I kept having children until I had a daughter: I tried everything until I read about a method that made me conceive a girl – and I’m not ashamed about it

A woman’s 16-week scan is always a tense moment. There I was, in the autumn of 2021, lying on the examination table as the ­sonographer slid the ultrasound wand over my belly.

Suddenly she stopped, and turned to me with a smile.

‘Do you want to know the sex?’ she asked.

Did I?! I’d thought of nothing else for the past ten weeks, since I found out I was pregnant. Actually, I’d been thinking about it for months before that, when we started thinking about trying for another baby. I’d prayed, begged, bartered and pleaded with the universe, fate – anything – to give me the answer I wanted.

‘Congratulations, you’re having a little boy,’ she said. And I promptly burst into tears.

Because I had three children already, all of them boys, and what I really, really wanted was a little girl.

I know many people will take a dim view of me at this point, ­especially those who’ve struggled with infertility, but hear me out. I fiercely love all of my boys – Aston, who’s six, LJ, five, Rocco, three, and now two-year-old Ace – but if we women are really honest, what we all want, deep down, is a daughter.

And by goodness I’d done everything I could to have one. I’d bought books, consulted astrological charts, popped cod liver oil tablets, joined various Facebook groups on the topic and presided over a strictly scheduled sex rota like a project manager. And yet here I was, about to welcome another son into our lives. Did the disappointment I felt really make me evil and selfish?

Even then, as I wiped the gel off my tummy, zipped up my jeans and thought about getting all the baby boy clothes back out of the loft, I knew I’d keep going. I would keep having babies until I had my little girl.

Growing up with my brother and sister, I was a tomboy who loved football and was happy in male company.

Yet as I got older – I’m now 35 – I adored the mother-daughter bond

I have with my own mum and longed to experience the same with a little girl of my own.

I fiercely love all of my boys  – but if we women are really honest, what we all want, deep down, is a daughter

There’s a saying, isn’t there: a son is your son until he finds a wife, a daughter is a daughter for life.

I met my husband Liam, who’s a firefighter, when we were both 16, and we knew we’d have children (note the plural) one day and agreed one of each would be ideal.

We were incredibly lucky, and ­having babies came easily to me. My pregnancies are always stress free, and I’ve never had ­morning sickness.

At the first 16-week scan in 2017, when I was 28, we were both really excited when we learned we were having a boy. At the second one in 2019, we thought it was lovely for Aston to have a little brother.

But at the third one in 2020 I was really upset and couldn’t hide it, however much I kept telling myself how lucky I was to have two – soon to be three – healthy children. I sobbed to Liam asking him what was wrong with us – why couldn’t we have a girl?

Liam tried to reassure me life would be fine with three boys; while he would have liked a girl, he would have been happy to stop at three. But he agreed we could try for another baby if I really wanted.

And I did; we bought bunk beds for our five-bedroom house in Bristol and vowed to keep on going to have that elusive ‘other one’.

The family with dad Liam – who Francesca thinks exhaled ‘thank God!’ under his breath when they found out they were having a girl

By the fourth ‘disappointment’ that day in Autumn 2021, even Liam was getting frustrated. As the ­sonographer delivered the news that saw me burst into tears, he let out a small sigh, knowing our family was not complete.

Yet to me, it didn’t matter that our already stretched finances might not be able to accommodate another child.

My mum didn’t mask her feelings either. When I announced I was ­having a fourth boy, I think her response was: ‘Oh Jesus Christ, not another one!’

After Ace was born, I knew we had to get serious about our attempts to conceive a girl.

As well as taking cod liver oil, as it’s said to make the uterus more ­favourable for sperm carrying the female chromosome, we’d tried what’s called the Babydust Method. It involves tracking your ovulation so that you have sex at the exact ­correct moment according to the sex of child you’d prefer.

If you want a girl, it suggests ­having sex two to three days before ovulation, whereas having sex as close to ovulation as possible is said to lead to conceiving a boy. This is because sperm carrying male chromosomes (Y) are faster ‘swimmers’, meaning they get to the egg first, but they die off quicker. So having sex days before ovulation gives the longer-lasting ‘female sperm’ a stronger chance.

The author claims to have a 78 per cent success rate. Unfortunately I was in the 22 per cent of women for whom it didn’t work.

I was holding Liam’s hand as she stopped the wand and turned to me and said the words I’d waited forever to hear: ­‘Congratulations, you are having a ­little girl.’

While most of my friends were ­sympathetic, there are of course women who don’t understand the visceral desire to have a daughter.

