Raising a Son

I read a post today about a mom who lost her first child...a daughter. Her first rainbow is a son. She mentioned that she was nervous upon finding out that her first rainbow was a boy; that she didn't know if she had what was needed to be the mom of a son.

I'm the youngest of four girls. I never really grew up with any boys around. Of my generation, both parents' sides, only 4 cousins out of 15 are boys. When Jon and I were pregnant with Oscar and Bella, we didn't find out their sexes until they were born, so I never had any thoughts of parenting a particular sex, but when we found out that Gus was a boy, that changed.

Initially, I grieved. I grieved Bella. I grieved that I didn't have the opportunity to raise a living girl. I grieved that Bella wouldn't be able to see what kind of mom I'd be to her had she lived, she wouldn't get to see the fun girly things we would have done and the girly clothes she would dress in. It truly wouldn't have mattered if Gus was a girl...I would have had these same thoughts, just about Oscar, instead.

Once I got over the resurgence of grief for Bella. I slowly began to get nervous. I didn't know anything about boys! Sure, I had 3 nephews and 1 niece, but I wasn't really close enough (geographically) to spend a lot of time with them to learn about young boys and what they like to do. My eldest sister has 2 boys and she was doing just fine raising them, but that didn't ease my fears much.

After reading Franchesca's post, though, I realized that Gus really has shown me how to be the mom of a boy. How it really isn't that much different than raising a girl...sure, the items we play with are different, but regardless of the sex, each child is different and Gus has shown me each and every day what he needs from me.

Thank you, Franchesca, for opening my eyes to the fact that, while I'm not raising a living girl and I have my not-so-great parenting moments (like any mom), I'm doing a great job learning how to raise a son.