[Ouroboros]

زنی از ترسهای خود پیرامون پسر بودن بچه‌ای که با آن حامله است می‌گوید، گزیده‌هایی از این نوشته:

Please, not a boy,’ I hissed at my sister Harriet. ‘If it’s a boy, I’ll just die. I can only deal with one man in my life... and sometimes that’s one too many.’

Boys are gross; they attack their siblings with sticks, are obsessed with toilets, casually murder local wildlife and turn into disgusting teenage boys and then boring, selfish men

‘Well,’ said the sonographer. ‘You can’t confirm anything at 12 weeks, you really have to wait to 20 weeks to be sure, but . . . it does look suspicious, doesn’t it?’
I felt light-headed; was the nausea I was feeling from morning sickness or horror at the prospect of a man-child?

‘Had the scan,’ I blurted out. ‘All fine, only one head, in the right place and all that. And, it looks like it might be . . .’ I stalled, praying he would be more enthusiastic about the prospect of a boy than me ‘. . . a BOY!’

For most boys don’t want to do nice things like baking, colouring in, and making up their own dances to Disney theme songs. They want to kill ants and shout, wee in clean laundry, break things, hurl cricket balls through windows and upset next door’s cat.

More to the point, there is no getting away from the fact that my new baby is a boy, and I have no choice but to get used to it. I will have to get used to a different nappy-changing experience and accept that there will be a lot more plastic dinosaurs in the house.