I remembered a while ago I had this discussion with a woman my age that I didn't know well, we were meeting over a week-end at a friends' farms to help out. At the time I was 4 months pregnant, barely showing yet and she asked with interest how old I was - 31 yo I answered.
She replied oh same as me... and then shared that she had accidentally fallen pregnant a couple of month ago despite her IUD and that, although her and her boyfriend wanted children in not too long, because it wasn't the RIGHT time, she had terminated the pregnancy.
She described getting an abortion in a very detached, careless way, like ordering a take-out - i don't know if she truly wasn't touched by it, or was trying to convince herself it didn't hurt as much as it did...Seing me pregnant brought her back to the fact that she would be close to term by now.
I was so taken aback... here was this woman in a stable situation, with a job an appartement a boyfriend, who wanted children soon, but NOT NOW. The very idea of unplanned accidental pregnancy has completely disappeared in my French culture and makes women so unconfortable. It's WHEN and HOW you want it otherwise it's abortion time... I didn't comment on her choice of course but I've thought about her a couple of time since then...
Wow this is so illustrative of exactly what I was trying to express with this— we simply cannot expect pregnancy to be this perfect thing! And when we do, I think much is lost. I have had friends do the same thing and while I am not here to berate them for it, I have to discern that there is something very off there. When MOST things are lined up just fine but not EVERYTHING is and a woman still makes that decision, I think it is very sad. I have to wonder how much it impacts them in the future. I miscarried last spring and a coworker was due about two weeks off from where I would have been and just seeing her regularly made me so sad. I know it is is a different situation on the surface, but really it has the same foundation—one woman has a full womb and the other doesn’t but “should/could”—and no matter the specifics of the situation, this is a contrast that is very hard to ignore.
That's so sad. It sounds almost like she was in denial or coping. It's devastating when you see someone have a baby, the same age as you, and you think..."that's how old my baby should be. Why didn't I make the right choice?" Our children's lives are not disposable and yet they are so often treated that way. I know the devastating consequences of this very well...and I think it's terrible such a destructive practice is enabled. I think the fact that abortion is presented as a neutral choice, and not life-ending, allows for the delusion that unless pregnancy is planned or "wanted" it's somehow bad. A child is never a bad thing -- they are irreplaceable. Oh, RIP to all the people taken too soon from the world because of this false expectation that life needs to be perfect and planned to give birth. I don't know where that expectation came from, but it's been internalized by many 💔
I think the question you bring up here at the end of what you wrote is a really interesting thing to think on. Where exactly did this attitude arise from and at what time?
conversely, in Irene Irene Claremont de Castillejo’ book “Knowing Woman” she argues that “Woman, who is so intimately and profoundly concerned with life, takes death in her stride. For her, to rid herself of an unwanted foetus is as much in accord with nature as for a cat to refuse milk to a weakling kitten. It is man who has evolved principles about the sacredness of life … and women have passionately adopted them as their own. But principles are abstract. Woman’s basic instinct is not concerned with the idea of life, but with the fact of life. The ruthlessness of nature which discards unwanted life is deeply ingrained in her.”
I was thinking about this comment as my colleague who raises sheep mentionned to me that one of her ewe had two babies and then drowned the weakest one....
She added that often the ewes knew when there was a defect in the lamb, often something humans couldn't detect. When my colleague went against the grain and did all she could to help a rejected lamb survive, more often than not it ended up dying anyways or having a poor quality of life.... the ruthlessness of nature indeed. Giving life and taking it are the two sides of the same coin...
These are such great points. None of my kids so far have been surprises necessarily, but our first was "unplanned." When talking about her though I usually clarify between "unplanned" vs "unexpected" because we were charting and I am fortunate in that my cycle is pretty regular, even amidst stressful seasons, so we knew we were taking a risk 😅
But with our first I remember telling friends that I kind of wanted to accidentally get pregnant because it would take the decision out of my hands, and when it was all up to my husband and me it felt almost arrogant to say "yes, we're ready." Of course we weren't ready! We would never have really been ready, but the beauty of NFP is that it really lays bare one's reasons for wanting to avoid pregnancy, and sometimes deep down you're not really that committed to avoiding and you use a day that's "not that fertile"....
At the same time, when we felt "ready" to try for a third, we ended up not conceiving at first, and then when we did conceive, we lost that baby a couple months later. I now have a snoozing four-month-old strapped to my chest as I type this, but my entire pregnancy with her was a reminder of how little it is up to us. If we could plan everything, we would have had a different baby many months before this, but we can't, and that idea that we aren't perfectly in control of our own family size and spacing of children is hard to grapple with, and I can imagine it would be even harder for people who are so used to things like HBC or other medical interventions being normal parts of life.