I even had one school mum friend tell me not to worry as, for all I knew, one of my sons might later identify as a girl. While I know she was trying to be kind, I’m afraid I was speechless with horror at her insensitivity.

So, when baby boy four was born in February 2022, I gave myself six months to recover and that September I looked into gender selection. This is where embryos conceived via IVF are gender tested before being implanted in the mother’s womb, meaning, in our case, we could choose only the female embryos.

I know it is a bit of a taboo subject – the practice is illegal in the UK, though not in some other countries such as the US – but this was ­important to me. I researched the countries that do allow it and discovered clinics in Ukraine and Cyprus.

I spoke to an adviser at a clinic in Cyprus, where I was told I would be eligible.

The cost was nearly £5,000, excluding travel and accommodation. Beforehand, I had to undergo tests costing £850 at a Bristol fertility clinic to ensure my eggs were healthy enough.

It was a lot of money when we already had four healthy children but my attitude was: we can do this and know we are going to have a girl, or we keep on trying. And how much would that cost?

All my fertility tests came back positive, which was no surprise. But by then it was November 2022, so rather than investing any more money then, we decided to enjoy Christmas, get through winter and start the process with the Cyprus clinic in March.

Yet even though I’d opted for gender selection, I was still a member of various Facebook groups about how to ensure your baby’s gender, one of which follows the lunar method. It uses astrology to track our cycles with the moon and pinpoints the right point during the lunar cycle to have sex, depending on whether you want a boy or a girl. To be honest, I knew it was probably a load of nonsense, but when I saw that my cycle lined up with the full moon in February, creating an eight-hour window to create a girl, I thought ‘Why not?’

I called Liam home from work, because we had to have sex immediately.

Two weeks later I had a slight bleed. I’d never had it with the boys and didn’t think much of it at the time, but I now know it was implantation bleed (light spotting or bleeding as a fertilised egg attaches to the uterus lining).

When my period didn’t arrive we underwent a private test to see if there was ‘male DNA’ in my blood, which would indicate that I was carrying a male baby; if there wasn’t any then it meant we were having a girl. It’s said to be 99 per cent accurate.

When the email came back announcing I was having a girl I had to sit down. I was in utter shock and then cried my eyes out for what seemed like an age. I had longed for a daughter for such a long time, there were moments I’d feared it would never happen. After six years I couldn’t believe it was true.

At 12 weeks we had another ­private scan costing £100, which again confirmed we were having a girl. Yet I wanted to be absolutely sure, so I sourced yet another clinic in Birmingham who ­specialise in gender scans at 14 weeks for £65. Although this was the fifth time I’d laid on that examination couch, watching the sonographer and the black and white image on the screen, I was incredibly nervous.

I was holding Liam’s hand as she stopped the wand and turned to me and said the words I’d waited forever to hear: ­‘Congratulations, you are having a ­little girl.’

This time there were tears of joy – from both of us. While Liam was as over the moon as I was, I’m pretty sure I heard him exhale ‘thank God!’ under his breath.

I emailed the gender clinic to let them know we wouldn’t be ­needing their services after all!

I was unbelievably careful throughout the pregnancy, and Penelope – a name I’d had on hold for nine years after ‘stealing’ it from my sister, who I’d had to discourage from using it for any of her daughters all this time – arrived at 38 weeks.

As I gave birth to her, I cried.

Afterwards, I insisted that the midwife verified she really was a girl. Holding my daughter in my arms for the first time was utterly overwhelming, and as a mum I felt complete.

Within five hours of her birth, I’d posted a picture of Penelope across my social media accounts looking utterly adorable in a pink hat and pink tutu.

Today, nine months on, Penelope is the light of my life. I’m so pleased to be a ‘girl mum’ at last, and have been thoroughly enjoying myself, dressing her up in beautiful little outfits.

Her brothers are obsessed with her. Whenever we’re sitting down to eat or are in the car, I’ll say: ‘Who is the prettiest girl in the world?’ And everyone chimes in: ‘Penelope!’

As far as I’m concerned, our family is now complete, yet Liam is refusing to have a vasectomy.

I say it’s not much to ask given I have given birth five times, but he says he can’t face having it done. So we’re just being extra careful.

I feel so happy and extraordinarily blessed. I was delighted with my boys but having a girl is my absolute dream come true.

And while you may judge me for saying so, since having Penelope I’ve heard from so many other mothers of boys confiding that they secretly wish they’d kept going like I did in order to have their dream daughter, too. I’m just glad that I never gave up.

• As told to Samantha Brick