Baby #4 - Wolcott,CT

I am that girl! Kid 3 and the only girl. There have been times when I've wished for a sister, but I'm happy with my brothers. I get to be the favorite daughter no matter how badly I screw up! :) I married in to a family of all boys so my SIL and I are pretty close even though she grew up with all sisters. I'm also friends with my brothers' wives (one only child and one with a brother).
I don't think having all brothers is going to be a detrement to her unless you tell her it is. Don't worry, Mama, she'll be fine.

I have 4 younger brothers and no sisters. Talk about being the odd man out!! lol
My brothers are pretty great (well, except for one...but we wont talk about him). They are AWESOME with my kids. Love on my kids, play with them. If I need to talk with them they are there for me. They are HILARIOUS. I just really love them and feel blessed.
I always wanted a sister, but now that I have my brothers I can't imagine my life with a sister. I am NOT the kind of woman that would have been talking about boys, teen beat, and raising mykids together. I am my own person.
I really can't emphasize e nough how great my brothers are.
L.

My sister and I do not speak and the thought of raising our kids together breaks me out in hives.

My SIL and I are close and they will drive in from out of town to help me out with my kids if need be...in emergencies.

So she can be close with her brothers and eventually SILs like she would a sister.

Don't worry...it will all work out!! Hugs!!

I have one sister. We love each other dearly but never "best friended up and raised our families together." Our personalities are radically different.
Having another girl would not guarantee your daughter a built in best friend. And who knows, she may have one in one of her brothers.

You're fating her? I can't imagine your daughter doing anything but loving her life and loving her brothers (well, at least some of the time). Sisters aren't always sisterly, and they're certainly not always close, even after they're grown; sometimes brothers fill the ticket better. Your girl is not an only child. I imagine she has friends who are girls. So, even if you feel lonely, please don't project your attitudes on your little one.

When I was in high school, we lived next door to a family with four boys. They were all wonderful people. I do remember the mama coming over to visit my mother because she needed someone to "girl-talk" with! But my mother always said that's what neighbors were for.

You can't give *any* of your children a perfect life. Please sit down with a paper and pencil (yes, the old-fashioned way) and write down all the good things about your children's lives - and about yours. Maybe you'll recognize that they don't have to be ideal to be good.

Hope it will make you feel a little better. I've found that looking for friends makes friends hard to find. Is there anyone near you that you can *be* a friend to?

"Girls tend to best friend up with their sister and raise families together.".
Not in our family!
My sister and I have NEVER been able to get along and we can't stand each other.
We each wish we were only children.
The only thing we ever could agree on is we each had only children and we'd never put our kids through what we had to go through growing up together.

The best thing to do is to consider that she is an individual and unique.
She'll make her own happiness!
Try not to project any negative feelings you might be having onto her.
If you are feeling lonely - do something about that and get over it.

I'm surprised by this - I've never heard that boys marry and get involved in their own families (by which I guess you mean their wives' families?) while girls need sisters to bond with. You may have a family or two in your past where that happened, but I'm guessing your world view has much more to do with being a single child who lost her mom and wishes she had siblings, and you imagine you'd be closer with a sister than a brother. One of my dearest friends is the lone girl with 3 brothers, and they are all so very close. No one makes a distinction about families of origin vs. families they married into.

There is absolutely no guarantee that siblings will be close at all - many are but we all know of people in our own lives (and certainly it's discussed here on Mamapedia) where there's distance and strife in families. I think how your children bond has much more to do with their own personalities as well as the type of environment in which you raise them. It would be a shame for you to actually be a little disappointed if this baby is a boy (what a burden for him to grow up with), and a real tragedy if your daughter grows up thinking she's not going to have any kind of closeness with her siblings (how very sad that she will lose this because you will unwittingly influence her to think she's missing something). That's very much in your power to influence - maybe not control, but influence.

The issue is your own loneliness, your feelings of loss and lack of completeness - totally understandable but not necessary to carry forever. I hope a lot of it has to do with hormones, but if these feelings persist in any way, please get some focused counseling to help you resolve them. Women are hard enough on themselves - to blame yourself for not providing a child of a certain gender, which you totally cannot control, is so unfair to you and your entire family. We all have something we carry with us from our childhoods, and if these are influencing our own kids negatively, we owe it to ourselves and to them to get some help, insight and closure. Please take care of yourself and, by extension, your family.

I am an only child and have never felt lonely. I have cousins (all boys, though!) and often played with them when we were kids. And in fact, we get together often as adults, even though we live hundreds of miles from each other. We make the effort because we grew up in a close-knit family, and still enjoy each others' company. Although my cousins are boys, I've found that their wives have also enjoyed being part of our family. Just yesterday, I came home from a family camping trip. My kids are actually still there with their cousins, and are having a blast. So it's nice that this second generation of kids is as close as the first!

Anyway, that's my perspective as an only who didn't even have any girl cousins growing up. I love my family! They're great!

I am close with my brother, or was for 39 years. Things changed when he had a midlife crisis and left his wife of 17 years for his HS sweetheart. We don't see him as much anymore, because it's all about her, but you don't have to have a sister to have a special sibling bond. He was and will always be there when I need him.