Thank you for sharing all of this. It very much illustrates both ends of my point about surrender (I lost a baby last May as well, I very much relate to everything you say here and want to say both that I’m sorry for your loss and also so many congratulations on your little baby!).
My last semester of undergrad I was in a qualitative psychology research class where we were interviewing members of a community for their life stories. By random assignment, I interviewed a woman who was raped by an uncle as a teen and became pregnant. She hid it because she wanted to keep the baby, but eventually her mom found out and forced her to get an abortion. She described the procedure in detail, and it was a late term one involving getting a needle stuck through her stomach. I was pro-choice at the time, but it was the first I actually heard an abortion process described. Five decades later, this woman was still in tears over that experience. She literally could have talked about anything that happened in her life, but that pain was what she wanted to share. I think of her every so often and pray for her.
About six months after that interview, I found myself pregnant with a man who turned out to be a manipulative drug addict. If I hadn't met that woman, there is a chance I would have tried to get an abortion. But, by the grace of God, my son came into this world and gave me a new chance at life. I consider myself very fortunate to have met my now husband only a year later. He adopted my oldest, and we now have two more sons and are open to however many more children God will give us. We experienced secondary infertility between our second and third, so any sense I had of "control" in life has melted away. I can only surrender to God's will, in whatever children he sends me, or whatever people in general He sends to me, just like my interviewee. Surrender and receptivity are hard for us women to accept nowadays, but it has only led me to beauty.
I love hearing the life stories from other women, such as yourself Emily, who may have learned it the hard way, but are living it to the fullest.
Thank you for this, what a story. My heart breaks for that woman, for all of what happened to her, what a tragic situation all around. Very telling too, that that story is what she felt the need to share.
I had a similar experience with my first couple pregnancies as you did with the father of your first child, and am so grateful that I met my current husband fairly soon after as well!
Also, after the miscarriage I had last spring I very much can reflect back to you your feelings your expressed in relation to the secondary infertility. I think there can be a lot of relief in acceptance with these things all while holding onto the openness to life that brought you your last child and me this pregnancy.
Others have written about this better than I can, but society also seems to just assume that women WILL have 10 children in a row, easy as pie - that a successful pregnancy is a given. A baby born alive and well is a mystery, a miracle, and truly meant to be when we consider how many things can go wrong. How funny that pop culture obsesses over the concept of "let it go," but when it comes to fertility, we're encouraged to be frantic control freaks.
I haven't read the whole thing yet, but had to say
"I don’t recommend or pedestal single motherhood, but once upon a time, I was a single mother and that was better than what I was before—a lost girl."
Just moved me to tears, because absolutely. Some of your experiences mirror my own, and I carry this particular sentiment in me so deeply-- a pregnant single mom at 20, and now considering openness to a third with a very wonderful man, my 4th baby at 38-- you just pegged it so perfectly right there. I don't wish it for anyone, but wow, the gratitude for how it pushed me and shaped my life is deep beyond the cellular!
Thank you Liz ♥️ that’s so wild that our journeys mirror one another’s in such a way! I’m pregnant with my third with my current husband (4th total), so we are right there too! I know there is a lot of venomous talk in *the discourse* about single mothers and I understand why to a point, but I also personally feel my own experience very much shifted my entire life in an immense and profound way. Sounds like you feel the same!
I am a better and different Mama as a partnered woman (also older) but I grew up with my now almost 17 year old. Don't recommend, but do appreciate!
And with my husband, both are boys were unplanned but expected...we knew I was fertile and we were open to what came through in the moment, and we're getting back to that place again, these days. My sis-in-law is 35, has no babies though been married for years, and they're intensely planning...waiting for everything to be in the exact right place. I just can't imagine how hard that would be for us. I can't imagine things ever being "right," the laundry list is too long. And what you said about not relying on future fertility...I worry what might happen if things don't just go Bing! Bang! Boom!Baby! for them when they ARE ready.
I've been reading that Hannah's Children book recently, and it has been mirrored in my life that God really does provide, no matter the circumstances. I've been a SAHM with a husband providing, AND I've been a single one, scraping by and even having the heat turned off and not enough money for rent. I know which I prefer, but there still isn't one "right" timed baby in the family :) (well, my youngest 2 have birthdays literally one the day after the other, which is kind of hilarious)
All of ours have not been particularly "planned" but rather just "knowingly not avoiding" which has looked a bit different each time, and with different spacing. We'll see how this pans out the rest of our fertile years after baby #4 is born next month. haha (We got married the week of my 27th birthday and desired/were open to multiple kids, so being showered with children has—blessedly—been our experience thus far.)
