it is.
We can always ask the poster if she has tried to see the situation from another perspective - but try and be understanding.
Tillybelle, I agree with your posts and hope the OP realises that she is supported here and feels she can continue posting her worries.
I grew up with three brothers so boys held no mystique or thrall for me and I was delighted to have a daughter. When people said I should try again for a boy, I asked why and they never came up with a satisfactory answer!
Hithere, thing is, she may well be a doting mother to her two girls, and when she overcomes the birth, may well be a doting mother to the third - she is upset, she desperately wanted a boy this time around, she is entitled to be upset, and hopefully she will recover and not take it out on the baby. The fact that the poor little mite is premature may well be a reason for her not to want to bond - a mistake, as Paddyann said earlier, (I am so sorry, your story is so sad) but we all make mistakes in life. It is to be hoped that with the right support from her family , she will start to bond with the little one, and hopefully, the baby will recover soon.
I understand the poor OPs frustration too, let us all hope that baby does well and they can all be home soon and recover from this tremendously difficult birth
"She came to us to ask about her DIL's very strong and strange preference for a boy baby and refusal to accept her baby girl. "
We will have to agree to disagree.
Honestly, dil's alleged preference for girls is up to the parents of the baby to deal with.
Extended family had no business in this matter, including grandparents
In one of the thread I linked, OP said dil is a doting mother to her two girls, so what is it then?
Feminism has nothing to do with this
I'm still bothered by my computer's jumping around. Therefore I am reprinting my post written in response of Sat 17-Aug-19 11:55:47 to
Hithere and GoodMama
It should have read:
Hithere and GoodMama
I think you have drawn some wrong conclusions.
Your criticism of the OP is groundless and entirely out of place. You criticise her for something she has not done.
I cannot imagine or in any way understand how you jumped to the conclusion when you say:
"OP doesn’t seem to have learned anything in the 3 years since her original post."
How do you reach this conclusion from the fact that she realised her first name choice was not ideal, therefore decided to change it?
Your assumptions bear no logic.
You are attacking someone who made it quite clear that she is using this place to express her distress *because she would never upset her DIL*or DS.
She came to us to ask about her DIL's very strong and strange preference for a boy baby and refusal to accept her baby girl. The OP was asking for help in understanding this boy preference and support in her distress because she has nowhere else to turn.
She made it clear that she supports her son and DIL. With modesty, she revealed to us many of the kind things she does for them.
She told us the facts about how her DIL behaves towards her and regarding her and the DGC. We learned that the DIL and her family were difficult people with odd views.
You decided that because she reported the distressing way her DIL treats her, it is she that is a very nasty to the DIL! The truth is completely the reverse!
You need to read the thread again.
Your argument would mean that any Grandparent who had a son/daughter or DIL or SIL who treated them badly cannot tell us about the distressing behaviour they experience at the hands of that person for fear of you jumping in saying; “^The problem is clearly identified and solved^. This woman hates her sons wife. DIL can do no right in OPs eyes and everything is DILs fault."
How you came to this conclusion utterly baffles me. (Btw you need a lesson on when to use apostrophe s.)
I do feel very vexed when a person decides to persecute another on our site because they have not bothered to read the thread and have either not taken on board the factual information given about the situation presented there or have chosen to disregard the facts.
Such persistent determination to misrepresent what has been said is persecution of a person. It is enormously distressing in this setting, to the victim. I know this very well. I have worked with people who have become suicidal because one or two people on a social media thread have chosen not to read what they have actually said and are condemning them and saying hateful things about them all of which are not true.
If you read the evidence on this thread, you will see that your assumptions about the OP are very wrong which makes the hate-filled attack you make on her both dreadful and cruel. It has no place here on Gransnet.
Rocknroll5me. My advice to you is to completely ignore these kinds of messages. The content ignores all the facts that are clearly stated on the thread.
Thus the messages jump to completely false and misleading conclusions which do not bear the scrutiny of logic. The venom in the attack on you is totally iniquitous and has no place here. Please disregard the messages which say such things.
icanhandthemback
I am so sorry to read about your extremely sad experience. It is completely understandable that you wanted a baby girl after losing your baby girl. That is just so devastating. You are naturally very sensitive to this poor mother's distress at this time, with a premature birth, having had post natal surgery and the baby still in special care. It is a terribly frightening time for the family but for the mother having to go through the bodily changes as well we can understand that she must be feeling very distressed and probably confused. As I said before, she may be trying to avoid becoming too attached to this wee infant out of fear of losing her or because the trauma of her birth has left her finding everything about going to the hospital an ordeal.
