To sincerely hope motherhood is not the best thing I will ever do?

[purplebiro]

I'm 12 weeks pregnant, recently announced on FB and an old school friend commented "congrats - it's the best thing you'll ever do". AIBU to really want to reply "I sincerely fucking hope not"?

I know she was trying to be nice and I am delighted about the pregnancy but I am also highly intelligent, ambitious and hard working - if the best thing I'm ever going to do is with my womb, I might as well give up now. AND I doubt anyone would ever say that to a man.

Good luck with it all purple

Breed- to produce offspring, to give birth.
Look it up.

Only read op.

My children are the best thing I have ever done or will ever do. Hands down no contest. I have many other achievements, but the lives I've created and the wonderful people they are is incomparable.

Dementedma... it's not one or the other - mother v actual person! Becoming a parent will in nearly all cases change your life in some very clear ways (as I described in a PP). However, that doesn't mean that all other aspects of your life cease to exist, not true at all. It's possible to be extremely maternal and also be a career person, for example.

as a feminist I have spent my life defining my worth by my abilities and capacity to act on them - fertility isn't something that I ever considered an "ability"

Me neither. I never was able to get pregnant. I still have a child, though no childbirth was involved (on my part at least!).

I have been finance director of a very large multinational advertising group, I've set up my own business from scratch, I have been a trustee of a womens hostel. I consider myself to have been very good at all of these things and took much pleasure in them and helped a few people along the way.

But watching my DS overcome his start in life, help him where i can, revel in his little victories and commiserate with his failures and yes just enjoy him, has indeed been the best thing I have done so far and may well yet prove to be the best thing I ever do. I haven't really done much except hang on for the ride - I didn't do anything to earn the privilege of helping him grow up, I was just lucky.

And when I'm dead and gone DS will hopefully tell his children stories of his childhood and the good times he will remember and I will have helped him make those memories.

On the other hand there are companies I worked at for years who would struggle to remember my name already.

Maybe I'd feel differently if I were to discover a cure for cancer but as it is I feel that making a difference to one persons life can be every bit a life changing and rewarding as making a difference to 10,000.

Or maybe my DS really is 10,000 times more special than everyone else as I have long suspected.

When I look at my 26 year old and 24 year old and all they have achieved and what fantastic people they have turned out to be , I KNOW that raising them was the best thing I have ever done. That and marrying their wonderful father.

My children are the best thing I have ever done. They are almost 20 and almost 18 now, so I have seen them through most things.

With DS1 I have seen him from a newborn baby to starting the career he said he was going to have when he was 7. He is a very happy, confident, well adjusted young man. There have been ups and downs along the way, but in the main it has been relatively plain sailing. On the day he passed out in to the army 6 weeks ago, I looked at him in his uniform, shed a little tear and thought "yeah, we've done well!"

With DS2 we are guiding him through his application for university. It's not an easy process, he knows the course he wants, he's known for a long time, but he needs us to help him. I am so proud of him, he works on a Sunday and stays late because the boy he works with has problems reading and writing, DS2 helps him off his own back.

I am bloody proud of what DH and I have achieved with our boys, they are amazing.

Apols to you and to anyone else that I offended with that

OP, you certainly didn't offend me, but I do think your feminism needs a bit of work on it. Just because some jobs have naturally fallen to women and, as such, are unprestigious, this does not mean that are not truly important and vital.

Skim-read the thread.

I've done a degree, completed a PhD, got married, had two kids and gone back to work.

When I tally up the things I'm proud of, my PhD is at the top. I love my kids very much and I'm proud of them, as I think they're turning out to be wonderful little people. But who knows if any of that is down to me? They could have just been awesome anyway. I'm delighted that they ARE, but it's not my achievement - it's theirs.

Hence, I am most proud of slogging away and persevering and earning the fucking right to call myself a doctor. It gave the mental fortitude I need to be a parent and I would not be as good a parent as I am if I hadn't done it.

So op, I do kind of get what you mean. I don't want my life to be all about my role as a parent, although inevitably a large proportion of it is. Being a parent is part of my life and personality, not all of it.

