Dear Madison,
I first picked out your name around 2009, or so. I was watching the “Suite Life of Zach and Cody” with my little brother and sister-in-law. Maddie, that would be your nick name. Your name would be Madison. Your middle name was just as easy to pick, it would be Delores, after my grandma who died young and left a great impression on me in my first 9 years of life. You were the name of which I was always certain.
I waited for years to get the chance to meet you. Your dad and I got married in 2008, we had to wait another year for me to finish grad school, and then we moved to Cincinnati. It took me a few years until I was able to get a job in my field. Before having kids, we needed to save up enough money for daycare and expenses. Then in 2012, we successfully got pregnant with our first child. When we went to the anatomy ultrasound for baby #1, he did not cooperate and we could only see his spine. We had to come back in 4 weeks for another ultrasound, which was three weeks before my first baby shower, and we found out that he was a boy. Baby #2, we had the anatomy scan and there was an umbilical cord between the baby’s legs and the tech was only 60-70% sure that he was a boy. We paid to go to one of those ultrasound places just for moms and they confirmed, yes he was a boy.
And now I am pregnant with my third and final baby. Your dad and I agreed to only have three children. This time around, I went to a different ultrasound tech and facility (finally) and the technician was about to tell the gender of the baby with no issue. She put the results in an envelope, as I requested, and I found out the gender at the reveal party. Baby #3 is a boy.
Maddie, I must now say good bye to you. You are just not in the cards. It seems as though I was not meant to be a mom to girls…to attend princess meet and greets, to dress you in ruffles and bows, to braid your hair, to teach you how to put on makeup, to share with you the many great experiences that daughters have with their mothers, and to talk to you about the wonderful gift it is to get married and bare children. I will have to save these talks and the ruffled dresses for my nieces and my friends’ daughters.
Someday, my husband and I hope to adopt a girl, not a baby, if we are more financially stable. We have A LOT of student loan debt though, so I am not sure that three children plus an adopted sibling are in the cards, either. For now I have to let you go, Madison Delores, for I have been blessed to be a boy mom to three wonderful boys.
To read the post that I wrote to my Third Son, click here: “A Letter to Matthew: My 3rd Son”
