Aztec Jumpers and Baby Sick

So I have to be honest. Getting pregnant was not part of the game plan, at least not for a few more years. The game plan was in fact, this:

Spend the summer in Mongolia and hope that my boyfriend will either come with me or stick around for when I get home.

But... y'know... even if he didn't. This would probably be enough to start the healing process.

Study harder than anyone has ever studied in the history of studying to get my degree finished (whilst I work full-time may I add) so that I can become a teacher and y'know... get all Dead Poet's Society on some kids' asses.

Generally continue my usual cycle of working, saving and travelling until hormones start to kick in (I figured this would probably happen in my early thirties) and I start to reproduce.

Instead, last December, having just turned 23, I suddenly thought: "Ooo, my boobs feel a bit funny." Cue panicked pregnancy tests, a full day of carrying the secret around with me - the only person in the whole world to know I was carrying a tiny little person around inside of me, or at least the potential of a tiny little person, and a scared conversation with my boyfriend who I had literally only just moved in with. Literally two months before. We're not talking about a long-term, very stable relationship here people.

And here's the paragraph where you find out I'm a terrible, horrible person. Until the point when I actually gave birth to our little boy and held him for the first time I really really didn't want to be a mum. I didn't want a baby at all. The comments box below is reserved for your vitriol ladies.

My friend fell pregnant a couple of months before me and the contrast between us could not have been any more marked. She turned, I swear, into Mother Nature overnight and became the most serene, glowing pregnant woman I had ever seen, as though her eyes had turned inwards and she could actually see her baby growing and changing within her.

Actual picture of my friend whilst pregnant.

I, on the other hand, turned into a kind of panicked, sweaty monster. My history of google searches consisted almost entirely of questions like, "Why don't I love my unborn baby yet?" "Will this love thing kick in at some point?" and, my worst fear from day one: "What if it never does?" Thank the LORD, the second I saw our little peanut the love thing hit me square between the eyes and eight weeks on, it intensifies every day.

But the whole experience of being reluctantly pregnant got me to thinking. It's a kind of taboo to admit that you're not enjoying every second of being pregnant and that (shock horror) you may not have actually connected with your baby. It's a taboo to say that, actually, this has really screwed up my plans. I wanted to go to Mongolia dammit! And yes, by having sex, whether you are using protection or not (we were by the way) you know that the possibility of falling pregnant is always there. But it doesn't change the shock of seeing those two lines on a pregnany test. It really doesn't.

I'm not saying that I regret a single thing, and I certainly don't regret having our little boy who I love more than anything. But having a baby is huge and scary and... well it means you can't wear skinny jeans for a while.

I'll be writing about music and films and things I love, as well as my little boy and the things we get up to together. My hope is that someone like me reads this and realises they're not alone, because goodness knows I felt pretty alone in my pregnancy.

Listening to: Love love love by Of Monsters And Men