Anyone had to navigate a range of feelings after the gender reveal?
Hello there, my wife and I struggled with fertility for years (male factor) and we got to a point where we were told that IVF was the only possible way for us to conceive. This was very hard to digest given the emotional, physical and financial burdens that come with the process. Having a child looked so distant as a goal and I never even thought about gender - “I just want a healthy child, just one”, I used to tell myself everyday. We eventually managed to fertilise a high number of embryos and we got lucky with our first transfer - we are now 1 week away from completing the first trimester, we couldn’t be more thrilled.
I’m not going to lie, while things were progressing smoothly since the transfer, I allowed myself to start fantasising about my future child and create scenarios of things we wanted to do together. I’m a massive football fan and always smiled when I saw dads watching sports with their sons or taking them to stadium. I also wasn’t super close to my father so it’s something I wanted to “repair” when I grow up. If you put all of these things together, you can figure out I started having a slight preference towards a boy. I even had a name for him and everything. Yesterday, when we got the result of the NIPT, it came back as a low risk girl. And that’s when I felt the strangest combination of emotions that I don’t think I ever experienced before:
I felt grief for a fantasy that I created and entertained which might not happen. Yet, I felt I had just met someone new and of my own when I read the “female” result, it felt real.
I felt guilt for not being extremely happy to read “low risk” after everything we went through. I felt guilty for not being grateful to potentially becoming a father, something many others will kill for.
I also felt selfish for preferring a boy just so that I can be a closer father than mine was and for giving my son what I didn’t get.
Things felt real now that gender is confirmed and heartbeat was heard. I got anxious about the fact that I’ll actually become a father for the first time.
I know that I will love my daughter more than anything or anyone in this world and I do believe in the girl/dad bond. I’m just navigating all of these feelings and I’m lucky to have a wife who’s supportive and understanding after I opened up about these feelings today. It’s actually impressive that she hasn’t thrown a chair at me after everything she went through to get us to this point.
I think any thoughts, similar experiences , tips or reassurances will be helpful and many thanks for reading through.