This, in spades.
However, having an actual baby has a strong tendency to make you forget all that shit and discover the unique passionate self-sacrificial love that comes with the baby package. There isn’t, often, any comparable experience before you have one.
I delayed having a child for years because I was terrified I would be a failure mother like mine, and hers before her. Turned out I wasn’t.
Well see, when human beings learn they may be getting something they want, they tend to be happy about it.
Apologies if this has already been pointed out, but: Chances are, the only times you’ve actually seen people reacting to a positive pregnancy test have been on TV, in scripted shows or commercials. While I don’t doubt that people react that way in real life, the reason people react the way they do on TV is for the dramatic effect that the show or ad is trying to achieve, the emotion it’s trying to invoke in the viewer.
True. While we were very happy to get a positive, it was more “Wow, hey cool, this is… really happening” versus holding hands and jumping up and down, yelling.
Did you ever during all of this tell your wife that you didn’t want a child?
Works for some people. Doesn’t for others. Really hard on the kid (and often on everyone else within range) when it doesn’t.
No, what I mean is more like this:
By analogy, for me, I think it would be like an astronaut being told he’s been selected for his first space mission. On the one hand, that’s what he “wants” - what did an astronaut train for, if not to go to space?
On the other hand, chances are his mind will suddenly think, “Oh shit, the negative shit just got real, too. I really could get blown up on the launch pad, I really could die in a fire, I really could asphyxiate in space, I really could get stranded forever, I really could…(insert a dozen other ways to die or suffer)”
In other words, while the positive stuff is positive, the negative stuff would also hit for real, harder than ever before, because what’s abstract has now become concrete.
She knew, as that had been my stand from day one. She was pursuing treatment for her endometriosis, had gone through medication trials and surgeries. Her doctor suggested attempting a pregnancy and I wasn’t thrilled with the idea, but gave in due to it being unlikely she’d conceive. And she did not conceive until after all aggressive attempts were stopped. Her doctors said it was a one-in-a-million thing. A few years later my son was born.
I’m not going to say that’s not true for you - but it isn’t for everyone. I might think of the negatives at some point - but not in the moment when I’m getting the good news.
Yeah, that’s why I said ‘tendency’. People also, I imagine, have a better chance at feeling it if they aren’t impoverished and overworked.
You could say similar things about any significant change in life: a big promotion, starting a business, getting accepted into University, moving to another country…all will involve challenges and possibly added responsibilities, pressure and costs. But presumably you understand why people get excited about these things?
On the cost thing specifically (because it could be argued that to the extent the above things cost money they are all investments)…socializing in general can be a significant cost, it certainly is for me. But it’s worth it, and to most parents that’s unquestionably how they would see raising a child.
(Indeed the cost of raising a child is largely discretionary…if we’re just talking the cost of feeding them and keeping them in mandatory education, it’s not that expensive. Parents choose to spend more than that.)
For me, it truly was a simultaneous admixture of emotions. It was very positive, especially outwardly after all that time working on it, but tempered with the thought: “oh shit’s about to get real.” Everybody has a different reaction. The astronaut analogy is perhaps a good one. I’d be ecstatic I was chosen to go into space, but there would be some trepidation at the risk involved. Even if I had worked it out in my head beforehand, it’s not the same as reality. But, as I’ve discovered in my own experiences in life, great happiness often does not come without great risk. It’s reasonable to have ambivalent emotions at such a wonderful event, knowing how much your reality is about to change. (And even though I thought I was mentally prepared, it proved to be far more difficult for the first year than I had thought. Second baby was a snap, though, with proper expectations and experience in place.)
Equal measures of delight and terror are perfectly common. Even when planned for.
It is definitely a “shit just got real” moment and you can’t be certain of quite how you’ll feel in the immediate aftermath.
For us it was a gentle and cautious “yay” that stemmed from knowing that so much can go wrong.
We were happy in a “first stage accomplished” way when we found out, we were delighted when they were born safely and have been ecstatically thankful since as they’ve grown up healthy and happy.
ETA - ninja’d by pulykamell
Yep, that’s 100% of the excitement.
And like @MrDibble points out, any sort of heartburn or anxiety about the actual logistics or responsibility of having a child should be resolved long before actually even deliberately trying to have a kid, or even before you stop using birth control and let things happen naturally.
