After having four daughters, my husband finally got the son he had been longing for.
After having four daughters, my husband finally got the son he had been longing for. But the moment he held our newborn baby boy for the first time, what he said made my stomach sink.
Clay and I had been together eight years, and from the start we both said we wanted a big family.
And he had always been strange about having a boy.
Before we were married he used to tell me that a house with only girls in it would never feel finished to him. More than anything he wanted a son — somebody to carry the name, and to make the picture he had in his head come out right.
And not long after the wedding I was pregnant.
And he was beside himself, and he had decided within about a week that this was going to be the boy.
And we had a girl.
And he loved her, obviously. And in the middle of all of it I could see the thing he was trying very hard to keep off his face.
"We'll give her a little brother one day," he said.
So we went again.
And again.
And about every year or so another daughter arrived, and he loved all four of them, and every single time we found out it was a girl I watched that same look come back.
And by then I was finished. Four pregnancies had taken what they take, and he got more set on it with every year that went by.
And there were times when I honestly wondered how many he expected us to have before he would accept that it might never happen.
And then I was pregnant for the fifth time.
And the second I showed him that test he had already decided.
"I can feel it. This time I'm getting my boy."
And this time he was right.
And months later, after a long and horrible delivery, they told us we had a healthy boy.
And I have never seen that man look the way he looked.
And the nurse put our son into his arms, and I thought there would be crying, or laughing, or that quiet finally.
And instead he looked at that baby's face, and bit by bit everything went out of him.
And then he turned to me and opened his mouth and said the thing.
What he said.
"I don't feel anything."
And then: "Why don't I feel anything?"
And he said it quietly and he was not being cruel and he was not accusing me of one thing.
He was asking me a question, with our son in his arms, about four minutes old, in a room at St Eadred's with a nurse eleven feet away.
And the eight years in which I never asked him about his father.
I knew Dermot Braddock for five of them. He was at our wedding and he came to this house about four times a year until 2022.
And he was hard work and everybody said so and nobody ever explained why.
And I never asked my husband one direct question about that man. Not in eight years.
And I have called that tact, which is what I called everything.
And in the June, when Clay finally told me about growing up as the one who was supposed to fix it, he said something at the end that was not a reproach and that landed like one.
He said: "I thought you knew."
And I said how would I have known.
And he said: "You met him."
Which is fair. I met that man about twenty times.
And I spent all twenty of them being pleasant and getting through it and then saying something in the car about how hard work he was.
And at no point did it occur to me to wonder what eighteen years of him had done to the person driving.
Why.
Dermot Braddock.
My husband's father, who died in 2022, and who had four daughters and then Clay.
That is the thing I had never once put together in eight years, and I want to be honest that it is not hidden information. I knew he had four older sisters. I have met all of them.
And Dermot waited eleven years for that boy, and by every account in that family it was the whole of his life until it happened.
And then it happened, and nothing changed.
He was the same man. The same temper, the same long silences, the same way of being in a room.
And Clay grew up as the thing that was supposed to have fixed his father, watching it not work, every day, for about eighteen years.
And he came out of that with a thing he has never said out loud until the October of 2025, which is that his father must have got the wrong son.
That is what eight years of this was. Not a name on a family tree.
A man of thirty-six trying to prove that the arrival of a boy fixes something — because if it does, then his father's problem was him, and if it does not, then his father was never going to be fixed by anybody.
And he held our son and found out which one it was in about four seconds.
And the nurse, who was eleven feet away.
She is called Immy and she is about twenty-six and she was on that shift from eight.
And she heard it. There is no version where she did not; that room is not big and he did not whisper.
And what she did, inside about four seconds, is turn round and start writing something on a chart that did not need writing on.
She gave that man his back.
And then about ten minutes later, when he was in the chair and crying, she came over to me — not to him — and asked whether I wanted a cup of tea, in a completely ordinary voice, as though it were four in the afternoon on any day.
And I said yes.
And she brought it and went out and shut the door.
And I have told forty people about the six words my husband said in that room, and not one of them has ever heard about Immy.
And in the November I wrote to that ward to thank them, which is a thing you do, and I named two of the midwives.
And I did not name her, because naming her would have meant explaining what she had done.
What happened next.
He did not put the baby down.
That is the part I did not take in at the time and which is the only reason I can write any of this calmly.
He said those six words and then he stood there for about another ten minutes holding him, and he did not hand him to the nurse and he did not hand him to me.
And then he sat down in the chair and he cried, properly, which that man does not do, and he said sorry about nine times.
And Gil is fourteen months old now and that man is better with him than he was with any of the girls at that age, and I think the reason is that he is not expecting him to do anything.
What I have told people.
That my husband looked at our newborn son and said I don't feel anything, and that it nearly finished us.
And I have told it about forty times, to my sister, to four women at the group, to my mother, and once to a woman at a soft play who I had met twenty minutes earlier.
And it is a very good story because of the shape of it — eight years, four daughters, the big moment, and then six words.
And in every one of those forty, I am the woman it was done to.
The fourth one.
And here is the thing I have not told one of those forty people.
