FOUR GIRLS: ‘Are you disappointed not to have a boy?’

JOANNA MOORHEAD, 55, is married and has four daughters, Rosie, 26, Elinor, 24, Miranda, 20, and Catriona, 16

I have four daughters. That’s a sentence I feel incredibly proud to be able to say; and when I do say it, it usually gets the reaction: ‘Wow!’ (often, and especially if she’s female). ‘Four daughters! You’re so lucky.’ I am lucky. When I was a child, if anyone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always said a mother of four children (I came from a happy family of four children) and a journalist.

The icing on my cake was having four daughters, although I didn’t know it until I completed my family and had my youngest. But the same day my fourth daughter was born, my husband encountered a neighbour and told her the news. ‘Oh goodness,’ she said. ‘Are you very disappointed?’

My husband was perplexed and so was I when he related the story. I guess some people must have assumed that the reason we went on having children was because we wanted a boy. A friend, who had four daughters and a son – in that order – advised us to ‘keep trying’. In fact, I felt that I’d aimed for the stars and reached the heavens.

Even now there are still the naysayers, especially those who criticise me for being unecological by having four children. My response is that it all evens out in the end; I was one of four and only one of my siblings has children, so from my parents’ family of four came seven grandchildren.

But reaching the four I wanted wasn’t a straightforward trajectory; between daughter number two and daughter number three, I had three miscarriages. I knew I couldn’t keep on trying for ever – losing babies is tough – but I never lost sight of my dream family. And the more girls arrived, the more girls I wanted.

The day before I gave birth to my fourth daughter I finished reading Little Women with my second daughter, and I remember the tears rolling down my face as I realised how close I was to having the perfect family. By the following evening, I had it.