The question "was this a planned pregnancy" being one of the first at those initial prenatal appointments just grates on me. I get it! But also it reinforces that yes/no binary that is detrimental to our understanding of fertility and children. Perhaps open-ended questions about *intentions* and feelings about the pregnancy, while a little more mushy and harder to check a box for, would go a long way in the medical world.
I’m so glad you and your husband have been so abundantly showered with babies!
And yes—that question as part of clinical prenatal history taking seems a little bit “surveillance-y” to me to be honest. Maybe I’m just forever extra skeptical and pessimistic about healthcare with my work history but in the context of a typical OB/patient relationship it seems like an irrelevant thing to ask. In a more intimate provider-patient relationship with a midwife who actually spends more than 5 minutes with the women she serves, okay fair, but if it is just one question in the barrage of other boxes to check, no thank you!
I've got four kids all of whom were conceived as "planned" or during an "open to life" phase. What you said about the advice you gave to someone resonated with me. I had my first baby at 26, my last at 34. Between then and now (I'm 39), and after experiencing increasing pain over the past 5 years, I was diagnosed with stage 3 endometriosis and adenomyosis. The adenomyosis quite literally ravaged my uterus, and in all likelihood I would have had a hard time conceiving and/or maintaining a pregnancy. I had expert endo excision last week, and, unfortunatly, the only treatment for my adeno was a hysterectomy, which I had done at the same time. I feel so much better already, but I will be eternally grateful that I didn't wait until I had "everything together" before becoming a mom. Future fertility is not guaranteed and children are such a gift.
Oh I’m so glad you are feeling better! Also so glad you were able to have your children prior to your health issues becoming apparent. This is so important to discuss, especially as these conditions seem to be more and more prevalent (and the question as to why this is is also such an important topic).
I think advice like what I shared can seem sort of harsh but really this is exactly why I share it!
I've had 5 pregnancies, only one was planned. The first ended in miscarriage so I have 4 kids. I agree with basically everything you said and I love that you said it. I have no bandwidth to write right now so I love that you're putting these ideas out there for the rest of us! When women tell me they're freezing their eggs I am tempted to say, "don't freeze them, fertilize them now... With a man's sperm... By having sex!" 😂 It's all so very devoid of life the way people are approaching it... Stay as infertile as possible for all your childbearing years by taking hormonal treatments or keeping a copper wire inside your uterus to be hostile to sperm. And then go on dates with men but be so critical of them and understand male nature so poorly that you reject them and they reject you right back. Then, take more hormones and have your eggs harvested out of your body and put on ice so you can wait for that one nice guy you hope shows up before your body can't maintain a pregnancy anymore. 😒 Gawd. Maybe an unpopular idea, but why not just do what comes naturally if you're a heterosexual woman-- eventually you will likely get pregnant. Only sleep with men you like (of course!) and go from there. I was not promiscuous by any stretch of the imagination but when I met my now husband, we weren't very "careful." I got pregnant 5 months after we started dating. We've been together 12+ years now and have 4 kids. I'm not going to say that this is right for everyone but my age mates who were super careful with their birth control are alone and without kids at age 40. Two of them also had abortions because it "wasn't the right time." And honestly, I don't think any of these particular friends are happy with where they've ended up. They wanted families. I do hope we can influence young people and our own children to embrace what comes naturally!!
Really enjoyed reading your essay as usual. I also think that as a society, we get fixated on control as the ultimate value. And it’s one of those desires that can easily be invisible as it is not questioned or even acknowledged a lot of the time: just assume that more control is always better. But why? Is it really?
I never had the experience of being able to control fertility (except by not having sex). But thinking about my work life, I have realized that I have kind of applied your principles. I don’t think about or plan “my career.” Some of this is just a lack of ambition, perhaps. But mostly it has to do with simply trying my best with whatever (whoever, as I work with people) is in front of me. There have been very rough spots, but somehow it’s always worked out and I love my current job. There is something peaceful about taking this approach, instead of always aiming to manage and optimize everything.
I think control as the ultimate value very much goes along with another thing that society really seems to value-choice. I have often discussed the idea of “choice as the highest good” and why this is wrong, and I think control bolsters that belief for sure. It’s all just symptoms of extreme individualism.
I cried so hard sometimes over pregnancy tests. If I had only gotten pregnant when I “felt ready”, my life would be pretty empty now.
I mean, being married to a man who loves to share his bank account with me didn’t mean I “felt ready”, though, logically, being married and provided for is a good preparation for pregnancy.
I think we need to push back against the notion of living according to our feelings. Acknowledge the feelings, yes, and even wait on them sometimes, but when we let life be the way it is, the feelings will usually fall into place after a while.
I like the way you write about your first pregnancy. You show the hope in the situation without encouraging anybody to do the same.
I hope I’m writing enough not to provoke misunderstandings by not explaining exactly what I mean.