After Floss was born in the November of 2023, I was told not to do it again.
Not told exactly. It was put to me, carefully, in a room, in the January of 2024, by somebody who was not being dramatic about it, and the words were about risk and about my body having done four in five years.
And it was not a prohibition and nobody can stop you. It was advice, properly given, written down.
And I did not tell Clay.
Fourteen months, from that room to the test in the February of 2025.
And he has never known, and he does not know now.
And what was actually in that room in the January of 2024.
I have described it as advice, properly given, written down. That is accurate.
And there is a part of it I have never repeated to anybody.
At the end she asked me whether my husband was coming to things, and I said he usually did but that he had the girls that morning.
And then she said: "Would you like me to put this in a letter, so you've got it to show him?"
And I said no, that was all right, I'd tell him.
She offered.
That woman sat opposite me and worked out, in about twenty minutes, exactly what the shape of my house was — four girls in five years and a husband who was not in the room — and she offered me a piece of paper to do it with.
And I said no thank you.
And she wrote it in my notes instead, which is where it has been ever since, which is where anybody could have found it, including me, at any point in fourteen months.
And I did not go back and look at it until the February of this year.
Why I did not tell him.
And this is where the whole of it actually is, and it took me a year and a woman called Sinéad on Wednesdays.
Because if I had told him, he would have stopped.
That is the thing. I know that man and he would have stopped that afternoon and never raised it again, and he would have been fine about it, and that would have been the end of the boy.
And then I would have been the wife who had four daughters and could not do any more.
And he would have been lovely about it for the rest of our lives.
And I could not have that.
So I came home from that appointment in the January of 2024 and I said it had all been fine, and about thirteen months later I handed that man a test.
And what I said to him in the February of 2025, when I handed him the test.
I have given that as a moment — the second I showed him — and I have never written down the staging of it.
I waited four days.
I knew on the Monday and I gave it to him on the Friday evening, with the girls in bed, and I had the stick in an envelope.
An envelope.
And I had thought about where — the kitchen or the front room — and I chose the front room because of the light and because he would be sitting down.
And I handed it to him and said something about how I had got him a present.
And he opened it and did what he did, and it was everything I had been imagining since the Monday.
And in the May, Sinéad asked me a question that I have not been able to put down since.
She asked what I had done with the four days.
And the answer is that I had them. That is what I did with them. I walked round a house with four daughters in it for four days holding the thing that was going to make his face do that.
And I would not give it up any sooner than I had to.
What I actually wanted.
Not a son. I want that down, because it is the bit people will get wrong.
I did not care. I have four daughters and I would have had four more and been happy.
What I wanted was to be the one who gave it to him.
Eight years of watching a man's face go at four separate scans, and being the reason every single time — and then a fifth, where I am not.
And on the ninth of October, 2025, I got it.
And four minutes later he said six words and the whole of it came apart in a hospital room, and it had nothing to do with me at all.
And what I felt — and this is the one I have never said to anybody, including Sinéad, until about the June — was not sympathy.
It was that he had taken it off me.
And the fourteen months between that room and the test, which I have put down as a gap.
They are not a gap. There is a shape to them and I went and found it in the May, because Sinéad asked me when I had decided.
In the March of 2024 I went back to the surgery about something else and did not raise it.
In the June I told my sister Kitty that we were done, out loud, in her kitchen, and meant it at the time.
In the September I stopped taking what I had been taking, and I did not tell anybody that either, and I told myself it was because it did not agree with me.
That is the date. The September of 2024. That is when it was decided, not the February of 2025.
And in the October of 2024 Clay said something at a wedding about how it was nice not having a baby in the house for once.
And I agreed with him.
I agreed with my husband, at a table, in the October of 2024, about being finished — four weeks after I had quietly made sure we were not.
And five months after that I handed him a test and watched his face.
Junie.
She is seven.
And the girls grew up in a house where everybody was waiting.
And I have always told myself that I protected them from it, and that whatever was going on in their father's face, their mother made sure they never felt second to a thing that did not exist.
And then in the March, Junie said something at the table.
We were talking about something to do with Gil and she said: "Is Daddy happy now?"
And I said of course he is.
And she said: "Because of Gil though."
Not a question. She was checking something she already thought.
And I said that Daddy is happy because of all of them.
And she said: "Okay," and ate her tea.
And the delivery, which I have called long and horrible in four words and moved past.
It was. And the reason I have never gone into it is not squeamishness.
It is that the detail of it is the receipt for the January of 2024.
They were careful with me from about the twenty-eighth week because of the four before, and there was a plan, and the plan was followed, and the people at St Eadred's were very good.
And it was still long and it was still horrible and there was a stretch of about ninety minutes where Clay was asked to step out.
And I have told nobody what that ninety minutes was, including him.
And at no point, before or during or after, did anybody in that building know that I had been advised against it fourteen months earlier, because it was not on anything in front of them and because I did not say.
I was asked, in the March of 2025, at the first appointment, whether there was anything from the previous pregnancies I wanted to flag.
And I said no.
And a woman wrote no concerns raised on a form and we moved on to the next thing.
What I had actually been saying.
