On the twelfth of September 2014, I became somebody else. Somebody that was different to anything I had ever experienced before. On that day, I became a mother. From that second in time, life was forever changed.

When I was pregnant I read article after article, blog after blog trying to get a better insight as to what it truly meant to became a mother for the first time. I was hoping that they would be able to placate me a little so I could tame the overwhelming sense of anxiety that I was experiencing. Alas, no luck.

The crazy thing is that I had wanted to be a mother for as long as I can remember. I had fantasised about how cute I would look pregnant and what my outfits and hair style would look like. Yep, I was that annoying person living in Lala Land. Before I got pregnant, I had spent a considerable amount of time worrying that because of my age, it would take us ‘too long’ to conceive. I had always mocked those women who talked about being able to hear their biological clocks ticking and how pathetic and desperate they sounded. Of course, I became just like that and spent so much time looking at articles online about how to assist us in falling pregnant… When the time was “right”.

On Christmas Day of 2013, I told my husband that I hoped by Christmas the following year I’d be pregnant. He smiled and nodded and agreed. Little did I know that I was already pregnant and about to get massive shock. The truth is that I had been feeling ‘off’ for a week or more. I had actually done a pregnancy test earlier that week after experiencing a room spinning incident (while stone cold sober) and nausea. The test was negative, and I was relieved. We had only gotten married at the end of October and weren’t what I defined as ‘ready’. After the room spinning incident, there was the salsa incident. Id been going through a phase where all I wanted to eat was corn chips and salsa (hello pregnancy cravings!). On this particular day I had decided to buy corn chips and salsa. I dreamt about how good they would taste all the way home from the supermarket. It was pig out time! When I got home I could barely contain myself, I took the chips and the salsa into the bedroom and dove in. The outcome wasn’t exactly as I had envisaged. The salsa tasted wrong. I started ranting to my husband that the salsa makers had changed the ingredients. He tasted it and declared it the same as always. I was sure he was crazy and just didn’t know the salsa like I did.

On the morning that I discovered I was pregnant, I woke up at 5am and snuck to the bathroom pregnancy test in hand. I peed on the stick and set it down on the floor and stepped back. I looked away for the first 30 seconds and when I looked back I saw the undeniable two lines. They started out faint but continued to darken as time ticked away. A sense of panic washed over me. I was absolutely stunned. Stunned. How did this happen? Yes, I did actually think that. We hadn’t been actively trying to get pregnant, it was more of a lack of caution on our part. I was so certain that it would take me a long time to get pregnant that it didn’t even occur to me (it should have!) that it be pregnant less than two months after we got married. I felt numb.

I had no idea how I was going to tell my husband. After all, this wasn’t in ‘the plan’ I had devised for us. I went into the bedroom and sat down next to him. He woke up and asked me what was going on. I asked him to guess. He asked if he had overslept and missed his scheduled movie man date with my dad. I told him he hadn’t. His next guess was correct. Yes, I was pregnant. He nodded and said okay. Okay…. OKAY?! Okay for whom? Not okay for me. I stared at him for a few more seconds and he asked if I wanted to talk about being pregnant. I told him no. At that, he rolled over and went back to sleep. Ahhhh…. Men.

I felt a mixture of anxiety, shock, panic, excitement and sheer terror. This is what I had wanted. Isn’t it? I wanted a baby with the husband that I absolutely adored, or so I thought. The reality was that wanting and fantasising about something can be very different to the reality. I was able to add an overwhelming feeling of guilt to the mix. I was pregnant but I didn’t know if I wanted to be. I wanted to vomit and I’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with morning sickness. When the people around me had found out they were pregnant, it had been a joyous event. They were over the moon to be expecting their mini me. In addition to the other emotions, I added a deep feeling of ungratefulness. People try for years to conceive before success and some people are never successful.

I’ve seen videos on YouTube where women find out they are pregnant and are beyond happy or when they tell their partner they will be a daddy. I had always fantasised that I would have that moment. Actually, my little fantasy involved me being impeccably dressed and leaning over a pregnancy test, holding hands with my husband (who would also be impeccably dressed) watching and praying that it would be positive. Apparently not in reality.  I didn’t feel how I thought I should and that was a shock.