Thank you Loree! I love what you said here about simply “letting life be the way it is”. Such a lesson and one many have a lot of issues learning. I think likely due to the seemingly collective inclination toward neuroticism paired with a bit of a resilience problem that we have societally. The feelings usually do fall into place and it makes sense that they do!
None of my kids were really planned. once we had the first we just stayed in baby mode. In fact, our third came along just after my husband and I agreed that it would be prudent to NOT get pregnant for a while. Whoopsie indeed 😆 Our 5th baby was the real shock though. We were done and happy with 4 kids but were blessed with another in 2020. Best surprise ever.
** I could not for the life of me get the “link” button to work while working on this on my phone and guess who has too many items checked out at the library to use the free internet? 😂
So, if you are interested in CDC stats, here is the link to where I got those:
Emily, this was so beautifully written!! I have had four pregnancies, and exactly none of them were planned. Some I was more open to than others. But regardless, when I look at my children, “I don’t see a mistake nor misfortune,” as you so eloquently put it. Motherhood, despite being unplanned, catapulted me into the type of woman I was meant to be. It was a portal for a life of so much more than I ever could imagined. Thank you so much for sharing your experience, and I can’t wait to read the other works you mentioned!
This is wild - I've been deep thinking about this exact topic for my next freelance piece! I read in another post here that the typical approach to sex education has an "inherently anti-natalist frame" and I think that is so true! For example, the fact that we use the word "protection" as a synonym for contraception is a bit odd if you think about it. The implication is that our fertility is dangerous! With this logic, pregnancy is not a blessing, a wonder, but rather something that very well could ruin us. And we wonder why so many women don't see motherhood as something positive and why we have population collapse :S (obviously oversimplifying but the messaging we send young people matters)
Motherhood teaches us about the feminine, and the feminine is the opposite of what is most valued culturally (the predictable/linear/visible). There is so much spiritual truth in being open to life - some that I'm still learning.
Great piece, as always, and not me over here sad and jealous because I no longer have a baby in the house...
Yes I think there is a lot more to being “open to life” than just being open to pregnancy! Something that is really fascinating and hopeful to think on in my opinion!
Such an interesting insight about the term “protection” because while yes, we do need to protect ourselves in our sexual experiences, the thing which we are protecting ourselves from is decidedly NOT our own fertility! It can be a great many other things but fertility is something for us to actually be in protection of, not on the defensive from.
Will be excited to see your freelance piece come out!!
I want to respond more fully, but my brain is postpartum mush. I did write a poem in my last post that I think gets as close as I can come for now.
I think we miss a lot when we’re insistent on
control, and I have never looked at my own children (although, to be fair only one would actually qualify as a surprise) and not been thankful for their very existence.
I have often been overwhelmed, incredulous or doubtful of my abilities. But I also just don’t think you can predict how things will go. My recovery after my 6th has been one of my easiest, despite life itself being chaotic. He’s a cherubic little angel baby after a very hard pregnancy. You just don’t know, there are no guarantees and life is always a gift.
I will absolutely be going to go read your poem, Annelise, I’m sure it is beautiful.
I have often had those same feelings about my abilities in motherhood and I don’t think that ever really will go away, and yet, I feel like I’m the grand scheme of it all, those reservations and frustrations and fears are just little reminders of the jobs we’re given and set us on the path we need to be on and usually already were on.♥️ still learning, of course.
I was 20 years old, just married, still in college, and I got pregnant immediately after the wedding. By no means did I feel ready, but we also weren't doing anything to prevent pregnancy and we were both open to it (despite the fact we were both in college!) Ever since I was young, I knew I wanted to be a mother. That was a non-negotiable to me, and I once nearly had a panic attack at the thought that I'd have no kids or I was somehow infertile. Now my son is almost 18 months and I'm open to having another one soon. Babies are such blessings and they fill me with so much happiness with their joy and curiosity and innocence. I'm probably going to go the route of letting things happen and not worrying too much about it. It's kind of sad that our current society wants to rush women into careers/studying/jobs, etc, when sometimes, some of us just want to sit back and enjoy our babies. That's what brings me the most happiness and fulfillment, I've found.
Well congratulations Dani! I love what you said about babies and their inherently pure personalities. Just by virtue of that fact, they cannot be anything but gifts and opportunities for our own growth and expansion—even when their appearances come at what seem like inopportune times!
I remembered a while ago I had this discussion with a woman my age that I didn't know well, we were meeting over a week-end at a friends' farms to help out. At the time I was 4 months pregnant, barely showing yet and she asked with interest how old I was - 31 yo I answered.
She replied oh same as me... and then shared that she had accidentally fallen pregnant a couple of month ago despite her IUD and that, although her and her boyfriend wanted children in not too long, because it wasn't the RIGHT time, she had terminated the pregnancy.
