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Still 36/F/NZ

Today I found out the results of #3.

What I didn’t know when I posted a year ago was that I was pregnant. Only just. But it still counts.

A year on, I’ve been pregnant three times. I have no children. I’ve been a mum but not a parent.

 Today we found out our third pregnancy is a no go. It’s nonviable. I am not miscarrying, but I know I will. And once you know it’s coming, you really don’t want to be pregnant anymore. The thing is, that’s not something I can choose at the moment. God forbid what women in some countries go through where it is not a choice full stop.

I must stay pregnant and know it’s nonviable until I have met with my midwife, had more blood tests and several scans to confirm what tests have shown. And then, like on the matrix, I will be offered the pills, or a D&C procedure.

I will take the pills this time. It will make my period come and I will miscarry and that will be the end of my pregnancy. The end of the hope and naivety I’ve had. A period feels so underwhelming as a way to say goodbye to a loved one you never knew, who never really formed as such. But someone you anticipated and put some effort into making.

You see, you still mourn. But there is no funeral, no name, no speeches. Just sanitary pads (you cannot really use tampons for risk of infection) so you get to see it all happening. You get to walk around for a week or so with what is essentially a heavy period. You feel it inside, you see it outside, you feel the insecurity of others seeing it – pads are not discreet. And you just carry on.

You tell people and they will be sympathetic. But it’s not even what you want. I tell people because I want it to be more normalised. To feel easier – if that is possible.

This is my third time in 10 months. I’ve been here before. The first time was about 6 weeks into the pregnancy, the second was 2 months. This time only 4 weeks. Time spent cultivating a potential pregnancy, however, isn’t a yardstick for grief felt.

The first time I was surprised and excited. It was earlier than expected – we intended to try a month after I’d found out I was pregnant. I never thought I would be a mum, never wished for it, so I didn’t have a lifetime of expectations and dreams behind the moment. I did however begin to entertain the thoughts and have the feelings that I guess any woman gets when she finds out that she is pregnant.

I started to think about when I would finish work (as I would need to save money and think about the impact on my workplace). I started to think about eating well and exercising (because there is a myriad of things you ought not to eat and do). I felt excited too, even though I knew that up to a quarter of pregnancies don’t make it.

To the outside world, nothing was different. However, for me it was confronting on a daily basis. I felt sick. All day, every day. All smells and motion made me feel nauseous and unwell. I got good at pretending when actually I felt awful. The kind of awful that would usually require a sick day. But hey, I couldn’t take all day every day off work. So, I soldiered through like the masses of women before me, sucking it up and getting on with it. I have so much respect now that I too, know.

So, over the short 6 weeks or so, my boobs hurt and grew, my belly bloated out and I started to think and act like a mum to protect my future child.

The day of my first scan arrived – I went at 6 weeks as I wasn’t sure of dates. I look back and feel so naïve. My partner is a doctor. I am in the room with two medical people, watching the screen oblivious to the picture of the empty sac. The blighted ovum is what they call it. At the scan, I know now that if they don’t see what they need to on the outside, they head inside. That day I found out while they were inside me, that I was going to miscarry.

I was shocked. I hadn’t prepared myself. Worse still, the world and all of my education had not prepared me for this. I had no idea that a miscarriage could be diagnosed without bleeding. The movies taught me you bleed and then you know you’re miscarrying. I hadn’t therefore entertained the possibility of a bad outcome that day.

My first experience was turning into a confusing nightmare where I was the lead character, but no one had given me the script, plotline or direction. I felt like I was standing there like a stunned mullet in the spotlight, knowing nothing – about my body, the process I was in or how to navigate the situation.

And then I started to bleed. It hurt in all the ways it could hurt. I was so afraid. The doctors delt with the medical side of things. The diagnosis and procedures. My heavy period was a miscarriage. But it wasn’t a full miscarriage. Apparently – again, learning on the fly – you can bleed and not fully expel the failed pregnancy.

I bounced around medical practitioners, having the required bloods, internal scans (more are required to confirm) and appointments.

There are pros and cons to my love being a doctor. Pro - I can find out a lot when I need to, and he has a great bedside manner, it’s his job after all. Cons – He gets sucked from being the patient as well, to being in roles he ought not to have to be in. Secondly, the medical people at the hospital that I must go and see, are the people we socialise with.

