I Didn't Always Want Kids.

I feel like there are some woman who literally come out of the womb eager to be a mom. They adore their pregnant bodies and feel like they are put on this planet to be a mother.

Well, that is definitely not me.

I don’t remember having many thoughts of having kids when I was younger, and I’ve never had a strong pull towards pregnancy. In fact, it wasn’t until the past couple of years that the thought of kids starting to be more appealing. I’d also argue that some of the past relationships I was in weren’t exactly “family material” so that could have led to my hesitancy as well. I had a rocky childhood with my dad in and out of my life, and even when he was there, he wasn’t present, so my whole view of childhood was a bit skewed from the get-go.

Did I really not want kids? Were my self- limiting beliefs about myself twisting my confidence in myself? Did my past eating disorders and body image issues leave me fearful of pregnancy? I had a lot to unravel.

As I entered my 30’s, got married to a pretty alright man, whom I knew wanted kids, my perspective started to shift naturally. I also saw other people around me start having babies and started to feel a small pull towards motherhood, thinking about seeing Tim as a dad, starting new family traditions, passing on my values to someone else.

So, we set forth a bit of a plan and started to try. Here’s the kicker though, I’ve had a chronic back problem for over 2 years now. I’ve spent the last 2 years trying to resolve it before we got pregnant. I was starting to feel defeated and resentful that people were popping out babies around me and I had this back problem that was interfering with my plan.

Reflecting back now, maybe I used my back as a bit of a clutch because I wasn’t ready yet. But also wanting to validate my pain because it’s not just a pain that comes and goes, it’s chronic and my ability to manage it with medication or injections would be zero if I got pregnant, and that was terrifying to me. I value health and movement, and the thought of not being able to move because I’d be in so much pain while pregnant because of my back, with no end in sight that was enough for me to tap the breaks on the plan.

I’ve had many woman say “it’s only temporary” and while I do believe that, this back problem is not temporary for me. The back pain that can happen during pregnancy is not the thing I am worried about (knock on wood), it’s the problem I already have and how I would manage. I don’t have the luxury of the pain magically disappearing after the baby was born, that’s what people failed to recognize.

I also knew Tim was ready and it added a little bit more pressure to my plate to get pregnant. He had been and is so patient with me and my dilemma. Helping me try to figure out, reassuring me he was okay to wait until we figure it out. But I knew he was bummed to have to wait longer and that hurt my heart a lot.

In our case, there wasn’t going to be a perfect time, and my back problem clearly wasn’t going anywhere. So we decided to try anyways. It took 4 months of all in effort and planning and BAM, pregnant.

The “process” wasn’t exactly how we imagined, we would have preferred it happened a bit more organically, but time wasn’t on our side, and we didn’t want it to take another year to get pregnant. I had already been tracking my cycle for the past year with an app (Natural Cycles), so when those few days moving up to ovulation came around each month, we scheduled that shit like a drill sergeant. And MAN was it a chore (insert laugh).

For anyone who needs to hear this, those ovulation sticks, where you pee on them and read the 2 lines, are the most frustrating, difficult things to read and I don’t know why I tried to use them for so long. Skip the headache and go buy Clear Blue Ovulation Test, smiley face if you are ovulating, no smiley face if you weren’t… about as clear as you can get!

I can’t even recall the amount of times I read those damn pee sticks incorrectly, which led to having sex on the wrong days, or too many days. It felt like a process that would never end, the frustration I felt when I realize I fucked it up and another month of trying was gone. It was a chore and it was starting to not be enjoyable anymore but we tried to make light of it, there were several times we just had to laugh.

I remember each month taking a pregnancy test and feeling so bummed when it was negative. It felt like the whole world and on social media (lots of comparison-itis going on), everyone was announcing a pregnancy or popping out a baby. It weighed on me harder than I thought. And Tim, being the trooper he is would just say “it’s okay, well try again next month.”

I let my anxiety get the best of me most of the time. All the data supports having sex every other day up to your ovulation day has the same chances of getting pregnant as having sex every day. I would get worried we’d miss “the day” and I’d want us to do it every day instead of every other… we burnt ourselves out quickly on that haha. I loosened the reigns a bit after the first couple months of doing that when we switched to using the Clear Blue tests.

I definitely made it more stressful that I wanted, but in the end, it worked.

In November 2021, we conceived.

Oh shit, what did we do!