I never thought I wanted kids. To be honest, the thought has always kind of terrified me, and it took me getting pregnant to finally understand why…

I’ve always said that I would never have children. I didn’t want the responsibility, the burden, the change. I was adamant. Fast forward to the year of my 32nd birthday – 2020. I had a conversation with my husband and asked him if he still felt the same way. His answer changed but not entirely to a black or white option – “I’d be happy either way”, he said. “I’ve always sort of thought it would be cool to have a kid, but my life wouldn’t be ruined if we didn’t”. As I approached my mid-thirties I started to feel pretty much the same way. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid that at some point I’d completely change my mind and it would be too late. I mean sure, some women have babies as late as 40, but I knew that I didn’t want that. 33 was my cut-off age. By that time I either had to go for it or decide that I would be childless forever. But there was more going on in my mind than I think even I realized that kept me from the idea of having kids…

For the last several years, I thought that I could be infertile. I thought this to the point of telling close friends and even my mother that perhaps I was incapable of getting pregnant. This didn’t make a whole lot of sense since I was on birth control for the last several years, but I still thought that since I’d never had a scare that it was a possibility. I had known a handful of people that had gotten pregnant while on birth control, and I knew that I wasn’t always the best at taking my pill at precisely the same time every day and even had skipped days by accident. I wonder now if this thought was part of my aversion to the idea of having kids. If I couldn’t get pregnant physically, it was easier to accept if I didn’t actually want it. But after becoming pregnant in December (surprise!) I realized this wasn’t the only thing holding me and my heart back.

In June of 2020, I decided to stop taking the pill. A few factors played into this decisions including my age, my past tobacco use and the fact that my husband and I were opening up more and more to the idea of having a child. July was my first month without the pill after taking it for about 11 years. The transition was not easy at first. I got terrible acne, had bouts of anxiety and insomnia and all-in-all it took a few months to feel like I was back to myself. Once the transition period was over though, I felt great. I had more energy, less anxiety and felt like a fog had been lifted from my brain. I was stoked! I decided after about a month to try and track my cycle using my calendar on my phone, and my husband and I decided that if we were meant to have a child that it would happen and vice versa. This ended up being tricky since my cycle was highly irregular. My first period came like clockwork, but every other cycle after that ranged from 30-50 days in length. This made it almost impossible to track my ovulation window making pregnancy a very high possibility. By December of 2020, I was about 40 days into my cycle when I experienced light spotting and thought it was time for that time of the month. Little did I know that this was the first sign of the biggest change of the rest of our lives.

When I finally decided to take a pregnancy test I was terrified. I pretty much already knew that the test would come back positive, I could just feel it in my body – something was up. Sure enough the test came back positive, and I prepared myself to tell my husband when he got home from work. But there was something weighing heavy on my heart, something that I finally realized was probably the biggest and most effectual reason for me being afraid to get pregnant – I couldn’t call my mom. And to me, this feels a little whiny because my mom is still alive and many first time moms don’t even have that option, but in my situation I couldn’t call my mom. She was going through stuff, and still is.. Stuff like alcoholism. I didn’t want to call her and tell her like that, it wasn’t supposed to happen that way, and I wasn’t sure that if I did that she’d even remember. It broke my heart and it still does. Feeling like she’s not here for me is one of the hardest things I’ve had to go through with this pregnancy. And feeling like I can’t call her and ask her all my questions or hear about her experiences makes it feel like she’s not here, or maybe it feels even worse because she is but she isn’t available to me like that. I don’t know. It’s something I’m still majorly struggling with, and I’m not sure it will ever get better. But I’m certain now that this is one of the biggest reasons I’ve been so afraid to be a mother – not being able to rely on my own.

In the end, I’m excited to be having a child. I’m terrified, but I’m excited. I know that even with all of my doubts and all of my negative feelings, that I’m experiencing what many other first time moms experience and that it’s okay to feel this way. I am happy overall, and I think that’s what matters. I’m just taking it day by day now and giving myself a whole lot of grace and time to process this huge event in my life. I will be posting my thoughts here, since much of what I read online about pregnancy and motherhood seems so perfect and cliche. I hope that maybe someday someone like me will read it and know that they’re not alone as I’m sure I’m not either.