When you don’t fully miscarry they offer a couple of solutions, one of which is a pill that gets your body to have another good go at a period, to expel what is left of your pregnancy. Not a guarantee. The alternative is a D&C procedure. I am not a doctor, but essentially it’s like hoovering your uterus with a bit of light scraping where required.

At the hospital, they do D&Cs under general anaesthetic. It’s usually a short procedure, with some light bleeding afterwards. In the clinic, I was told that the procedure was under local anaesthetic, but that I’d be sedated.

I chose a D&C at the clinic because I wanted to minimise the bleeding – by this time it’d been happening for about 10 days straight. Plus, I was really busy at work, so I didn’t think a full day out was doable.

Because I’d never been through this, I had no idea in the world what I was trying to function through and make sounds decisions through. It was physically like a period and PMS on crack. No medical people during the entire process let me know what my hormones were going to crash after 6 weeks of exponential increase. And that this would leave me emotionally fragile. I found that out the hard way, and a friend who had been through this let me know why I wasn’t functioning as I thought I should be able to a few weeks later… That was really really hard.

Anyway, the procedure. Because I was new to it, I didn’t know what to expect, and these people did it all of the time, so I trusted the process as people say. We agreed on sedation, overtly. I was prepped and I went in, my partner by my side…

This procedure was the worst medical experience of my life.  Not because it’s a D&C, but because I was not sedated. At all. I was given pain killers and gas. I felt all of it and was able to move around. Unfortunately, the combination of pain medications they chose, I turned into what I would a liken to teenage drunk me. I was uncooperative and thrashed about as every action hurt me inside – a place that was already hurting from loss.

They ended up stopping and made some comments about me being “an A type personality”. I felt some of the greatest shame of my life as I lay there on that table, somewhere between awake and gassed. I cried so much. I said sorry. I felt humiliated, like I’d stopped the treatment I needed.

It was not my fault. I was not sedated. It’s what I was told I’d be. I know what sedation is as I have it for regular bowel screening.

After I left, I felt so many emotions. I can now label the header of these, as Trauma. Why was I not sedated? Couldn’t I have hurt myself? Perforated my uterus by being able to thrash around? What if I had? I didn’t realise how bad this procedure was until later on after my second one.

My procedure was at the end of my week. I went back to work on the Monday because I wasn’t sure what else to do. Should I treat it like a period, or a lost baby? There was no baby though, it was technically a sac, so was I entitled to grieve?

It was a mistake. I cried a lot. I wanted to go home, but I commute so home was a long way away. I took a day off. I kept trying to function and go back to work. When I did, I felt emotional and unable to think straight. Unhelpful as a senior leader in a high-pressure environment. I eventually signed out for a week. NZ has bereavement leave for miscarriages now, so I took it. Thank you, Government.

I decided to share – with anyone and everyone. It was hard because no one expected me to be trying, let a lone pregnant and now not pregnant. What was meant to be exciting news to share, was now bad news. I felt like I was alone and when I shared, I found I wasn’t. It was a secret club that no one was talking about. I am not sure why, because loss is so much harder alone.

Covid hit again, and in a way, it was a blessing. I worked from home and took time to rebuild. It wasn’t smooth sailing though, as I bled for 6 weeks after the procedure – something I now know isn’t really as normal as they told me it was when I called the clinic to check 3 weeks in. The bleeding wasn’t the nice kind you can predict and manage. It was the ‘nothing for half a day and then gushing torrents of blood’, unpredictable. It occupied my thoughts day and night. It was like being a teenager again when you are self-consciously wondering every time you feel anything, whether you are bleeding through your underwear… moments from an embarrassing situation.

A month after we lost our first pregnancy, we lost our beloved fur baby. It was gut-wrenching and sudden. Too soon. We had consoled ourselves during our miscarriage with the fact we were simply returning to our little family of three; me, my partner and our fur baby. And then she was gone, too.

I sank deeper into sadness. I tried so hard to feel good, to feel better and I was struggling.

I made a series of decisions to help myself refill my cup and find something to look forward to. I enrolled in study and booked all of December off work. I went back to life. We both did.

My bleeding started to fall roughly into its usual pattern plus or minus a few days, although I kept getting sore boobs and nausea each month after ovulation. The symptoms felt like I kept getting pregnant but the tests confirmed it was not the case… Someone told me that sometimes females can hope so hard that they physically feel the symptoms of pregnancy. I felt offended, as I didn’t feel that I’d conjured up what I was physically experiencing.  

