What I'd Tell My Younger Self About Having A Baby: Part 1

I never wanted to be a parent.

Parenthood was something for people who craved an extra copy of themselves. Parenthood was for those who had family support and dreams of spreading their legacy. My relationship with my family was so painful and complicated, I knew it was a sacrifice to have children; so much of a sacrifice, in fact, that I was certain I would never make such a choice.

My sister, on the other hand, had always wished for parenthood, and often described dreams of beautiful weddings and eventual games of elaborate dress-up with her progeny. To her, children meant she had fulfilled some innate task within herself. In her words, she thought she could do it better than our parents; she wanted to be the warm, soft place that sometimes -- the few times -- she saw our mom capable of.

I suppose I had less faith in myself to be that safe, warm place, since my dreams regarding children were anything other than terrifying. I dreamed about dying during childbirth. What kind of a parent would I ever make?

My husband -- the eldest of eight full-blood siblings, and twelve after his father remarried -- wanted a large family and felt parenthood was a rite of passage. Part of this was the culture of growing up LDS in Salt Lake City-adjacent Farmington. As a man, his focus in education was less about finding a career that fed his soul and more about finding a field that would feed his family. His every move with our relationship had a solitary goal: get married and have babies.

This was an instant turn-off to me, which complicated my attraction to him. He made me feel safe and recognized some of my weaknesses as trauma responses, helping me heal. On the other hand, I was frank about what I wanted -- or didn't want, rather -- and explicitly said that a large family wasn't in my plans. Maybe I could compromise on one, maybe two, but if he had dreams of a brood in a minivan, I was the wrong choice of spouse.

Well, love is a powerful force, especially when one is escaping abuse from the home of their parents. He became a refuge and a safe place to cling to. So, at twenty-one, we married, and the ticking clock to parenthood began.

While my family worried I would immediately become pregnant, my convictions were strong enough to defy those expectations. I had graduate school to get through, and so did he, and we agreed that having children in that time would be downright stupid. We were careful not to be careless, even if we didn't have an agreed-upon deadline for when it would be time to expand our household. As long as we were in school, I was confident that he wouldn't push -- and he didn't.

This didn't stop the still very family-oriented culture surrounding us from asking constantly when we'd have children. On one particularly memorable occasion, I attended my sister-in-law's baby shower and was cornered by her mother-in-law. She raised a brow and asked the question I'd heard hundreds of times by that point, when we'd been married for over a year: "Is it your turn next?"

My usual answer flowed off my lips. "Well, we're still in school, and I--"

She interrupted to chastise my choices. "Is that a requirement?"

I didn't quite know what to say to that, as most people respected my boundary and excuse to grow up a little more before becoming a parent. But she was downright aggressive in her question, as if my becoming a doctor was a shitty choice, since my purpose in life was clearly to use my as-yet-untouched uterus. Not doing so when I had a perfectly acceptable man to impregnate me meant that I was choosing myself over my children, and my children didn't even exist yet.

Needless to say, I came home fuming and yelled at my husband as if it was his fault. He graciously took my verbal tirade and hugged me after, reassuring me that he was in no hurry, and neither was I. Our life didn't belong to anyone else, expectations aside. What he didn't know was how hard I prayed that the day would never come.

Friends around us started procreating more and more as years went by, and some struggled with fertility. When one couple chose adoption after failed in-vitro, I felt guilty for not wanting it at all. This miracle of parenthood was nebulous and odd to me. Pregnancy or not, people wanted to be parents, and it was a distinct part of their life's plans.

At my first job after graduate school in 2014, while attending a formal training camp, we were asked as attendees to outline our five-year life goals so the company could help us reach them. Sure, it was a cheesy and disingenuous way to make it seem like they actually gave a damn about us and not how much product we'd sell, but why not at least write down what I hoped the future would bring?

A lifelong overachiever, I had to resist putting more than three milestones in my five-year plan and settled on the most important to me: 1) Pay off half my (6-figure) student loans, 2) Finish my 2 novels-in-progress, 3) Release my first EP. When I finished first and had my goals read aloud, the same-aged recruits were impressed with my creative efforts and asked about what else I did when not planning to be a doctor during the day -- jewelry making, artwork, baking, crochet -- always a never-ending list (I wouldn't be officially diagnosed with ADHD until 2025).

I wanted to be proud of my extra efforts and thought my goals had merit. At least, I did, until the others announced theirs. Every one, without fail, had a goal that was decidedly absent from my list: start a family.

Oh. Yeah. Right. That's a goal some people have, I thought. A few of the young women around me had wedding plans lined up for the following year or two, but having kids was on everybody's list by mine, and I had been married the longest out of all of them. It simply wasn't on my radar, like I forgot about it somehow. Children, a goal?

---

The following year, with my husband's 30th birthday approaching, he broached the subject for the first time in years. He felt his own clock ticking in a way I didn't and had no desire to be too old to enjoy his kids. How could I deny him that when he was so suited for fatherhood and had whatever drive everybody else seemed to have but me?

So, I stopped my many medications for the chronic illnesses that plagued me and set a timeline to start trying in three months. His birthday would be the first time we made love without any protection keeping us a twosome. We were anxious -- how could we not be? -- like we hadn't really had sex until that moment, and frankly the experience felt like that, too. It was by far the worst time we'd ever had together, and we both laughed afterward that we would have to do better next time.