But I would like to remind us all that the OP has told us that this mother was very against this third baby being a girl from the early days of the pregnancy. We have been told that she was prepared to abort the baby if it were not male and that throughout the pregnancy she insisted that the baby was male. I think this is a sign of quite a big problem. This mother must have some deep seated reason for needing to have a son, and it may be that she feels ashamed having already had two girls. She may have a mental problem which is not her fault but has developed from something in her upbringing perhaps. It sounds as if she was in denial about the baby's sex when she was pregnant and now is in shock. Poor girl, however odd she is, and her family, I think there might be more to her behaviour and possibly she needs some help. The time after giving birth as so many have said, is a very vulnerable time. She has been through a lot.
I suddenly remembered about when I was pregnant with my second child, how my mother had made it abundantly clear that my older half sister was far superior to me as a mother because her first-born was a boy and mine was a girl. Then my sister had another boy which put her safely on the highest pedestal. I eventually had three girls, spread over a wide range of years. I was not phased by my mother's attitude, simply because she always favoured my half sister, so this was nothing new. But suddenly when I read your moving post ican, I remembered it and wondered if this mother's absolute determination that this baby must be a boy may not be a simple preference for boys, but have its grounds in the way she has been treated and perhaps even been made to feel ashamed for not having a son. Thus she is in a state of denial about this child and simply can't accept her.
I can understand, ican how one can feel closer to one child than another because they are so different too, irrespective of their sex. Between my three, luckily, this difference tends to change around so I seem to give a fair turn to each! But they are all different and oftentimes one can be very difficult while another may be so helpful!
Witzend What lovely words you write in your opening paragraph. How I agree!
What a fascinating insight your story about your second daughter's birth gives! Also what a lovely husband! It does show the extremely strong belief in that culture at that time that baby sons are much more desirable than daughters. It comes of course, from the way the society and economy of the family was structured for so long in that area. I mean of course that women were dependent upon men for their well-being. To have a son was an insurance for one's old age. A daughter, I assume, would leave the immediate family and marry out. Or if not she would be another mouth to feed and only the men could bring in the money to do that. I think this is becoming less so across the world but some cultures are still very male dominated.
I do hope, Rocknroll5me, you have felt supported here and that the vast majority who read your posts understood the spirit in which you needed to get off your chest the distress about your most recent DGD being rejected for being a girl. I am glad her mother showed a bit of improvement and a step towards accepting her. It might be something deeper than her having her own desire to have a son. Perhaps something she has grown up to feel, and is inseparably attached to her own identity and self-worth. She may feel she has failed. Whatever it is, I truly believe that Counselling would be helpful for her.
If you can, Rock, please let us know how little Sky and her family get on. There must be many of us thinking about her. Thanks.
I would like to end by quoting Witzend: I do so hope she'll improve and love will come
With love to all, Elle x ???♀️
Poor little baby - I do so hope she'll improve and love will come. It's even more heartbreaking when you think of many who'd be so thankful for either baby - so many rounds of failed IVF etc.
Just after I had much-wanted dd2, dh bought me a lovely ring - I'd never had an engagement ring.
We were living abroad at the time, among a largely largely Southern European community in the Middle East. It was a boy-favouring culture, and when I showed my ring to a neighbour, she said, 'You got that for a girl?'
Your DIL is in shock and probably feels really ill if she's had a retained placenta. She probably couldn't face any baby at this stage regardless of sex. She is also probably very frightened for her baby and doesn't want to get too attached just in case something goes wrong. When she feels better, I expect she will feel more able to cope but if not, your son needs to get her to seek help for PND. Unfortunately, as your grandaughter is in SCBU, she cannot have the skin on skin therapy that is advised where Mum and Baby learn to bond but that can happen. May I suggest that a very close eye is kept on your DIL with her needs being met as much as her babies, this is a very dangerous time for PND and Post baby psychosis.