I actually should have gone and got a scan to make sure the D&C had been completed – something I wasn’t aware of because you only know what you know.

And then, in October we fell pregnant again. We felt hope, scattered with anxiety and caution. The bloods looked good. Things tracked well. I took December off and at 9 weeks, I decided to get a scan before we started to share our good news more widely.

The outer scan showed me what I saw last time, but with a blob in it. The radiographer asked to do an internal examination. I knew what it meant, and I asked. She confirmed that it didn’t look like good news. I lay there, numb, while she confirmed that we had another nonviable pregnancy on our hands. With the additional of an unexpected blood clot in there.

I haven’t had any medical confirmation of what the clot was, but it wasn’t from the current pregnancy, and possibly retained products from the last one… the one I had a procedure to remove. Blood is incompatible with a new embryo forming.

Anyway, I now knew that I was pregnant and awaiting an inevitable miscarriage. I asked to end it as soon as possible. There is something awful about feeling really unwell all day, every day (alongside the other pregnancy symptoms) and knowing it’s not going to end in a baby. I wanted out.

I was booked in for my second D&C at the hospital (in another DHB) this time. I didn’t want to be awake or moving for it. The trauma of the last one still gets me, even now. I well up when I need to tell someone of it as part of my medical history. I feel all of those emotions again.

The next procedure was wonderful. The staff were wonderful. I felt no shame, no pain, no fear or humiliation. I went to sleep (no stirrups present) and woke up with a nurse asking how I was feeling. I then had the best cheese slice sandwich of my life.

After the D&C I had minimal spotting, no gushing bleeding and I felt so much better. A complete dichotomy of last time.

Our second pregnancy had come to an end. We mourned again together. It felt easier this time, like it wasn’t such a shock. Not quite expected, but it had been a possibility niggling in our heads after the first time.

My partner is the best. Beyond the best. He has been more than a rock. More like an emotionally intelligent boulder of sorts. He holds me, never hurries my feelings, listens, talks it through and tells me he has my back and that we will be ok. I couldn’t and wouldn’t want to do it without him. We agreed that our song was Tub Thumping for these experiences. It captured the feeling aptly… “I get knocked down, I get up again, you’re never going to keep me down”…

It's the small things, as silly as it sounds, that keep us afloat when it all feels a bit hard. Most importantly, these knocks are just that. Knocks. The base of us is strong and we weather these knocks, together.

We decided to take a break, where we don’t try to make a baby, but we don’t take precautions not to. Making a baby isn’t always sexy. You have small windows, and in our case, we were juggling between shifts and commuting for work.

Our third time happened a month after the last D&C and was not planned. But it happened. My period didn’t come on the day expected, so I did a test, assuming it was too soon and it probably wasn’t a goer. It came back positive and I felt a wave of fear wash over me. I cried. There were no tears of hope, happiness, anticipation or joy. They were tears of fear and anxiety.

I didn’t have much hope this time around. I engaged my midwife straight away (she must be sick of having a customer where she never gets to finish the job). I did the bloods, two lots, 48 hours apart to confirm pregnancy and to check the hcg hormones were trending in the right direction at the right rate to rule out retained products – the beautiful name for leftovers of the previous pregnancy.

I got the results today. It wasn’t good. It’s another miscarriage in the waiting. And this is where my experience ends. For now, until I start the procedure of removing what’s left of my hope from my body. Again.

I guess that spells the end of our natural attempts at having a family. Our next journey will be more arduous, involved and costly. Here we go, into the world of IVF.

This is our baby journey.

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36/F/NZ

I have grown weary of social media as of late. The kind of social media where everyone has an opinion regardless of its impact on others, where people can type things they wouldn’t say in person and perpetuate misinformation (I am pro-vaccination). I am also growing tired of the (barely) subliminal messaging I receive about diets and body image that troll my feeds.

But I am a social creature by my very nature. Aren’t we all?

My first blog title is a nod to my ASL (age, sex and location). It’s an ‘early internet thing’.

If you are my age, you will recall (hopefully) the advent of ICQ and MSN… The patience of waiting for dial up to connect – god forbid someone else was on the landline – after school so that you could connect with friends, strangers, potential cuties… The potential cuties however were (and still are) not always what they appear to be.

But I am not here to blog about dating. Or house prices. Or global warming, avocados or other woes facing the younger generations – am I still young?