If I took that advice literally, I would never have had a child. It was a little bit of jumping into the void for me. I knew I’d be a good father. I knew I could handle it. It still was scary as shit, and I was anxious about it. I just knew enough about myself that I could get through it. I don’t agree with advice like how one “should” feel about these things. There has never been a moment that I’ve regretted having my two daughters. But I was anxious about fatherhood from before having a child through about the first one’s first year of life. Only then did that anxiety start to work itself out.
I’m not saying you should be comfortable, but you should be aware. I mean, some anxiety is normal. But if you’re trying to have a child with your partner, and the first emotions that hit you are panic and fear, then you’ve somehow done it wrong IMO.
It should probably be excitement and happiness and then later, the anxiety and fear should set in.
I wonder what immediate blood tests would show. I would imagine a big dopamine dump for most people as in some ways we are hardwired towards reproduction. But that may accompany cortisol and other stress hormones.
For me it was simultaneous. If a friend told me he was scared shitless when he found out his partner was pregnant, I would think that’s an understandable reaction. When my daughter was actually born, I did not have the expected “greatest moment of my life” reaction parents are supposed to have. I was glad she was born safe and healthy, but I did not feel this overwhelming wave of love that society tells me I’m supposed to have. I had more of a rush at a particularly good meal I had a few weeks ago. And I don’t feel bad about it. My emotions are my emotions. I’m usually a very emotive person, but this was very abstract.
Nothing brings me more joy than my children now, but my opinion is that there is no certain way a person “should” feel and think before having a child. We all react and process the world differently.
exactly, there is no “right way to feel” about any of this. People are so often guilty of thinking that the way they see and process the world is the way others should do too.
I don’t get these two responses to @Velocity’s comments here. Having a baby is a wonderful thing, yes (at least for those of us who want/wanted kids) but it’s also a huge responsibility and, yes, burden – a positive one for most, to be sure, but a big one nonetheless. As a result parents tend to worry. And worry. And worry. We love our kids, even before they’re born, and we want what’s best for them. So it’s only natural to worry about the “thousand things to go terribly wrong” like being injured, growing up to be criminals or drug users or… whatever. Parents worry.
When my wife told me she was pregnant with our first I had a full-blown anxiety attack. We wanted kids and were hoping for a kid but that night, after she emerged from the bathroom having just taken a pregnancy test and told me it was positive, I realized the whole parenting thing…
Yep. Exactly this. It was no longer an idea, a plan, a goal. It wasn’t something distant that we were hoping for. It was real. A kid. I was about to responsible for the very life of another human being. Not just in the terms of pure survival but raising him or her to be a good, productive, loving, caring, helpful, honest member of society.
It’s a big lift and a positive pregnancy test brings all those worries to the front of the mind. So when we found out my wife was pregnant, I spent a couple of days in a fog, thinking to myself over and over again:
I love my kids, I’m glad we had them, but a really, really big part of being a parent is worrying about your kids and questioning / analyzing the best way to raise them. And for a lot of people those concerns start on day 1. Choosing an obstetrician. Quitting smoking / drinking. Taking a prenatal vitamin. The mom does all these things because she cares about the baby and, by extension, worries about it. So yes, it’s natural to worry. It’s not something you “get over” before you plan on getting pregnant.
My sons are now 17 and 14. My 17 year old has a 16 mile each way commute to school that takes him over a mountain pass. He’s an excellent driver, very attentive and aware, but I still worry every day about him on the road. He also goes to school 4 days a week and works the other 3. I’m worried that he’s going to get burned out and just quit, or that he’ll hate his job so much that he’ll become some living-in-his-parent’s-basement bum who doesn’t want to ever work again, and I worry about a million other little things.
My 14 year old has just been accepted into college in an actual degree program. 3 months into his freshman year of high school his teachers and school admin met with us and told us, basically, that he’s too smart to waste 4 years in high school and should go to college instead. So here we are. Sneak brag. He’s earned nothing but A’s and B’s in HS so far and there’s no indication that he’ll do anything but soar when he’s taking undergrad college courses. But… he’s 14. Going to college. I worry. I worry he’s not mature enough, I worry that his professors will eat him alive if they find out his age, and I worry about a million other little things.
Worrying is not something parents get over.
We never had a pregnancy test. Back then, you had to go to the doctor for that, and I didn’t see the point. We had sex at the right time. I thought I was pregnant. When it became obvious that I was pregnant I made an appointment to see an obstetrician. My “positive pregnancy test” for the medical industry was when she listened to the heart beat, I suppose.
But we were pretty happy to have started on a baby. We both wanted kids, and despite the fear, we were excited and enthusiastic.