Five for Five

I’d always wanted a daughter. I come from a family of girls. Each of my three sisters has a girl. Naturally, I thought I was meant to have a little girl of my own.

My husband, Lonny, and I had our first child, a beautiful baby boy. I figured our girl would come along later. Our second child was a son too. So was our third. And our fourth.

My fifth pregnancy wasn’t a surprise. Lonny and I planned for a big family. But we did consider the likelihood that this baby would be our last. I loved my boys utterly. It was just time to have that girl I’d dreamed of.

I pushed back the first ultrasound to early January so the baby would be developed enough to identify gender. Being pregnant at almost 40 warranted the super ultrasound at the university medical school. I lay on an exam table, Lonny standing beside me, as the doctor roved the transducer over my belly. The baby was healthy and strong. Only one question remained.

I closed my eyes and pictured my little girl. Wisps of blonde hair escaped her ponytail. Her eyes were wide and green. She wore cotton and crochet on top, and bare pink toes fringed out from frayed jeans. Her gentle spirit was evident in the way she moved. She was mine to teach, mine to mold, mine to pour myself into.

A fresh squirt of goop on my belly jarred me back to reality. “Are you ready to know what you’ve got?” asked the doctor. Lonny drew my hand into his, and I nodded. Our eyes were fixed on the monitor. The marbled image on the screen moved closer.

I was pregnant with our fifth son.

Everything about the walk through the university parking lot was slow. Conversation was slow. Our pace was slow. Even the snowflakes that shook from the clouds were slow. “You know, Shawnelle, you are an awesome mom to our boys,” Lonny said. “No one could do better.”

“I adore our boys,” I said.

“They’ll be great men,” he said, “because of you.”

That I wasn’t so sure of. I was gentle, sensitive by nature. I loved books, not bugs and baseball. I worried that my boys would need more than I could give them, especially as they got older.

“Are you okay?” Lonny asked.

“Sure,” I said. But I wasn’t, and I was ashamed of it. We had lost a baby early in our marriage. We’d struggled through a time of infertility. I had friends who couldn’t conceive. I understood the fragile blessing of a baby. I just couldn’t control the tears.

That night I waited for Lonny’s breathing to fall into the even rhythm of sleep before I crept from our bed. I stepped around the action figures and dinosaurs in the hall and curled up in our wing chair in the family room.