For years.
***We're hoping to get you a little brother.***
And I had no idea how often I had said it until I made myself count, in the April, and the honest answer is that I cannot count it, because it was the standard explanation for everything in that house.
Why Mummy is tired. Why Mummy is at the hospital. Why there is a new baby coming. Why Daddy has gone quiet.
***A little brother.***
I used that phrase, to four girls under eight, for about five years, as the reason for every difficult thing that happened to them.
And I have been going round saying that I protected them from their father's thing.
I translated it for them. Into language they could use.
And Junie Braddock, who is seven, worked out on her own, somewhere between the November of 2023 and the March of this year, that the four of them were the thing being got through.
And the four girls, who I have had in this as a count.
***Another daughter arrived.*** That is the phrase in my own account and I did not notice writing it.**
Junie is seven and she reads at night under the covers and thinks nobody knows.
Bette is six and cannot be told anything twice.
Wilda is four and has been calling herself a different name since the summer and will not answer to the other one.
Floss is two.
And in the April, when I was going through what I had actually said to them over the years, I did another thing I did not enjoy, which is that I went through the photographs.
And there are about four hundred from 2019 to 2024 and they are lovely and that house is full of them.
And there is not one single photograph in five years of the four of them together with their father in which somebody is not pregnant or holding a newborn.
Not one. I looked for forty minutes.
There was never a stretch. There was never a year where the four of them were just the four of them and the thing was not going on.
And I arranged every one of those years.
Clay.
He has been in the worst year of his life and he has done it well.
He saw somebody from the January and he still does, which took a lot, because of the house he grew up in.
And in the June he told me something that I have not been able to put anywhere.
He said that from about 2021 he had known it was not really about a boy.
Not the whole of it, and not in words. But enough that he had, twice — once in 2021 and once in the spring of 2024 — nearly said to me that we should stop.
Twice.
And in the spring of 2024 is three or four months after I sat in a room and was advised not to do it again and said nothing.
So there were about eight weeks in the early part of 2024 where both of us were separately, silently, about four words from ending it.
And neither of us said them.
And I am the one who then went and got pregnant.
And the four scans, which are in the first part of this as the moments I watched his face go.
And I have told those as four occasions when something was done to me.
And in the June I made myself remember what I did in the room, each time, in the thirty seconds after.
And it is the same thing four times.
I apologised.
Not in those words. The first time, in 2019, I said something like sorry, love, under my breath, with a woman still holding a scanner on me.
And by the fourth one, in 2023, it had turned into a particular sort of joke that I made before he could say anything — something about how he was outnumbered, said in a light voice, in a room, lying down.
Four times, over five years, I got in first and made it funny so that neither of us would have to look at what was on his face.
And I have described him, for eight years, as a man who could not hide his disappointment.
He never had to hide it. It was handled for him, in the room, within thirty seconds, every single time, by me.
His sisters.
There are four of them and they are between forty-one and forty-nine and I have known them for eight years.
And after Gil was born, two of them said something to me within a fortnight that I did not understand at the time.
Bernadette said: "Is he all right? Honestly?"
And Mairead, separately, on the telephone, said: "He'll be a bit strange about it, love. Don't take it to heart."
They knew.
All four of them grew up in that house and they knew exactly what the arrival of a boy was going to do to their brother, and two of them came and told me, in the only way they had, inside a fortnight.
And I said that he was fine and thank you for asking.
And the forty tellings, which began at St Eadred's.
My sister, on the telephone, on the tenth of October, about nineteen hours after.
And by that point I had slept for about two hours and Gil was eighteen hours old and Clay had gone home to get the girls to school.
And I gave her the whole of it, with the six words in it, and Kitty said what anybody would say.
She said: "He said what?"
And I have had that reaction, in some form, about forty times since.
And what it does — and it took me until the summer to see it — is that it puts everybody who hears it on my side of a line, immediately, before they know one other thing about that man.
I have been introducing my husband to people, for fourteen months, with the worst four seconds of his life.
Including to two women at a group he does not know I go to.
And he has never once asked me what I say about it, and he would not, and he never will.
And he is in that house every evening being extraordinary with a baby.
And the last thing.
The name.
We had a boy's name picked out and we had had it since about 2019.
Dermot. After his father.
And it had been on every list for five years and it was not even a conversation; it was simply what the boy was going to be called if there ever was one.
And on the eleventh of October, 2025, two days after, when they brought the forms round, Clay said he did not want it.
And he did not explain and I did not ask, because by then I had worked some of it out.
And we called him Gil, which is after nobody.
And in the August I was going through a box and I found the list.
It is a bit of paper from 2019 with about nine girls' names on it in my handwriting, and one boy's name at the bottom.
And it is not in my handwriting.
He wrote it. On my list, at some point in 2019, in a different pen.
And he has crossed it out.
Not in 2025 — the ink is the same age as the writing, and it is a single line, and it is gone over twice.
May you like
So somewhere in 2019, on a kitchen table, my husband wrote his father's name down and then crossed it out again.
And then said nothing about it for six years, and let me go on believing that was what our son was going to be called.
