Well, it sounds like there have been a lot of unwanted pregnancies that have turned into children that were wanted very much. That’s wonderful.
Everybody assumed that the Sprout was planned, given that I was in a stable marriage and wanted children and all that. But nope. I certainly wasn’t looking to get pregnant right then. Nevertheless, he was very much wanted. I’d tell him the truth about that if it comes up, once he’s old enough to understand the difference between unplanned and unwanted.
I’m the opposite of unplanned. My parents wanted two children, spaced 4 years apart, and a boy and a girl. Ideally, the boy would be older and the girl would have red hair. That’s exactly how it happened. I have no doubt that they would have loved me just as much no matter what, but it still feels kind of weird.
I was unplanned. So was my older brother. Both times my moms doctor told her that childbearing was an impossibility, nuh-uh, wasn’t gonna happen. Surprise!
My two sisters (both older than bro and I) were adopted. So my parents had the joy of telling their kids that they were either (a) unplanned or (b) adopted. Or my Dad did, anyway - my mother died when I was 1.
And we made it through our childhood with our psyche’s unscathed. Except for the shit that we did to each other.
(Of course, the real question is why am I here and why did my parents trust the same doctor who had been so spectacularly wrong the first time? )
I’m the last of 5 kids with almost a two year gap between myself and the sister closest in age to me. My mom told me she actually tried to abort me with some poison pill she got from some quack. She had second thoughts and spit it up. This was all well before Roe vs. Wade. I am and always have been completely pro-choice.
I just asked my mom if I was planned or not and she told me that I wasn’t planned per se but they didn’t take any kind of precautions and had at least three miscarriages before me so I guess I was, to a point. I don’t really care one way or the other and would be as frank with my child as my mother was with me.
Conversely, my older sister is convinced she was an accident and apparently has an issue with it. I think she’s stupid.
I’m pretty sure I was both unplanned and unexpected. My mother used to tell me, at various times, that she had never really wanted to have kids, at least, she wasn’t one of those women who really wanted children and couldn’t wait to have them. And then sometimes she would tell me that if she’d had a choice she would only have had two. Take a look at my screenname.
And then there was the fact that she had three miscarriages, two of them between my next older sibling and me. Her doctor told her she’d never carry another child to term. I’m sure my younger brother finds that interesting, too.
The funny thing is, none of that ever made me wonder if she loved me. Never had a doubt.
Ditto, only substitute “9” for “8”. I kinda like being a surprise; my mom says that God knew she needed me. (So far, though, He’s done nothing about the fact that she could use a new car. )
I have three kids. First came about a year before we were planning. The second was planned and conceived two years later and the third came while we were debating whether or not to have two or three kids.
When we are sitting at the table I tell them that only one of them was invited but all of them are welcome.
Huh… I was planned, but my sister was not. My parents had planned to have two kids, they just wanted a little more spacing between. I don’t think my sister knows, and I think I only know this because I overheard a telephone conversation years and years later. Doesn’t make much difference, though.
Some years back I stumbled across a stack of typed up pages tucked in with a typewriter in the family storage unit. I glanced at them to try to determine what they were and discovered they were my mother’s depressed and unhappy thoughts on being pregnant with me. Apparently not only was I unplanned, but unwanted as well. :dubious:
I’d suggest if you’re not going to tell your children about them being unplanned, you’d better destroy any evidence of the truth.
My parents have been known to joke that I was born about 3 years premature. As so many others have said, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest, because I grew up knowing I was loved, and that’s what matters.
My mother refused to marry my father until he got her pregnant. It was a condition of her acceptance of his hand in marriage.
She wanted children, and she wanted some verification that he could give them to her (even though he had two daughters from a previous marriage at that time).
I found this out when I did some basic math in elementary school and realized that my parents got married precisely six months before I was born. My youngest sibling is slightly less than a year younger than me. There’d have been more (my mother really wanted children), but the doctors and my father bullied her into having a tubal ligation.*
Her youngest is 31 and she’s still grouchy about not being able to birth her very own football team.
*She had difficulties with all three of her pregnancies - lost her first child to a then-untreatable genetic disease, had to have C-sections with both me and my brother because vaginal delivery was hugely risky for her and the considered medical opinion at the time was that a third pregnancy had a better than 50-50 chance of killing her. Particularly since my brother and I were so close together.
Ah, that’s because after a while you learn that, even though you know that your children are the most special, beautiful and unique gifts ever bestowed on this Earth, this fact escapes most every one else in the world. Especially once they are not so baby-cute any more.
Still, if you show any sort of interest, I’ll brag about mine until you wished you hadn’t.
I’ve been dithering about this in my own life right now. My son, at 14, conceived when I was 17, is not an idiot. I’ve been pretty open about the fact that, as is becoming a litany in this thread, my first pregnancy was unplanned, but not unwanted. Except, of course, when it was also unwanted. CaerieD, try not to take what you saw too seriously. I’ve now had one unplanned, unwanted pregnancy and one prayed for and very planned pregnancy, and my emotional/mental state with both of them was about the same - most of the time I wanted this, but when I didn’t, I REALLY didn’t and I was depressed and hated it and everything it stood for. But, of course, abortion being legal and all, it was indeed my choice, both times, to have kids. HE wasn’t and has never been unwanted, but sometimes (with both kids) PARENTHOOD has been unwanted. I’m not sure if it’s a distinction that can really be grokked by the non-parent.
Anyway, at least one of his peers is now sexually active, and I’ve been wondering if I should mention to her that not only was my son conceived unwittingly, he was conceived while using mulitiple methods of birth control. It seems like it would be a good impact statement: look, your friend who you’ve known since y’all were 6 and 7 wouldn’t be here if birth control was 100% effective. So be careful! But I know it would get back to him. And while, informationally as a critique of contraception and warning tale, that might be useful. But it seems to me there’s a fundamental emotional difference between knowing you were unplanned and knowing you were actively, futilely, being *prevented *from coming into existence. That seems harsher to me, and so far, I’ve decided not to share that information.
I don’t think it’s just a Catholic thing. When my parents got together (late '60s), for a lot of young couples, you got married and you had your family. Nature took it’s course. The only real planning required was more of a STOP family-planning, and that was basically whether the husband was going to get a vasectomy or the wife a tubal ligation. For the non-Catholics, I mean.
My brother and I were kind of planned, just earlier than expected.
My daughter was the best surprise I’ve ever had - even though (and I tell her this) it was very scary at first and I wasn’t sure if I could handle the responsibility of raising her alone.
I also tell her that I had an idea in my head of what I’d like in a child, and she’s not the child I thought I wanted - she’s better in every way!
Spencer is one of the most planned little kids I’ve ever heard of. We were going on a family cruise (also long planned-for), and I knew I couldn’t be more than 24 weeks pregnant when we set sail. So, we counted backwards and started trying to conceive. We were successful our second month. And we always thought it would be cool to have a baby with curly blonde hair and blue eyes. Who knew that’s what we’d get the first time around! (See here - old photo, but shows 'em off well.)
This baby was conceived earlier than we had planned (we were going to wait to conceive in February - I’m due 2/7/08), but we always knew we wanted more that one child.
)