I didn't think I wanted children. I ended up with five.

Navigating the ways becoming a mother changed my mind and my life

Ben and me with Felicity (at age 3 1/2) and Sarah (about a year old) at Sunnyside Park in New Paris, Indiana, 2014. Photo credit: Ani Wallach Photography.

For an audio version of this essay, please click here:

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In case you missed it, this month I’m focusing on the topic of belonging: what does it mean to feel like you’re part of something bigger than you? To be a member of a community or group and to be celebrated for who you are without feeling the need to conform or fit in? Each essay in April will feature a story that ties in with this theme of belonging and inclusion. I hope you enjoy them!

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Growing up, I decided I didn’t want to have my own children someday.

Scratch that: I didn’t think I wanted to have my own children. That is, until I did.

My reason was always the same: I didn’t like kids. They were messy, unpredictable, and cried all the time. I couldn’t reason with a child. Babies were even more difficult to decipher, because they were pink and wrinkly and squirmed or wailed, constantly soiling their diapers. No, thanks.

As the older of two kids, I was seldom exposed to babies or toddlers. My family of origin is small, and my parents didn’t have siblings (either at all, in my mom’s case, or they were quite a bit older, in my dad’s case) with infants. The two largest families I knew were the Harrises across the street (five kids, Catholic like we were) and the Nelsons, who also had five kids.

Though life brimmed with activity that included church family camp-outs, youth group retreats, school trips, birthday sleepovers, and neighborhood kickball, I can’t recall ever seeing a woman holding a baby. Or nursing. Or changing a diaper. Maybe I did but it never registered, because I was too enthralled with my kid life. Maybe it’s because it was the 1980s, and women were more private about the early months of infancy then.

I’m pretty sure I would have remembered at least overhearing a conversation between my mom and one of her friends about the travails of breastfeeding or chronic sleep deprivation. But I didn’t.

I didn’t hold babies, didn’t watch them sleep, didn’t ask questions about their feeding habits. I wasn’t curious about children. At all. Faded memories tell me that I watched infants from a distance, never close up. Whenever I’d hear one cry (or scream) at the grocery or at church, I winced. And cringed. That awful, blood-curdling wail was enough to make me want to run in the opposite direction.

Because babies couldn’t use words to express their needs or thoughts, I couldn’t relate to them. Even as an elementary-aged child, I needed intellectual interactions with others—at least using verbal language.

By the time I entered adulthood, I had only babysat once as a teenager—and it ended poorly. (The toddler I was watching had a poopy diaper and I never changed it.) Though I told myself, Someday when I have kids… I didn’t really believe I would make a good mom.

But later in life, I would go on to bear and raise five children. In retrospect, my dis-ease around little ones was directly related to my fear that I would screw up any kids I might have. I didn’t want shame to be the overarching message I’d inadvertently pass down from my childhood to theirs. This fear was overruled, however, by my primal longing to procreate and to hand down to my progeny whatever measly legacy I might leave behind.

The first time I held Felicity, our first child, my shoulders relaxed and heart rate steadied itself, but my mind spun on the proverbial hamster wheel. What if I can’t do this? What if I don’t know what she needs? What if I can’t be what she needs? My childhood fears returned in the form of postpartum depression. Instantly, I felt overwhelmed and inept at caring for this little human life. My reflexive response after Ben arrived home from work every day was, “I can’t do this” or “I’ll never be a good mom.”

All my life I’d felt inferior to others. The categories of people all around me were incessant reminders that some people were “good” and others “bad,” and I was among the latter group.

It’s not that my parents overtly declared the goodness or badness of people. It was in the delivery of the messages I received as a small child:

“You shouldn’t talk like that.”

“Little ladies don’t interrupt and blurt their opinions.”

“If you keep bossing everyone around, you’ll never keep any friends.”

Categories. Boxes. Stereotypes. By the time I was in high school, the world was a terrifying place, and I approached each day with reticence. Nearly everyone I met at my large school intimidated me. The disparity among them challenged my upbringing. In fact, the first day of my freshman year, I discovered my locker was adjacent to a self-described Satanist who brought a Satanic bible to school (I saw it once, on top of his textbooks), dressed in all black every day, and wore a pentagram necklace. (All true.)

Different races, religions, socioeconomic backgrounds, sexual orientations, and cultures pelted me from every direction back then, which expanded my worldview and opened my heart to other ways of being and thinking and living. And I wondered, hoped, that maybe I might find my unique fingerprint in this world, too.

So bearing children was a huge leap of courage, one I’ve never regretted. As time progressed, I slowly became acclimated to motherhood. With each child, I revisited the wounds of my past, yet as I faced each one, the healing balm of love between me and my newborn forged something deeper than my insecurities.

Felicity took her first steps on her eighteen-month birthday. She was delayed in gross motor development and had been rigorously practicing cruising along our coffee table for months during physical therapy sessions. Initially, when she was diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder, I blamed myself. My reflex was to chastise whatever I’d done wrong as a parent, whatever I did to cause this. I assumed I had to be responsible for this.

Though I knew these thoughts to be irrational and untrue, I harbored them for a time, even as I smiled and followed every piece of advice from the medical experts on how to help Felicity meet her major milestones. This wasn’t the life I wanted, but it was the life I had.

As the moments melted into years, Felicity grew into a perceptive and sensitive child. I saw myself reflected in the way she noticed small things, like selecting one specific daisy in a flower patch that slightly differed from the rest. She noticed people’s feelings, too, and often furrowed her brow when she sensed someone was upset. Sometimes, she would cry before they did.

All I could think then was, “I can’t mess up this precious child.”

Motherhood has taught me that children fall, then they rise again. They skin their knees. They feel the sting of an insect bite and heartbreak. The bruise of betrayal, too. It is not my job to protect them from life’s certain fluctuations between disappointment and celebration. Instead, it is my purpose to guide them through the brutality and beauty, so that they can discover what resilience meant to them—just as I am learning about myself.

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Your financial contribution helps supplement our family’s expenses and offset the costs of ongoing medical care for our daughter Sarah that requires 20 hours of unpaid caregiving on my part. I want you to know how much your support means and how it helps our family.

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Hey, I’m so glad you took the time to read my essay today. Would you mind taking a moment to click on the heart, leave a comment, or share this piece with someone else? I also have a few other, related posts you might want to check out:

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The malleability of my kids softens me as a mother.