When you’re not excited about your pregnancy
What do you do when you’re not excited about your pregnancy? You can feel however you feel about your pregnancy. (Even during the month of October. It’s ok.) If you’re excited, that’s amazing! I’m so excited with you! If you’re not excited, that’s ok, too. It doesn’t mean you’ll love your baby any less when it arrives. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent. It just means that you are… a person.
I understand the feeling of desperately wanting a positive pregnancy test because I’ve been there. We had 6 miscarriages, 5 of them in a row, with infertility. Every month was a struggle between despair and hope.
But, I can also identify with the feelings of overwhelming terror at a positive pregnancy test, because I’ve been there, too. Our older two kids are very close together and our oldest was not an easy baby or toddler. We were overwhelmed and felt like we were failing miserably already. Our first thoughts about the positive pregnancy test were not joy. (Both of our first thoughts were “Oh crap.” I was so surprised that I just told my husband to go into the bathroom and look on top of the toilet. That’s how I told my husband I was pregnant. No fun video. No cute little onesie. No cute announcement or card. Just “Hun, go look on the toilet.”
As that “oh crap” pregnancy continued on, I became a little less terrified about having another baby and a sibling for our first. I started to bond with the baby in my uterus and slowly became excited to meet him. I started to picture two sweet siblings playing and eventually bonding themselves.
That baby, now, is 17 years old is one of the biggest joys of my life. When he was young, he was my little sidekick. He’s a senior in high school now and it feels both like just just yesterday, and an eternity ago, that I took that pregnancy test.
If your feelings align more with the “oh crap” story, it’s ok to take time to feel that. Grieve whatever your plans were if this wasn’t in the plan. Grieve what you thought your family spacing would be, or how you imagined how old your other children would be when you had their sibling.
It’s okay to feel sad.
It’s ok to feel mad.
It’s okay to be terrified.
Just because you aren’t ok now, doesn’t mean you won’t be ok later.
**At Rocket City Doulas, we recognize there can be a wide range of emotions during pregnancy. Your doula team can be the listening ear you need to voice whatever feelings you’re feeling. Even when you’re not excited about your pregnancy**