She described getting an abortion in a very detached, careless way, like ordering a take-out - i don't know if she truly wasn't touched by it, or was trying to convince herself it didn't hurt as much as it did...Seing me pregnant brought her back to the fact that she would be close to term by now.
I was so taken aback... here was this woman in a stable situation, with a job an appartement a boyfriend, who wanted children soon, but NOT NOW. The very idea of unplanned accidental pregnancy has completely disappeared in my French culture and makes women so unconfortable. It's WHEN and HOW you want it otherwise it's abortion time... I didn't comment on her choice of course but I've thought about her a couple of time since then...
Wow this is so illustrative of exactly what I was trying to express with this— we simply cannot expect pregnancy to be this perfect thing! And when we do, I think much is lost. I have had friends do the same thing and while I am not here to berate them for it, I have to discern that there is something very off there. When MOST things are lined up just fine but not EVERYTHING is and a woman still makes that decision, I think it is very sad. I have to wonder how much it impacts them in the future. I miscarried last spring and a coworker was due about two weeks off from where I would have been and just seeing her regularly made me so sad. I know it is is a different situation on the surface, but really it has the same foundation—one woman has a full womb and the other doesn’t but “should/could”—and no matter the specifics of the situation, this is a contrast that is very hard to ignore.
That's so sad. It sounds almost like she was in denial or coping. It's devastating when you see someone have a baby, the same age as you, and you think..."that's how old my baby should be. Why didn't I make the right choice?" Our children's lives are not disposable and yet they are so often treated that way. I know the devastating consequences of this very well...and I think it's terrible such a destructive practice is enabled. I think the fact that abortion is presented as a neutral choice, and not life-ending, allows for the delusion that unless pregnancy is planned or "wanted" it's somehow bad. A child is never a bad thing -- they are irreplaceable. Oh, RIP to all the people taken too soon from the world because of this false expectation that life needs to be perfect and planned to give birth. I don't know where that expectation came from, but it's been internalized by many 💔
I think the question you bring up here at the end of what you wrote is a really interesting thing to think on. Where exactly did this attitude arise from and at what time?
conversely, in Irene Irene Claremont de Castillejo’ book “Knowing Woman” she argues that “Woman, who is so intimately and profoundly concerned with life, takes death in her stride. For her, to rid herself of an unwanted foetus is as much in accord with nature as for a cat to refuse milk to a weakling kitten. It is man who has evolved principles about the sacredness of life … and women have passionately adopted them as their own. But principles are abstract. Woman’s basic instinct is not concerned with the idea of life, but with the fact of life. The ruthlessness of nature which discards unwanted life is deeply ingrained in her.”
I was thinking about this comment as my colleague who raises sheep mentionned to me that one of her ewe had two babies and then drowned the weakest one....
She added that often the ewes knew when there was a defect in the lamb, often something humans couldn't detect. When my colleague went against the grain and did all she could to help a rejected lamb survive, more often than not it ended up dying anyways or having a poor quality of life.... the ruthlessness of nature indeed. Giving life and taking it are the two sides of the same coin...
These are such great points. None of my kids so far have been surprises necessarily, but our first was "unplanned." When talking about her though I usually clarify between "unplanned" vs "unexpected" because we were charting and I am fortunate in that my cycle is pretty regular, even amidst stressful seasons, so we knew we were taking a risk 😅
But with our first I remember telling friends that I kind of wanted to accidentally get pregnant because it would take the decision out of my hands, and when it was all up to my husband and me it felt almost arrogant to say "yes, we're ready." Of course we weren't ready! We would never have really been ready, but the beauty of NFP is that it really lays bare one's reasons for wanting to avoid pregnancy, and sometimes deep down you're not really that committed to avoiding and you use a day that's "not that fertile"....
At the same time, when we felt "ready" to try for a third, we ended up not conceiving at first, and then when we did conceive, we lost that baby a couple months later. I now have a snoozing four-month-old strapped to my chest as I type this, but my entire pregnancy with her was a reminder of how little it is up to us. If we could plan everything, we would have had a different baby many months before this, but we can't, and that idea that we aren't perfectly in control of our own family size and spacing of children is hard to grapple with, and I can imagine it would be even harder for people who are so used to things like HBC or other medical interventions being normal parts of life.
Thank you for sharing all of this. It very much illustrates both ends of my point about surrender (I lost a baby last May as well, I very much relate to everything you say here and want to say both that I’m sorry for your loss and also so many congratulations on your little baby!).
