I don’t think it’s that helpful for people to comment when they clearly don’t understand and are in a much better position mentally, physically and emotionally, it’s very hard to be proactive and positive when you are struggling and feeling overwhelmed and depressed as the OP clearly is.
She mentions having no real support and not being in her home country and your comment about how you aren’t feeling the same as her is literally based on you having support which you acknowledge.
I don’t think it is that simple to say it’s obvious about how hard motherhood is when as a childfree person I constantly get told how worthwhile it is, how I’m missing out and how nothing else matters when “you experience the greatest love you’ve ever known”.
I was lucky to have multiple friends with children who were honest about how hard they found things and I witnessed it so no amount of love was making me sacrifice my freedom or being depended on by someone else constantly and having to put myself second. I get told that’s selfish but I think most humans are intrinsically selfish and that’s why a lot of people struggle.
Also as a pp says some people just aren’t touchy feely and don’t realise how difficult it will be to be constantly needed and climbed on and followed around. A lot of my friends have children in bed with them every night just to get some sleep and are constantly exhausted because the kids are even lying on them or holding onto them through the night. Their marriages suffer because they say they are just “mummy and daddy” now and their marriage constantly comes second.
I think you are in quite a privileged position to have the support you do and a huge amount of men don’t split childcare fairly, my parents used to look after my niece and nephew when my sister was at work until she finished when her husband started work early and finished mid afternoon, they would pick up the kids from school and have them till she finished work because her husband said he needed rest after such an early start!
I don’t know anyone who didn’t have to juggle things massively just to go to the gym for an hour, they would have laughed at the idea of running a marathon.
The only person I know who got to live a life similar to before having children was my sister and that’s only because of the massive amount of support and childcare she got from my parents and seeing the strain on them meant even if I wanted children I wouldn’t have felt comfortable doing the same to them.
I also have friends who were offered a lot of support but wouldn’t accept it and gave up everything to dedicate their lives to their kids. We couldn’t even meet for a quick coffee without them bringing their kids along despite offers to babysit and now the kids are grown up and doing their own thing they resent it and wish they had kept up with friendships or not put their lives on hold, some people don’t realise how important it is not to always put themselves last until it’s too late.
I know this is just my own experiences but spending any time on mumsnet shows this isn’t unusual. I have seen so many similar threads to this one about people regretting parenthood or struggling and there are a lot of online groups with thousands of members who feel the same.
Over the years I’ve lost count of people who went from telling me I was missing out not having kids to admitting if they had their time again they wouldn’t have had any.
I’m so happy for you that you feel differently but I don’t think it’s fair to the OP to feel like she’s unreasonable for how she’s feeling because some people were offered (and actually accepted) more support or were in a position to enjoy parenting. This is the attitude that means people go ahead and have children and think it’ll be the same for them then struggle and feel resentful and lied to.
It’s a shame people can’t train to become parents or do work experience to see if they are really cut out for it.
I think if people could have a taster session first they might realise just how hard it is and be able to make a proper informed decision.
I do think that would have a terrible impact on the falling birthrate though and lead to our species dying out!