I came from a large family and I was changing the diapers for my younger siblings when I was barely out of them myself. When I was 12 I got my first job babysitting for a few families in my church. By the time I became a teenager I was burnt out and thoroughly over the baby experience. In my irrational teenage state, I felt that I had been deprived of a childhood and that everyone else got to be a baby except me. When I was 17 I started dating a long-term boyfriend and we became sexually active. After several years, the relationship began to deteriorate and I began to try to find a way out. Sensing that he was about to lose me, my boyfriend intentionally compromised our birth control and got me pregnant in an attempt to trap me. Panicked that I had this baby that I wasn’t sure I wanted, I isolated myself. I didn’t tell anyone what was going on and I considered an abortion. Over the next two months I slipped into a depression. I stopped eating and sleeping and started abusing caffeine and alcohol. Due to the abuse I was putting my body through I had a miscarriage.
I cannot even express the guilt I have felt over losing that unwanted baby. For years I felt that it didn’t matter if I ever changed my mind and decided I wanted kids, because I did not deserve them. I have struggled with spells of insomnia and night terrors where my baby asks me why I didn’t want her. The sound of hearing an infant cry fills me with so much guilt that I become physically ill.
Instead of dealing with this pain I decided to cover it up. In an attempt to excuse myself from ever having to be around babies I have taken the Robin Scherbatsky approach from How I Met Your Mother. I decided to be career oriented and to over animate a fear of babies.
Recently a friend attacked my dislike for children and called me harsh and anti-feminine. Now I have a new fear. What if I can manage to heal? What if I do decide one day I want kids? I worry that because I have misrepresented myself so thoroughly that I will not be welcome around my friend’s children and my friends would tell mine that I did not want them.