My last semester of undergrad I was in a qualitative psychology research class where we were interviewing members of a community for their life stories. By random assignment, I interviewed a woman who was raped by an uncle as a teen and became pregnant. She hid it because she wanted to keep the baby, but eventually her mom found out and forced her to get an abortion. She described the procedure in detail, and it was a late term one involving getting a needle stuck through her stomach. I was pro-choice at the time, but it was the first I actually heard an abortion process described. Five decades later, this woman was still in tears over that experience. She literally could have talked about anything that happened in her life, but that pain was what she wanted to share. I think of her every so often and pray for her.
About six months after that interview, I found myself pregnant with a man who turned out to be a manipulative drug addict. If I hadn't met that woman, there is a chance I would have tried to get an abortion. But, by the grace of God, my son came into this world and gave me a new chance at life. I consider myself very fortunate to have met my now husband only a year later. He adopted my oldest, and we now have two more sons and are open to however many more children God will give us. We experienced secondary infertility between our second and third, so any sense I had of "control" in life has melted away. I can only surrender to God's will, in whatever children he sends me, or whatever people in general He sends to me, just like my interviewee. Surrender and receptivity are hard for us women to accept nowadays, but it has only led me to beauty.
I love hearing the life stories from other women, such as yourself Emily, who may have learned it the hard way, but are living it to the fullest.
Thank you for this, what a story. My heart breaks for that woman, for all of what happened to her, what a tragic situation all around. Very telling too, that that story is what she felt the need to share.
I had a similar experience with my first couple pregnancies as you did with the father of your first child, and am so grateful that I met my current husband fairly soon after as well!
Also, after the miscarriage I had last spring I very much can reflect back to you your feelings your expressed in relation to the secondary infertility. I think there can be a lot of relief in acceptance with these things all while holding onto the openness to life that brought you your last child and me this pregnancy.
Others have written about this better than I can, but society also seems to just assume that women WILL have 10 children in a row, easy as pie - that a successful pregnancy is a given. A baby born alive and well is a mystery, a miracle, and truly meant to be when we consider how many things can go wrong. How funny that pop culture obsesses over the concept of "let it go," but when it comes to fertility, we're encouraged to be frantic control freaks.
Absolutely! It truly all really is miraculous 💗
I haven't read the whole thing yet, but had to say
"I don’t recommend or pedestal single motherhood, but once upon a time, I was a single mother and that was better than what I was before—a lost girl."
Just moved me to tears, because absolutely. Some of your experiences mirror my own, and I carry this particular sentiment in me so deeply-- a pregnant single mom at 20, and now considering openness to a third with a very wonderful man, my 4th baby at 38-- you just pegged it so perfectly right there. I don't wish it for anyone, but wow, the gratitude for how it pushed me and shaped my life is deep beyond the cellular!
Thank you Liz ♥️ that’s so wild that our journeys mirror one another’s in such a way! I’m pregnant with my third with my current husband (4th total), so we are right there too! I know there is a lot of venomous talk in *the discourse* about single mothers and I understand why to a point, but I also personally feel my own experience very much shifted my entire life in an immense and profound way. Sounds like you feel the same!
I am a better and different Mama as a partnered woman (also older) but I grew up with my now almost 17 year old. Don't recommend, but do appreciate!
And with my husband, both are boys were unplanned but expected...we knew I was fertile and we were open to what came through in the moment, and we're getting back to that place again, these days. My sis-in-law is 35, has no babies though been married for years, and they're intensely planning...waiting for everything to be in the exact right place. I just can't imagine how hard that would be for us. I can't imagine things ever being "right," the laundry list is too long. And what you said about not relying on future fertility...I worry what might happen if things don't just go Bing! Bang! Boom!Baby! for them when they ARE ready.
I've been reading that Hannah's Children book recently, and it has been mirrored in my life that God really does provide, no matter the circumstances. I've been a SAHM with a husband providing, AND I've been a single one, scraping by and even having the heat turned off and not enough money for rent. I know which I prefer, but there still isn't one "right" timed baby in the family :) (well, my youngest 2 have birthdays literally one the day after the other, which is kind of hilarious)
All of ours have not been particularly "planned" but rather just "knowingly not avoiding" which has looked a bit different each time, and with different spacing. We'll see how this pans out the rest of our fertile years after baby #4 is born next month. haha (We got married the week of my 27th birthday and desired/were open to multiple kids, so being showered with children has—blessedly—been our experience thus far.)
The question "was this a planned pregnancy" being one of the first at those initial prenatal appointments just grates on me. I get it! But also it reinforces that yes/no binary that is detrimental to our understanding of fertility and children. Perhaps open-ended questions about *intentions* and feelings about the pregnancy, while a little more mushy and harder to check a box for, would go a long way in the medical world.
I’m so glad you and your husband have been so abundantly showered with babies!