My sister and brother are much closer than my sister and I are. They're closer in age and their children are closer in age, so they spend a lot more time together than I do with her/them.

Well, I have had 9 brothers, and 3 sisters. 2 of those brothers, one sister, and I were raisd 100% together, though for a majority of our childhood we did have another brother and another sister living with us. (Lots of custody issues, marriages, divorces, and deaths going on...)

Anyway, of the 4 of us that were always kept together, my older brother and little sister seemed to team up, while my younger brother and I made a pair. Granted, my brothers were close... And I was close to my sister... But the brother/ sister bonds were much closer than any of our brother/brother or sister/sister bonds. I wouldn't worry about it at all. :)

As adults, my sister and I have grown closer than we were as kids, and I love her dearly... But it's still my little brother I have the special bond with.

For a while after my dad's 3rd marriage there were 5 boys in the house, with my little sister being the only girl. She didn't really have a problem with it, as she had been raised around enough boys that she was well able to keep up with them. :)

I think you are speaking from experience. That's not the experience I have at all with my family. Sisters can turn nasty and end up not talking. Boys sometimes do not get married at all (one family I know has 3 boys who never married). And siblings in general can be (wonderful, I am sure) but a huge headache when grown. You have to worry about them! I can't imagine having more than 2 to worry about, aack!

I didn't worry about down the line with #4. Just getting through the diapers and sleep with #4, lol!

While I wouldn't say my brother and I are "best friends" we are close and I am close with my SIL as well. We live 10 min from each other and we have raised our kids together. I have 3 boys and one girl and they are all pre-teen/teenagers now and they are close as well.

You cannot project the future. She may or may not be close to her brothers.

I am sorry you feel left and alone. I, too, am an only child whose mother died when I was 9. My mom knew in her heart that she would not see me grow up and told me so. But she did prepare me for survival and a long prosperous life. She instilled and subtlety drilled in me how to care for me and to use my intuition which has served me well on many occasions. Yes, I wish she were alive to see how I turned out but she has seen such from above and I feel her presence daily.

I have friends from long distance that I can call and do to solve problems. Some are closer to me than others and some are in different parts of the country and in Quebec but they are all there for me if I need them. One friend always tells me I know when to call her in her hour of need to pep her up. She lost her daughter this March to a druggie driving in Washington state. I knew nothing about it until two weeks ago when I talked with her from my hospital bed. Talk about shocking.

The "only is a lonely" can be but it is how you are raised and what you do with what you have. Friends are for reasons and seasons some long and some short. Sometimes it would be nice to have that buddy you do everything with but it doesn't always happen.

So, stop worrying about what you don't know and have a great pregnancy and delivery. Not every sibling is a close bud some still want to take out the other as long as one is alive. Enjoy your family and take each day as a full day of life and be happy.

the other S.

I have never heard this boys vs girls and their families stereotype. I have two much older brothers- neither married or have children. So I can't attest to how brothers live and raise their children. My brothers were great. They taught me all the important stuff- how to drive a manual transmission, play basketball, play cards, ride a bike, and above all, respect myself. I can honestly say I have ever wanted a sister. My mom can't get along with her sister- I get so tired of hearing about that drama. My grandma got along with none of her sisters. My MIL has 6 sisters, and they are so annoying- all that yacking and talking about each other behind their backs. It would drive me insane. I vote for being the only girl with brothers any day- way less drama, I think.

Oh my gosh, you sound like my MIL! Shortly after we got engaged she told me, "A son is a son until he takes a wife, but a daughter is a daughter for the rest of your life." Basically she tried to preemptively give me a guilt trip for taking her son away from him. I had no intention of taking her son away from her. I could tell she was just trying to show me that she was going to try to graciously accept her fate, but it kind of ticked me off!

Some people are close to their siblings. Others have close friends. Sometimes we struggle making new friends. You just never know where life will take you. The best thing you can do is enjoy the present and be optimistic about the future. But remember, there is a lot you cannot control, so just try to enjoy the tide!

I am one of 5 kids, the second oldest, and 1 of 3 girls.

My daughter is an only girl and has two younger brothers.

Sure, I get time with my sisters getting pedicures, coffee, etc, but I also get plenty of time with my brothers. I love football, history, travel, etc....we all have things in common.

Also I am finding that as they get more involved in their adult relationships (one is engaged and one is seriously dating) that they are more open to doing family things versus partying.

All 4 of my siblings are my best friends, and I can't imagine having only sisters.

That's my family make up. All of the kids are close in age and play together. She plays the "boy" games, and the boys play her "girly" games. My daughter also tends to bond more with friends, where as the brothers are all perfectly content to only play with each other.

As for brother/sister relationships - I only have one brother, but we are very close. I talk to him on the phone every day and we share everything that the closest of sisters would share.

Stop trying to guess what her relationships will be in the future. I only have a sister, we see each other a few times a year, and talk maybe every other month. Just because we are the same gender doesn't mean we are close.