I feel like I’ve read a lot of negative threads lately about people who don’t enjoy parenting or who regret having children. No judgement from me, I understand it’s very hard and I also understand it’s important to share these stories.
I’m expecting my first baby next month and I’m not going to lie, I’m terrified all of a sudden. I understand people saying ‘everyone tells you it’s easy and wonderful and it’s important to share the negative stories because otherwise you won’t realise that actually it can be really shit and awful’. I’m sure that’s true for many, but I feel that I’ve been hearing nothing but the negative ‘it’s shit and awful’ messages for a while - not just talking about on here, I’ve had it in real life a fair bit. For example I met up with two friends before lockdown and the subject of breastfeeding came up, when I said I was going to try it the responses were along the lines of ‘you’ll hate it it’s hideous try it if you must but you’ll end up giving up like everyone else does’.
I’m 40, I’ve longed for children for a very long time. I even considered trying to do it alone before I met my husband and was starting down that path, but met him and we very quickly realised we wanted the same thing so started trying together. We had fertility issues and it’s taken us 4 years to get here.
Whenever I would say about wanting children to friends/family members I’d get a whole lot of ‘oh you don’t know how lucky you are, don’t bother’ type responses. Followed by stories about how tired, poor, stressed etc they were. Once it became clear we were seriously trying/ struggling to conceive and definitely once I became pregnant they have luckily changed their tune to saying how lovely and exciting it all is, but there’s still an undertone of your don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for’.
In the darkest days of unsuccessfully trying to conceive I would think that if I could just have a baby I wouldn’t care if I never had a full night’s sleep again, that I’d give up all our boozy lunches, nights out, holidays etc etc in a heartbeat so I could be a mum and we could be a family and I’d never look back. Now here I am 8 months pregnant and I’m suddenly shitting myself that our life of pleasing ourselves is going to change, that I really love time to myself and I’m about to lose it all, that I’ll never have a completely chilled ‘drop out’ holiday again where I read on the beach for 8 hours, have a nice meal with lots of wine, sleep like a dead thing and repeat every day for a fortnight. I love those holidays!
I really thought we’d planned and discussed and thought about this decision in every aspect but I suddenly feel laughably unprepared and a bit ‘what on earth were we thinking?’ I suppose spending so long wanting it and not being able to get pregnant it started to feel like something that wasn’t really going to happen.
I’m rambling but I just feel like I need some positive stories to balance out the negative that I’ve been fixating on a bit lately. It’s perfectly possible I will fall in love with my baby and not regret becoming a parent isn’t it? It’s perfectly possible I will love being the parent I’ve longed to be for at least 10 years if not my entire adult life? I’m not saying ‘please tell me it’s easy and I’ll never have a problem or a shit day/week/month’. More ‘please tell me that it’s not automatic that I’m going to hate every second and regret it for the rest of my life’.