I was desperate for a girl in each and every pregnancy, made even worse when my third child, a girl, didn't make it. I cried when they said my second born was a boy, then they whipped him off to SCBU and within 24 hours I was crying even harder because I wanted him back! I have a much closer relationship with him than my girl but that is down to personalities rather than gender. My youngest boy is also my pride and joy but I have to admit that I was terribly disappointed that he was male initially. I felt really guilty and couldn't say anything to anyone because after losing our little girl, everybody just thought I should be overwhelmingly grateful to have a baby. Now, I wouldn't change him for the world but hormones made it difficult to start with.
I know loads of people who yearn for a girl when each baby that arrives is a boy. I also know quite a few that yearn for a boy. In most cases it doesn't mean they love the children they get any less.
From "In a modest way" it should read
^she told us of the kind things she does for them"
Sorry - I am having some computer trouble - it jumps!
The point was that the OP is very kind to her DIL and her family yet when she tells us here, privately, speaking to us because she is in a safe place and would not upset her DS and DIL, she tells us a bit about the DIL's behaviour towards her despite her kindness to her. Somehow GoodMama decides that because the OP tells us about her DIL's behaviour, the OP is the Villain! Thus it must mean we cannot confide here Grandparent to Grandparent of any difficulties she have in relationships with our DC or DIL/SIL for fear of being accused of being the problem, viz: "The problem is clearly identified and solved. This woman hates her sons wife. DIL can do no right in OPs eyes and everything is DILs fault." How illogical is that?
The computer jumped over that and another part. Hence I only saw the second "jump". I hope my general message is clear to every one. Many thanks.
Hithere and GoodMama
I think you have drawn some wrong conclusions.
Your criticism of the OP is groundless and most out of place.
I cannot imagine or in any way understand how you jumped to the conclusion,
"OP doesn’t seem to have learned anything in the 3 years since her original post."
from the fact that she realised her first name choice was not ideal, therefore decided to change it.
Your assumptions bear no logic.
You are attacking someone who made it quite clear that she is using this place to express her distress because she would never upset her DIL or DS. She came to us to ask about the strange preference for a boy baby that was so strong in her DIL, asking for help in understanding it and support in her distress because she has nowhere else to turn.
She made it clear that she supports her son and DIL. In a modest way, shof you jumping in and condemning them with your crazy conclusion of "The problem is clearly identified and se revealed to us of the kind things she does for them. She told us the facts about how her DIL behaves regarding her and her DGC.
You decided that because she reported the distressing way her DIL treats her, she must be very nasty to this person! Your argument would mean that any Grandparent who had a son/daughter DIL or SIL who treated them badly cannot tell us about the the distressing behaviour they experience at the hands of that person for fear of you jumping in saying; The problem is clearly identified and solved.
This woman hates her sons wife. DIL can do no right in OPs eyes and everything is DILs fault. "
How you came to this conclusion utterly baffles me.
I do feel very vexed when a person decides to persecute another on our site because they have not bothered to read the thread and take on board the factual information given about the situation presented there.
Such continuous persecution of a person on a website is enormously distressing to the victim. I know this very well. I have worked with people who have become suicidal because one or two people on a social media thread have chosen not to read what they have actually said and are condemning them and saying hateful things about them all of which are not true.
If you read the evidence on this thread, you will see that your assumptions about the OP are very wrong which makes the hate-filled attack you make on her a dreadful and cruel attack.
Rocknroll5me. My advice to you is to completely ignore these kinds of messages. The content ignores all the facts that are clearly stated on the thread.
Thus the messages jump to completely false and misleading conclusions which do not bear the scrutiny of logic. The venom in the attack on you is totally iniquitous and has no place here. Please disregard the messages which say such things.
Hithere, very enlightening links.
The problem is clearly identified and solved.
This woman hates her sons wife. DIL can do no right in OPs eyes and everything is DILs fault.
OP doesn’t seem to have learned anything in the 3 years since her original post.
Wishing DIL and her family warm wishes and recovery from a traumatic time no doubt aggravated by OP and her nastiness.
I thought it was only certain countries in which gender bias held sway with most of the population.
Not surely in the UK 
Registering is free, easy, and means you can join the discussion, watch threads and lots more.
Register now »Already registered? Log in with:
Gransnet »Get our top conversations, latest advice, fantastic competitions, and more, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter here.
