While your grief is very understandable, at the same time, even if you’d had a daughter the likelihood that she would like you and/or share your personality traits is pretty slim. In fact, daughters often rebel against their mothers more than they do their fathers. And the more the mother wants her daughter to be in her image, the more the girl resists. It happened with my mother and me. Which was very sad for both of us.

You can mourn the idealised dream you had, but take comfort that even had you birthed a girl, she probably wouldn’t have turned into that ideal mother’s best friend anyway.