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Call me shallow, but before I got pregnant I wanted a baby, but really I wanted a girl. I wanted to buy her pink dresses, and Barbie dolls, take her shopping and braid her hair.

I’m a girl, I understand girls, my whole family was female, except my Dad who was good-natured and totally outnumbered, we even had girl cats and girl rabbits. I didn’t get boys. Boys are those weird, smelly, alien creatures who tortured worms in science lab at school. My husband, well he’s an exception, and anyway he’s a man, not a boy.

Before becoming pregnant, I have ideas of following the old wives’ tales of a “girl diet” and as it turns out, scientists recently suggested there’s something to that. But once I don’t get my birth control prescription refilled, before I know it, a pregnancy test turns positive. We are ecstatic, but now I have to confront the fact that this might well be a boy.

What made the difference for me was a book a friend recommended. It’s called It’s A Boy! Women Writers on Raising Sons. (There’s an “It’s a Girl” too, if you are the opposite of me.) Reading the mother’s stories made me laugh, cry, relax, worry, panic, and ultimately accept that sons are different, but every bit as good as daughters.

I’m glad I accepted my potential son early in my pregnancy, I think that I enjoyed being pregnant much more once I had made peace with whatever gender the baby was.

And by the time of the 20-week ultrasound I was convinced the baby was a boy. I was right - my ultrasound technician confirmed that she had seen a boy part, as she put it. But more importantly, she saw the kidneys, head, heart, and limbs of a healthy baby.

It’s a cliche. But cliches are true - It took me a while, but I realised that I really, truly didn’t care if we were getting a boy or a girl, as long as the baby was healthy. And I’m grateful beyond belief to say our beautiful, perfect, wonderful, adored son is healthy.

Tags: books, boys, gender, girls