BIRTH - GIRLS

‘Pammy’ Buchanan

…after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.
‘I suppose she talks, and eats, and everything.’
‘Oh yes.’ She looked at me absently. ‘Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?’
‘Very much.’
‘It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about – things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. “All right,” I said, “I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool – that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.

F.Scott Fitzgerrald, The Great Gatsby

BIRTH - BOYS

The baby showed up thirty-six hours later, at four in the morning. He weighed nearly a stone. Guy was allowed a brief visit to Hope’s suite. Looking back at it now, he had an image of mother and son mopping themselves down with gloating expressions on their faces, as if recovering from some enjoyably injudicious frolic: a pizza fight, by the look of it. Two extra specialists were present. One was peering between Hope’s legs saying, ‘Yes, well, it’s rather hard to tell what goes where.’ The other was incredulously measuring the baby’s head. Oh, the little boy was perfect in every way. And he was a monster.

Martin Amis, London Fields