Hollie, seriously. It's his birthday this month so I could actually tell you what day this happened on in 2009. Do you know why? Because it was my life and it was a very painful experience for me. One of the reasons I asked for it to be deleted was I read it over and over and I knew this was unhealthy for me, so I have a pretty good memory of what it said, and if you read my post and yours, you'll see they really aren't radically different interpretations of the event. It was mentioned that the medical staff would make certain investigations and I did specifically ask what they'd be looking at, but so what? Read my 'unfair' interpretation that drew you out here to defend someone who wasn't even being maligned. Where is this terrible slur being made on someone who wasn't named, in a context where reasonably, anyone in my position would expect NO ONE to remember it. If you look at how it arose on this thread, it came up purely by chance as other posters mentioned how AIBU can be tough for the uninitiated. I don't think this has even been mentioned by me in AT LEAST two years, and a total of maybe three times in five years. Do you read every thread on Mumsnet, seriously?

It is entirely irrelevant that someone who was not even named is considered to be helpful to others, how bizarre... and frankly the fact you know who it is on the basis of the details shared when I have a new name and it is FIVE years on suggests there is an unhealthy cultishness from some on the breastfeeding boards about some regulars! Yikes!!

Kewcumber

This is twice today a poster has made me cry you sound like the most fantastic mum, I had one of those and you are so right about your ds, he will tell the world of your greatness.
Have another

fairy you paint a picture of middle class parenting that makes me feel slightly nauseous (sorry)

Apologies for derailing. Just actually shocked. Good luck to you purple, buy those baby converse, you won't regret these tiny things. I need to hide this thread and seriously consider what the hell I strayed into AIBU for. Change your name to something with Elephant in it Hollie, won't you? Man.

At 12 weeks having a baby is still pretty abstract. You probably don't have a bump, you haven't felt the baby move etc etc.

Having a baby changes you in ways that you never expected and cannot prepare for. It's very early days for you op. Just wait until you are eating in shifts with dp and rocking a baby to sleep for an hour for the third time that night. It's just too early to be making such sweeping statements. Sorry. I think you'll eat your words.

Area52- I think that's very mean to fairy

why would you say my thread was boak-tastic arena? Just because I think that growing another human being inside me is an amazing gift, really? How stupid is that.

Motherhood is the best thing I've ever done. Yes I love my career but no career is better than a new life.

This thread is full of people trying to get one up on each other by being oh so edgy" where really the gift of life is far far better.

Having a baby changes you in ways that you never expected and cannot prepare for

Yup, totally agree. My mum said something to me once about the love you feel for your child - she said there is nothing like it and no-one can prepare you for the love you feel.

My God, was she right.

There are so many wonderful bits of being a parent - nurturing this little person, seeing them grow and develop, watching their personalities come through, the hugs, kisses and cuddles, all the 'firsts' etc etc. But it's the LOVE which is so, so amazing. That depth of love you feel for them and that they have for you. To them, you are their world, they don't care what you look like, no-one else will do.

Even after a bad day, when you look in to your beautiful soundly sleeping child, it's the best thing in the world.

If I do nothing else with my life, if my dc grow up happy and healthy that is more than enough for me.

Why do some women think they need to do that? but i suppose lots of "people" have nasty traits.

Well I'm an intelligent and ambitious woman who reached a senior position in a highly male-dominated profession by the age of 31. I earned more than my husband when I met him.

I can categorically say that having my DD (now 13) is by far the most challenging, satsfying and rewarding thing I've ever done.

But I didn't think that 13,10, 7 or even 5 years ago. So IME your friend is completely correct - just not yet .

area we're not middle classed at all, we're far, far from it!

What a horrible thread, yabu.

Oh and what's with all this intelligence snobbery? Being intelligent doesn't make you a better person.

Motherhood to me is a bit like dreaming and wanting to travel to your dreamed of destination EVER.

You have saved up for years to go to Tahiti/New Zealand/Austraila/Lapland/New York or wherever you choose. You have bored your family and friends with your dreams and tacked maps on the walls and bought all the kit to go trekking/mountain climbing/shopping.

Then you get there.

Oh wow! The views! The shopping! The sea is sooo blue! Incredible! Look at me. I am here!

Then you travel to the next town and there is graffiti everywhere, the food is shit and hoodies on every corner and you cannot sleep because the music is blaring out at all hours.

Go to another town and FANTASTIC the views, the food, the people are just amazing. I want to live here for ever!

The next village is full of mumbling, grumpy locals who HATE you.

You have invested all your savings in this trip and people expect soo many funny stories.

You can't say some of it was really pretty shit to be honest...........but hey the view from here is amazing!