I never thought I would say this. I want to talk about having kids.

I will declare upfront that I want for nothing. I am a reasonably successful, professional woman without kids. I own my own home (or at least half of it). I live a city lifestyle, am fit, healthy and have a wonderfully loving and respectful partner (you know, one of the types of guys that speaks up and isn’t threatened by independent and successful women) - A rarity for which I cherish more than the rest of the stuff I list above. I am sure I will write about it at some point, but he is the product of a single mother doing a fucking incredible job in the most challenging of circumstances. Hats off to her!

As I was saying. I want to talk about kids.

I have never wanted them. And now we (not I. We) want to dip our toes into the pool that an increasing number of 30-somethings decide to jump into …

I am grappling with so many things. Things that are unique to us females.

I spent my teenage years being actively taught more about how to cook, clean and be a good girlfriend than I did about my own body – stuff I am learning now in retrospect (also a probable, future blog). I went onto the pill as soon as I got my period. It was a ‘precaution’ (for whom?). I learned about my vagina because I suddenly needed to put something inside it (not for pleasure) to stop my monthly bleeding from causing me more shame than I already felt – because periods are a woman’s burden to be carried in secrecy, and to be joked about by guys when the emotions get the better of us… “on the rag?” “must be that time of the month…”.

I am now 36 and just starting to become woke (as the kids say it now).

My teenage years, I imagine, were not unique. I recall one sex ed class at high school (yes, just one hour) where we learned about sex leading to STIs (previously called STDs) and pregnancy. Pregnancy was the devil and needed to be prevented at all costs (health, time and concern - which the female generally absorbed).

We skipped the bit about consent, respect and two-way intimacy – I found out about those by trial and error.

I got through to my mid-20s and the rhetoric changed. Instead of those I looked to telling me babies were bad, suddenly, babies were all the rage. I had come out of university with my two degrees, ready for that promised career, and to travel and build the life I wanted.

I felt confused.

Now, I was never the ‘maternal type’. I wonder now if there is such a thing or if its just something that we are carefully manicured into thinking that it’s what we want all along. I never wanted baby dolls and prams as play toys. I wasn’t into pink and pretend kitchens. Instead, as a kid, I was into sports, horses and motorbikes. I climbed trees and played games that used my creativity and imagination.

So, when I reached my mid-20s and people started to ask me about when I wanted to ‘settle down and have kids’ I rejected the entire notion of it. I said I didn’t want kids. In fact, I was well known amongst my peers for saying I didn’t even like kids. Which to a point is true. I don’t like ALL kids. Some kids will not grow into good adults and I place the responsibility for that on nurture not nature. This may be controversial; however I wish to believe that we are all born into this world with the potential for good.

New-born babies were thrust into my arms, because you know, I will need practice… How come boys don’t have to hold babies? I felt awkward. Like I was rejecting something that I was ‘born and bred to do’. But I didn’t want it. Not then.

When I told people I didn’t want kids, they were shocked. Kind of like the shocked face of people when I tell them I don’t drink alcohol anymore – you know, culturally unacceptable behaviour by any Kiwi’s standards. This was quickly followed by, “Oh, you will want them one day… it will all change. Trust me”.

Patronizing much?

I can now say that I felt harassed in those moments. Let’s label it.

The questions and opinions I would get were unnecessary, unprovoked and unhelpful. I honestly wondered why everyone was so invested in my interest in procreating – more so than being interested in me as a person with my own wants and needs. I guess this was part of my training for being a mum. A call out to all the mums who work tirelessly – yes, work (you have a job and it’s the hardest job of all).

I stayed the course and purchased my own home, got a great job that I worked hard for (don’t we all work extra hard, ladies!) and I prepared myself for a life with no legacy (legacy, I learned from those closest to me, is achieved though children, not a career, when you are a woman).

And then I met this guy.

He wanted kids. I kept true to my long-held comms line (like the ‘no comment’) and said I didn’t. And then he did something that I will never forget…

He said it was my choice. My choice.

He asked me why I had made that choice – his right to do after disarming me. I said, without thinking, and for the very first time… “I’m scared”. Shit, no backing out of it now…

I was scared because alongside all of the rhetoric that is forced down our faces about motherhood were the truths. The home truths. The ones I had witnessed in person. I had seen and heard, that taught me all about the value of a woman when she becomes a mum.

