Very slightly early, Hannah’s baby
girl was born at 3am on Monday morning, 16th August – her c-section
was booked for Tuesday 17th August. I don’t have the details yet,
but here is a passage I would like to share with her, and all new mothers out
there – especially if you have given birth to a baby girl.
Mom and baby are well and healthy.
This is an extract from “A Daughter
for a fortnight” by Mrs. Robert Henry.
“There is a belief that every
woman first longs for a son, but a son, by the very nature of things is lost to
her after the tenderness of his early years. A woman who has no daughter of her
own misses most the intellectual companionship she can only obtain from an
adolescent version of herself. Our intelligence differs from that of men. It is
sometimes deeper and invariably more subtle. There is great satisfaction in
having continually at one’s side a daughter with whom one can share interests
and problems peculiar to one’s sex. For that reason, a daughter must be the
most precious of joys.
“It is true that a mother soon
loses her daughter by marriage, though her daughter’s marriage will be the very
thing she will strive for most.”
Photograph: Aloise Ireland