Except, that next time didn't come, because I got sick shortly afterward. I still prayed for infertility and sighed with relief when my period came a week later during a camping trip with friends. It was light, but present, and I escaped that morning to go fishing alone and reveled in the quiet that was still part of my life since, after all, our friends with two kids already and one on the way were in drought of silence.

Hubby asked me another week later why we'd stopped trying -- as if we'd really started at all -- and I explained that I didn't feel well and wanted to wait until I was more stable. He deflated but agreed, not wanting to push me, and I was still looking for a legitimate way out.

I'm sure you saw this coming at the start of the last paragraph, but all my worst fears and anxieties came true that very day: on a whim, I took a test, and my cat D'artagnan sat on the sink with a look in his eyes that said he knew something, too. When the word "Pregnant" flashed on the little blue screen, I stood in my hallway, alone, and stared at it.

"Well, I'm not crying," I said, somewhat chuckling, grateful my first response wasn't despair. I didn't know how to feel about what had happened -- after all, I let it happen, didn't I? Isn't this what I was supposed to want as a 27 year old with a career and a good husband and a place to live? Wasn't it time?

At the same time I got pregnant, my mother lost her marbles. She descended into psychosis and became more and more difficult to handle. Even while being states away, her abuse spanned over the invisible internet and screamed at me through emails that climbed to over fifty per day. Some broke into the triple digits, and she didn't look at my own responses. My usually eloquent, professional mother would keyboard smash and send frightening curses, calling me a cunt for not hating my father. While all this is too complicated to detail in this piece, the distraction of my mother's words kept me from focusing on the horrid sensations and fears of pregnancy.

Even now, I only vaguely recall the worst symptoms: the hemorrhoids that never went away, even years later, which made me cry and beg and plead for relief nobody could give me. The lack of sleep, like a timer in my mind waking me every night at 2 AM and robbing me of rest. The splitting of my abdomen, diastasis recti, pulling and sharply aching whenever I moved. Labor was a blip compared to all the rest, and all of it was buried under my mother's constant pull for attention.

As much as I'd hated the idea of having kids, I bonded with my to-be daughter fairly quickly, to my own surprise. I always knew just where she was -- when going in for ultrasounds or doppler checks, I could point to my belly and find her every time. I bled often throughout our nine months as one, even wondering if we'd make it to the end. My friable cervix (and un-diagnosed uterine polyps) made every day a little unpredictable.

We approached the due date like a freight train. I tried to enjoy the preparation shopping and picking her name, but my mother's demands always took precedence. She spiraled to the bitter end until, one day, she didn't -- about three weeks before my kid was born, my mom stopped cursing at me on the phone and didn't hang up on me anymore. It was like she came back from some faraway hell and wanted to be my mom again. Parenthood terrified me, and I didn't know if I could do it alone -- sure, I had my great husband, but who beyond that? If it took a village, mine was very small, and like my sister said too well, I now wanted to do something my mother couldn't. I wanted to do a better job. But I still needed her.

Uncomfortable and counting the days, labor began ten days after my due date, throwing a wrench in the initial plans to be induced. Twenty-eight long hours and now, she was here, part of the real world, part of my life forever. A child. My child. What I recall most after hours of pushing was when they first put her slimy body on my belly and she opened her blue eyes and stared through my soul.

No tears. No screaming. Her long fingers and legs spread out like she'd waited all that time to just stretch. "She has my hands," I muttered, reveling in that moment before they cut the cord and whisked her away to make sure she could breathe. It was truly magical, that slick connection between us, which powered beyond all the months I felt her kicking and the times I sang to her because I felt I should. I had no instincts for parenthood. Babies terrified me. But now, I'd seen mine, and she was everything.

Thank god for my husband, though, who had no fear, and instantly jumped into action to change her diaper and tease her toes. She hadn't been crying because she's an old soul -- of course she could breathe, but what was there to fuss about? While I was being stitched, he sat on a small couch and stared at our daughter with stars in his eyes.

"How long has she been sleeping?" I asked, barely aware of how much time had gone by since I finally stopped pushing.

"She's not sleeping," he whispered, nearly teary himself. "She's just staring at me."

I was proud of my partner. Glad I picked a good one. He's the man at the park with the children that childless women all say that they want. Born to be a father, a good at it, too. My shortcomings would balance with his overabundance of want.

Once we were home, we treated parenthood as practically as possible, setting up routines and trading places whenever we could. When my mother took her own life four days after the birth of our daughter, I felt just as lost and distracted as ever, still blissfully unaware of how very foreign my own body felt. My grief was a shield to my inner monologue, numbing me and silencing the terror every time I had to change my daughter's clothes because I thought I'd break her.

The worst part after she was born had nothing to do with mom's death and my sadness. It was the fact that when she cried, my body reacted; not a conscious zing to make me act, but a visceral one that twisted my insides. My stomach hurt whenever I heard it. Thankfully, it wasn't often, as our oldest child was the easiest baby. But my wonderful husband couldn't understand why I disagreed with letting her "cry it out" - my body didn't let me. Her voice commanded me. Like a puppet, I'd move to her every whim.

So no, I never wanted to be a parent. But I am one. What now?

---

Let me end this by giving an unequivocal statement to my eldest child: I do not regret you, and this is not a statement made to discount your existence or my love. When you read this, I hope you view it with empathy and patience, as there is no such thing as "adult" when we are always growing.

Stay tuned for Part 2, the post-baby learning curve, and how my second pregnancy redefined my whole existence.