Now – disclaimer – I am not saying that I never seen or heard good things about being a mum. But hell, I did see and hear more average things than good things.

I saw and heard about how all the females in my immediate sphere of trust had given their careers up (in the current trajectory that they were on or entirely) when they became mums. If they didn’t choose being a mum, they were falling short of society’s expectations. If they became a mum and chose a career over full time parenthood, they were ‘outsourcing’ their most important role - as a mum.

I saw and heard my mum take the lion’s share of parenting, putting herself last. I saw and heard her play the part of mum and dad while my dad built his career – for us. The career that was really for him – let’s be true, it was his dream he was pursuing, not mine and not hers. I saw and heard her be proud of others but not of herself. I saw and heard her cry, a lot.

FYI I am very proud of my dad and I love him to bits. He is human. So is my mum. They made choices, together, in parenting us, but those choices were not made by people with equal power in the relationship and subsequently the choices did not always (actually, very rarely) benefit mum as a whole person.

I saw and heard my mum find ways to make herself feel better. She was good at buying things she did not need or want.

I saw and heard my mum largely unsupported, doing a thankless job. A job that society places no tangible value on. If you become a mum, and take time out of the workforce (i.e. you leave your job) to raise a child, you are considered unemployed (i.e. you are negatively placed on the ‘books’ aka GDP – not an investment, not a value-add activity, but a cost – you know, that the Government carries).

Funnily enough, ‘unpaid work’ of which parenting falls into, is the single largest sector of our economy but it is unpaid and therefore under-valued. Mums and dads who parent, are not seen as contributing to the nation’s economy. Where does our future workforce come from again?

And then once my last sibling left home, so did my dad. My mum was alone.

Due to her lack of ‘work history’ she could not apply for a credit card – dad could. Mum oversaw the family business finances and ensured we were looked after but did not ‘take home a wage’. Dad did. So, as usual, mum missed out and just kept on missing out. I can’t help but feel incredibly shit for mum. For all women.

These things shape my views on becoming a mother.

As do my own personal experiences.

As bad as this sounds, mum made sure I was better off. I got an education; a good career and I was raised to be independent and to ‘hold my own’. Funnily enough, I don’t recall ever ‘learning’ to hold my own. It wasn’t a session at school, or a mother-daughter discussion. It wasn’t a workshop or a coaching session at work.

Sarah Everard.

I have been following, as many women are, Sarah’s story in the news right now. Well, I correct myself – it’s not her story. It’s the story of her demise, chosen by a man she did not know or chose to know. There is an international groundswell of rage erupting from women around the right to be safe.

I saw an article written about this, and I thought, “shit, me too” (excuse the pun). A woman had put words to all of the ways in which we just know how to ‘hold our own’… the keys between the fingers when walking to the car late at night, the text to a friend “text me when you get home”, the pretending to be on a phone call, or the running without music to keep vigilant and at the ready. And the worst… Literally having an escape plan in your head as you walk down a dark street, or past a pack of guys.

This is an everyday experience of practically all women. Everywhere. I don’t know how we know it; we just do. But we shouldn’t have to.

These things are relevant and ever-present when I think about and talk about motherhood. It is ingrained in me, and has been from a young age, to be prepared for the worst, to take personal responsibility for what could happen to me, and to be prepared for things that men don’t have to worry about (it’s not their responsibility after all).

The reality is that my partner and I bring a completely different world view into a conversation about having kids together. How could it not be?

I am honest with him. I am scared. I have so much to lose – things that I have fought so hard for. On balance, I know there are gains, but one tends to focus on the things familiar and previously experienced.

I have a career built on proving myself. I once spent three months (I was an HR Manager and not a shit one) negotiating with my male boss for a salary increase to be on par with my all-male leadership team colleagues, whose roles were not as large as mine. I had to prove why I ‘deserved it’. I got it in the end. And my male colleagues successfully argued for their salary increases directly afterwards as well… sigh.

I am scared because I don’t want to lose my career. I don’t want to fall behind, and I know I will.

While I have children, my peers will continue to work, earn money, earn Kiwisaver for their retirement (and therefore increase the interest accrued), be rewarded and promoted (and increase their salary)… I will not accrue any leave. I will not get a salary increase or increase my retirement savings. I will not get promoted.

I will more than likely come back to work part time, because my partner and I will make choices and my job is the more flexible of the two. I will start earning again – but less. I will increase my Kiwisaver and get rewarded again – but at a pro-rated rate. I will probably work just as hard squeezing a full time job into fewer days for less money, while also trying to be a mum (also a 1 FTE job).

