Here’s the start of my story

Dear blog,

To quote Maria Von Trapp in The Sound of Music, “let’s start at the very beginning.” On June 8th, 2022, I felt that something was…uh, “off”, so I took a pregnancy test at home. Literally within 3 seconds, it was a positive test, and I freaked out yelling for my husband to “get the hell in here!!!” After two trips to urgent cares (because the first urgent care’s test said negative), within that week span, boom! It was official. I was pregnant.

For those of you that may know me well and are reading this, know that I was NEVER going to have kids. My entire life up until I was about 30, I said there was no way. I never had that “motherly instinct.” It was a job I never felt qualified for, and frankly didn’t WANT to do.  I also am DEATHLY afraid of anything medical, whether that’s needles, IVs, you name it. The thought of birth has always been truly the biggest fear in my entire life. And, I didn’t want to go through that. I have to walk away anytime there’s a traumatic birth scene in a show or a movie. I can’t stand it. When I then met my now husband, and was in what I call a “mature adult relationship” (finally), my views started to evolve and I truly dug deep into myself and did some internal work to truly answer the question as to “why” I didn’t want any kids.

After lots of therapy, and talking with my boyfriend (now husband), I reconsidered the possibility of having kids. I drew the conclusion that I was truly just scared. But I also never really understood why people wanted kids. Again, as someone who never felt this motherly instinct, I come from this angle of not “getting it.” And honestly, I don’t think anyone “gets it” until you actually have them. However, my reconsideration truly stemmed from the brutal fact that I really don’t feel a close relationship at all to my extended family. And, that is the truth. My cousins and I aren’t close at all, which makes me sad. I hardly see my aunts and uncles. So, the thought of starting my own family and doing things mine and my husband’s way sounded appealing. I also truly thought about when my parents are passed away, who do I have around? No, it’s not that I “want someone to take care of me one day.” Its, who is the company that I will have around when I’m older? Obviously, my husband, but other relationships with family are important too, and that’s when it clicked for me. I felt that having children would be our way to create the family dynamic WE wanted, and we would always have love in our family until the day we die.

I’m not going to deny that, well, that is a gamble. Having kids doesn’t always guarantee you love. I know of people who have really shit relationships with their parents, etc. But, I ultimately knew it was a gamble I was willing to take, if it was meant to be. If I’m being honest though, I’ve NEVER been into babies. Babies have always scared the crap out of me. Newborns to me are gross and weird looking, and little babies are so fragile and helpless, that I felt like “what the hell would I do with this thing?” Hah, and then I had my own baby……

So here we are, June of 2022, Literally a month and a half after Steve and I got married. I’m newly pregnant, but realizing, oh shit…. In 9 months, how the hell is this thing going to get out of me? Cue: anxiety.

I have had depression and undiagnosed anxiety now for probably about 15 years. I have been on and off medication, and was on a lot of things actually the year prior to my wedding. After my wedding, I had gotten off of one of my medications (lithium), because it was not a good medicine for me to take long term (plus I had weird side effects). So, luckily while being pregnant, I was still able to be on two of my medications for depression, which are Wellbutrin, and a low dose of Abilify. In terms of my depression, I actually felt pretty decent for the most part during pregnancy. However, I had major anxiety about this looming deadline of facing my world’s biggest fear. The part that was the most difficult for me during pregnancy was that I could not take Xanax, and god damn, I wanted that pill more than ANYTHING.

In my next entry, I’m going to talk about how I managed this. I also had many intrusive and negative thoughts come up in my brain about how I thought parenthood would go. I want to address these too. Again, I have always come at the angle of thinking I would never have kids. I was truly in the mindset of “if it’s meant to be, great, if not, then that’s okay too.”

Let me just leave you all with this for now: anxiety is freaking painful. Anxiety hurts. It is incredibly hard to control, and hard to overcome. If any of you struggle with this, know you’re not alone. It is a battle that I face every day in my mind. The way I visually describe my anxiety is there is this nasty ass guy wearing a wife beater sitting in a lawn chair with his arms crossed feeding me lies about my life. This ass hole’s name is Clyde. I can picture him now. What an ass hole. So, every day I have to sit Clyde’s ass in the corner and tell him to shut the f up, because it is LIES. Anyways, if you don’t have Clyde in your life, I’m freaking jealous. Because Clyde can often times consume my brain. And that my friends, is what makes anxiety painful. Until next week.

-Jess