And yes—that question as part of clinical prenatal history taking seems a little bit “surveillance-y” to me to be honest. Maybe I’m just forever extra skeptical and pessimistic about healthcare with my work history but in the context of a typical OB/patient relationship it seems like an irrelevant thing to ask. In a more intimate provider-patient relationship with a midwife who actually spends more than 5 minutes with the women she serves, okay fair, but if it is just one question in the barrage of other boxes to check, no thank you!
Twins!! I also got married the week of my 27th birthday 🙈🫶🏼
I've got four kids all of whom were conceived as "planned" or during an "open to life" phase. What you said about the advice you gave to someone resonated with me. I had my first baby at 26, my last at 34. Between then and now (I'm 39), and after experiencing increasing pain over the past 5 years, I was diagnosed with stage 3 endometriosis and adenomyosis. The adenomyosis quite literally ravaged my uterus, and in all likelihood I would have had a hard time conceiving and/or maintaining a pregnancy. I had expert endo excision last week, and, unfortunatly, the only treatment for my adeno was a hysterectomy, which I had done at the same time. I feel so much better already, but I will be eternally grateful that I didn't wait until I had "everything together" before becoming a mom. Future fertility is not guaranteed and children are such a gift.
Oh I’m so glad you are feeling better! Also so glad you were able to have your children prior to your health issues becoming apparent. This is so important to discuss, especially as these conditions seem to be more and more prevalent (and the question as to why this is is also such an important topic).
I think advice like what I shared can seem sort of harsh but really this is exactly why I share it!
Blessings to you as you recover ♥️
I've had 5 pregnancies, only one was planned. The first ended in miscarriage so I have 4 kids. I agree with basically everything you said and I love that you said it. I have no bandwidth to write right now so I love that you're putting these ideas out there for the rest of us! When women tell me they're freezing their eggs I am tempted to say, "don't freeze them, fertilize them now... With a man's sperm... By having sex!" 😂 It's all so very devoid of life the way people are approaching it... Stay as infertile as possible for all your childbearing years by taking hormonal treatments or keeping a copper wire inside your uterus to be hostile to sperm. And then go on dates with men but be so critical of them and understand male nature so poorly that you reject them and they reject you right back. Then, take more hormones and have your eggs harvested out of your body and put on ice so you can wait for that one nice guy you hope shows up before your body can't maintain a pregnancy anymore. 😒 Gawd. Maybe an unpopular idea, but why not just do what comes naturally if you're a heterosexual woman-- eventually you will likely get pregnant. Only sleep with men you like (of course!) and go from there. I was not promiscuous by any stretch of the imagination but when I met my now husband, we weren't very "careful." I got pregnant 5 months after we started dating. We've been together 12+ years now and have 4 kids. I'm not going to say that this is right for everyone but my age mates who were super careful with their birth control are alone and without kids at age 40. Two of them also had abortions because it "wasn't the right time." And honestly, I don't think any of these particular friends are happy with where they've ended up. They wanted families. I do hope we can influence young people and our own children to embrace what comes naturally!!
Hear hear to all of this! 🥂
Taking sex out of reproduction is a mistake, period. In full agreement with you, 100%.
Really enjoyed reading your essay as usual. I also think that as a society, we get fixated on control as the ultimate value. And it’s one of those desires that can easily be invisible as it is not questioned or even acknowledged a lot of the time: just assume that more control is always better. But why? Is it really?
I never had the experience of being able to control fertility (except by not having sex). But thinking about my work life, I have realized that I have kind of applied your principles. I don’t think about or plan “my career.” Some of this is just a lack of ambition, perhaps. But mostly it has to do with simply trying my best with whatever (whoever, as I work with people) is in front of me. There have been very rough spots, but somehow it’s always worked out and I love my current job. There is something peaceful about taking this approach, instead of always aiming to manage and optimize everything.
I think control as the ultimate value very much goes along with another thing that society really seems to value-choice. I have often discussed the idea of “choice as the highest good” and why this is wrong, and I think control bolsters that belief for sure. It’s all just symptoms of extreme individualism.
Curious what you do for work?!
I can email you if you are very curious. I don’t typically talk about work online for privacy reasons 😄
Oh I totally get that! I get nervous every time I mention that I’m a nurse 😂
I cried so hard sometimes over pregnancy tests. If I had only gotten pregnant when I “felt ready”, my life would be pretty empty now.
I mean, being married to a man who loves to share his bank account with me didn’t mean I “felt ready”, though, logically, being married and provided for is a good preparation for pregnancy.
I think we need to push back against the notion of living according to our feelings. Acknowledge the feelings, yes, and even wait on them sometimes, but when we let life be the way it is, the feelings will usually fall into place after a while.