I worked it out. Furthermore, I will be reducing my in-the-hand income while on maternity leave by 82% while receiving the Government’s maximum paid maternity leave allowance (while I can).

I work extremely hard, but I am privileged. I can see why mums feel torn. I can see why there are massive impacts down the line for gender equity. And I can also see how we have missed a beat here around putting families and children first in NZ and our stats show this… Check out our OECD education stats, our wellbeing stats, our child welfare stats etc… Having working mums is not the issue. It’s the lack of choice driven by negative financial outcomes that makes being a full-time mum the poorer choice (pun intended).

I am scared because I may find it too hard. I am 36. My energy is not what it was. I hear new mums don’t get much sleep. I currently work between 50-80 hours a week. I am not sure how to do both, well. But I am unsure how to be happy, just doing one of these things.

I am scared because I may change. I will have a new focus – this could be amazing, it could also be hard. My friends are career focused. Not baby focused. Will we still have the same relationships? Will I become boring? Will we have the energy to go away with friends on weekends? Who will babysit?

I am scared because my body will change. My body is 36. I look after it. I exercise and eat well. I am not ready to look at myself in a mirror and feel mournful antipathy. Ouch. I know. Women are great at self-loathing and body-shaming ourselves. We learn it from the media. And men. And sadly, also from other women.

I don’t have many friends who don’t hate some or all of their bodies. We are told and shown what we should look like – and men are also shown what we should look like. Porn has its place, but it is not real. Unfortunately, these images require personal trainers, personal chefs, fake tans, implants, botox, fillers, makeup, hairdressers etc… Women don’t get paid as much as men. It is expensive being a woman.

Babies can mean stretch marks, fat that doesn’t go away, sags and hormone driven changes that you cannot explain. It impacts your pelvic floor.

I have heard from other women these things negatively impact on intimacy in the bedroom. How could it not if you are feeling like your body has been replaced with one you don’t know how to rock? And if we don’t rock our bodies, how will our men get off on it?

I am scared that my relationship with my partner will become secondary to the needs of our child… and our individual needs to sleep and have ‘me time’. Our relationship is strong. It is built on respect, communication and trust. I know this after years of relationships where these things were in part or fully absent.

Are helicopter mums born that way or does a switch flick when they have kids?

I want my relationship with my partner to be #1, always. Of course, it is our choosing to make it so. However, I also know what it’s like to put in effort when you’re both tired. Our relationship functions now around shifts, commutes and long work hours. We have it sorted. Add a child and less sleep into the mix and I honestly don’t know how people do it.

We are best friends who talk a lot. So, I hope that’s enough.

I am scared because I don’t want to fail. I am a high achiever. A child is something you don’t want to fuck up. I haven’t done it before and yet I have no interest in having all of the women in my life (or as I have heard, also those not in your life) tell me how to do it. Advice on ‘breast is best’ is unwelcome, Karen… I see and hear how women are given advice. Often entwined with judgement. I then also see and hear men get praised for ‘doing it alone’.

I am scared because after all of this time, if I choose the title ‘mum’ over all else, what if I cannot even become one? This is a real fear and nothing is a give-in. Wanting it, does not make it so.

I am scared because I don’t want to find myself alone at the end of it. This scares me the most. I have seen how the most important woman in my life sacrificed everything and then when it was her turn, it turned out she was the sacrifice.

...

When I write this, the Devil’s advocate voice plays out in my head. “Oh, she is a feminist”, “she is just insecure” “is she really thinking of starting a family with a partner if she thinks he will leave her?”, “she’s a but angry – old chip on the shoulder”.

I am secure in myself. I have done stints in therapy – it’s a gym membership for the soul. I am liberal, yes. And a feminist – name a sound-minded female who isn’t pissed off about the additional hurdles in her lane on the track. My partner and I are solid, or we wouldn’t be talking about having children – talking is what adults do in a healthy relationship.

I am scared. In a way, it is healthy. If I was going into it thinking “I have this nailed” then I am probably delusional, naïve or just plain arrogant.

I am writing this because it is cathartic. It is a way to express the things I feel. And to share them as I expect so many other women (and men – yes, two men can have babies together too) feel.

#mum #parenting #newmum #career #firsttimemum #startingafamily