After 200 years ... it’s a girl!
By Becky Dickinson
WHEN little Myla Lawrie was brought home from hospital four months ago, a veritable sea of pink greeted her, with clouds of balloons filling the sitting room, along with cards, bunting and ribbons in every shade of girliness.
For this was a very special event in the Lawrie family. When Myla was born in October, she was the first girl to be born in her family since 1809.
The last time a midwife announced ‘It’s a girl’, the Napoleonic war was still being fought, the motorcar was yet to be invented, and ‘mad’ King George III was on the English throne.
No wonder her proud parents — Hannah, a 26-year- old midwife, and Mark, a 33- year- old professional golfer turned coach, from Maidstone in Kent — wanted to celebrate.
‘When Mark and I first got together, he told me how everyone in his family, for five generations, had produced boys,’ explains Hannah. ‘He warned me that the chances of us ever having a daughter were pretty remote.’
True to form, when Hannah became pregnant in 2012, no one was surprised when Mason, who’s now three, was born.
Looking back over the family tree, Hannah could see why everyone was so convinced. The last girl to be born in the Lawrie family was Mason’s great-great-great Aunt Bessie, born more than 200 years ago in the same year as Charles Darwin.
Bessie and her brother had had sons, and so the pattern had continued, all the way down to Mark and his brother Glenn. Mark has two other boys, ten-year-old Ben and seven-year- old Zac, from a previous relationship, while Glenn had one son, Reece, who’s 14.
‘I even questioned whether there could be a genetic condition that meant Mark produced only male sperm,’ says Hannah.
‘I asked numerous doctors and consultants in the hospital where I work if this was the case, but was told time and again that it wasn’t. Every time a baby is conceived, the chances of it being a girl are 50/50, they told me — but in Mark’s family, for some reason, it never was.’
While it has been long suspected that men who come from families with plenty of males have higher odds of fathering boys, and that for men with many sisters, it is vice versa, there has never been any stong scientific explanation as to why.
In a study published in the journal Evolutionary Biology, the researcher, Corry Gellatly, examined the histories of more than 900 American and European families, dating back to 1600, involving more than half a million people.
A child’s sex is always determined by the father. While women produce eggs that carry an X chromosome, male sperm cast the deciding chromosome — either an X or a Y.
Mr Gellatly found evidence that men carry a gene that determines the percentage of X and Y chromosomes in their sperm. One version of this gene produces mostly X chromosomes, another mostly Y, and a third yields equal numbers of both. But even carrying a gene that predisposes men to more sons or daughters is no guarantee of the sex of a baby — in the same way that rolling a rigged die with a six on four of its faces is no guarantee of landing a six.
DEspERATE to improve their chances of having a girl, Hannah came across the shettles Method, developed by an American doctor in the sixties, which claims the timing of conception can help determine the baby’s sex.
This is based on evidence that male sperm (Y chromosome) are faster, weaker and have a shorter lifespan than female sperm (X chromosome), which are slower but survive for longer. This means that having sex before ovulation, rather than during, should increase the likelihood of conceiving a girl, as only the female sperm will survive long enough to penetrate the egg.
Hannah used ovulation kits to work out when she was ovulating. Love-making was allowed only early on in Hannah’s cycle. As soon as the kit showed she was approaching ovulation, intercourse was banned for the rest of the month.
Hannah admits it was far from romantic, but says she wanted to give it their best shot.
Hannah fell pregnant straight away but was convinced the technique hadn’t worked and that she was expecting another boy. The couple even sorted out all Mason’s clothes into age order ready for when the new baby was born.
‘I spent £65 on a gorgeous cot mobile with blue and green cars and lorries, and we’d bought a blue buggy and a blue car seat.’
As a midwife, Hannah has delivered more than 200 babies and admitted to feeling pangs of envy every time it was a girl.
she says: ‘I adore the boys, but I’d write up my
notes, while listening to the new mum bonding with her daughter, and be filled with longing, wishing it could be me one day — yet truly believing it never would be.’
Hannah has always been extremely close to her own mum, Tracey Hayden, and craved the same kind of relationship with a daughter of her own one day.
Then, at the 20-week scan, they received the astonishing news that they were expecting a girl.
‘I was in a state of disbelief,’ says Hannah. ‘I kept asking the sonographer if she was sure.
‘Mark was so emotional he was in tears, crying that it was a gift from his Dad — who, sadly, passed away just before I fell pregnant. He’d told us he’d love a granddaughter.’
Despite the sonographer’s assurances, Hannah spent the rest of the pregnancy struggling to accept that her desire for a daughter really was about to come true.
‘I must have had about 16 scans,’ she says. ‘Whenever I’d finish a night shift, I’d beg one of the doctors to give me another one, just to make sure,’ she says. But it was only when her baby was finally placed on her chest following an emergency Caesarean at 39 weeks, that she truly believed it.
‘The first thing I asked was: “Is it definitely a girl?”’
And while it’s often hard to tell the sex of young babies once they’re dressed, there has never been any mistaking Myla’s gender. The little girl has, Hannah admits, a wardrobe to rival a Disney princess, with dozens of flowery dresses, patterened tights, butterfly hairclips, frilly tutus and pink fluffy slippers.
Myla never leaves the house without wearing a headband — pink, of course — and Hannah has traded in Mason’s blue buggy and car seat for pink ones.
The nursery glistens with every shade of pink, from the marshmallow rug to the candyfloss chest of drawers and changing table.
A powder-pink gingham bumper surrounds the cot, teamed with a pink blanket with embroidered hearts. The cars and lorries mobile has been replaced by one with pink elephants and giraffes. There’s even a canvas, surrounded by fairy lights, with Myla’s name which lights up in pink — a gift from Hannah’s sister, 23-year-old Ellie.
Of course, there is still an abundance of cars, tractors, Thomas the Tank Engines, Lightning McQueen and golf equipment around the house. Hannah loves her boys as much as she loves her daughter, but she can’t resist the urge to splash out on pretty things, and has sold bundles of Mason’s outgrown clothes on eBay to fund her newfound love of all things pink.
She says: ‘I know it’s over-the-top, but I can’t resist.’
Mark is equally besotted. ‘He thinks I’m a genius for producing a daughter,’ says Hannah.
With three big brothers to look after her, Myla is never going to be short of protectors. Hannah says they are all very protective, but especially Mason, who tells people who pick up his precious sister to put her back immediately.
Hannah’s biggest worry now is that her daughter will turn out to be a tomboy.
Mark teases her, saying she’s bound to end up a professional golfer, but Hannah already has plans to sign her up to ballet classes on her second birthday.
‘I really enjoyed dancing when I was a child, and I’d love for Myla to do the same,’ she says.
Hannah is also looking forward to the days when Mark and the boys go off to play 18 holes, and she is able to enjoy shopping trips with her daughter.
One thing she’s certain of, though, is that her family is complete.
‘If I’d had another boy, I might have had another shot at a girl. But now that I’ve got one of each, I’ve got everything I’ve ever wanted.’
Hannah will never know if her ovulation kits did the trick. But whether by luck, or science, the 200-year Lawrie family boy spell has finally been broken.