I like the way you write about your first pregnancy. You show the hope in the situation without encouraging anybody to do the same.
I hope I’m writing enough not to provoke misunderstandings by not explaining exactly what I mean.
Thank you Loree! I love what you said here about simply “letting life be the way it is”. Such a lesson and one many have a lot of issues learning. I think likely due to the seemingly collective inclination toward neuroticism paired with a bit of a resilience problem that we have societally. The feelings usually do fall into place and it makes sense that they do!
None of my kids were really planned. once we had the first we just stayed in baby mode. In fact, our third came along just after my husband and I agreed that it would be prudent to NOT get pregnant for a while. Whoopsie indeed 😆 Our 5th baby was the real shock though. We were done and happy with 4 kids but were blessed with another in 2020. Best surprise ever.
Aww I love to hear this! Surprise babies are such a gift, even when we think we are done!
** I could not for the life of me get the “link” button to work while working on this on my phone and guess who has too many items checked out at the library to use the free internet? 😂
So, if you are interested in CDC stats, here is the link to where I got those:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_02/sr02-201.pdf
Emily, this was so beautifully written!! I have had four pregnancies, and exactly none of them were planned. Some I was more open to than others. But regardless, when I look at my children, “I don’t see a mistake nor misfortune,” as you so eloquently put it. Motherhood, despite being unplanned, catapulted me into the type of woman I was meant to be. It was a portal for a life of so much more than I ever could imagined. Thank you so much for sharing your experience, and I can’t wait to read the other works you mentioned!
Oh thank you Sarah! Sounds like we have had similar experiences, and similar outcomes! And thank you for reading ♥️
This is wild - I've been deep thinking about this exact topic for my next freelance piece! I read in another post here that the typical approach to sex education has an "inherently anti-natalist frame" and I think that is so true! For example, the fact that we use the word "protection" as a synonym for contraception is a bit odd if you think about it. The implication is that our fertility is dangerous! With this logic, pregnancy is not a blessing, a wonder, but rather something that very well could ruin us. And we wonder why so many women don't see motherhood as something positive and why we have population collapse :S (obviously oversimplifying but the messaging we send young people matters)
Motherhood teaches us about the feminine, and the feminine is the opposite of what is most valued culturally (the predictable/linear/visible). There is so much spiritual truth in being open to life - some that I'm still learning.
Great piece, as always, and not me over here sad and jealous because I no longer have a baby in the house...
Yes I think there is a lot more to being “open to life” than just being open to pregnancy! Something that is really fascinating and hopeful to think on in my opinion!
Such an interesting insight about the term “protection” because while yes, we do need to protect ourselves in our sexual experiences, the thing which we are protecting ourselves from is decidedly NOT our own fertility! It can be a great many other things but fertility is something for us to actually be in protection of, not on the defensive from.
Will be excited to see your freelance piece come out!!
I want to respond more fully, but my brain is postpartum mush. I did write a poem in my last post that I think gets as close as I can come for now.
I think we miss a lot when we’re insistent on
control, and I have never looked at my own children (although, to be fair only one would actually qualify as a surprise) and not been thankful for their very existence.
I have often been overwhelmed, incredulous or doubtful of my abilities. But I also just don’t think you can predict how things will go. My recovery after my 6th has been one of my easiest, despite life itself being chaotic. He’s a cherubic little angel baby after a very hard pregnancy. You just don’t know, there are no guarantees and life is always a gift.
I will absolutely be going to go read your poem, Annelise, I’m sure it is beautiful.
I have often had those same feelings about my abilities in motherhood and I don’t think that ever really will go away, and yet, I feel like I’m the grand scheme of it all, those reservations and frustrations and fears are just little reminders of the jobs we’re given and set us on the path we need to be on and usually already were on.♥️ still learning, of course.
I was 20 years old, just married, still in college, and I got pregnant immediately after the wedding. By no means did I feel ready, but we also weren't doing anything to prevent pregnancy and we were both open to it (despite the fact we were both in college!) Ever since I was young, I knew I wanted to be a mother. That was a non-negotiable to me, and I once nearly had a panic attack at the thought that I'd have no kids or I was somehow infertile. Now my son is almost 18 months and I'm open to having another one soon. Babies are such blessings and they fill me with so much happiness with their joy and curiosity and innocence. I'm probably going to go the route of letting things happen and not worrying too much about it. It's kind of sad that our current society wants to rush women into careers/studying/jobs, etc, when sometimes, some of us just want to sit back and enjoy our babies. That's what brings me the most happiness and fulfillment, I've found.
Well congratulations Dani! I love what you said about babies and their inherently pure personalities. Just by virtue of that fact, they cannot be anything but gifts and opportunities for our own growth and expansion—even when their appearances come at what seem like inopportune times!