Messy Minded Momma

From a very young age, I knew I wanted to be a mother. I also knew exactly what kind of mother I would be.

I wanted two or four children. It had to be an even number because, in my mind, an odd number meant someone would always be left out. Two kids could play together. Four kids could pair off. Three? Absolutely not! Someone was obviously going to be left out.

Apparently, I had motherhood completely figured out before I’d even had children.

I was also going to be the Miss Honey of mothers. Soft-spoken. Patient. Kind. Safe. Gets down on your level to talk to you. Never loses her shit because someone has asked for a snack four seconds after saying they weren’t hungry.

That was going to be me.

My love of Disney and my young-at-heart personality would keep me fun and playful. I’d be calm. I’d be patient. My kids would have siblings. We’d have this beautifully chaotic full house and I’d somehow remain completely regulated through all of it.

Then I actually became a mother. And somewhere along the way, the mother I thought I would be disappeared with the baby names I once loved.

My husband and I got married in May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, so any plans for a honeymoon went out the window. Instead, we bought a house and spent our first summer as newlyweds social distancing and moving to a new city.

Two months into our marriage, we started talking about going off birth control and trying for the family we both desperately wanted. Two months later, I found out I was pregnant.

I cried happy tears of joy. I was ecstatic!

I remember staring at that positive test with tears streaming down my cheeks, thanking God over and over again for this beautiful blessing. I promised Him I wouldn’t let Him down. I was going to be the best mom I could possibly be to this baby. The love I felt for someone who was basically the size of a poppy seed was immediate. I was ready.

My pregnancy was beautiful. I had no sickness, healthy ultrasounds, full mobility and minimal weight gain. I followed all the rules and had amazing sex. I did develop gestational diabetes, but it was diet-controlled, and the following summer I gave birth to a beautiful six-pound baby boy.

Everything had gone according to plan. Next step: baby number two. We wanted another fairly quickly so they could be close in age.

But things changed after I gave birth. I didn’t feel right. I kept telling my doctor that I didn’t feel right and kept hearing some version of, “You’ll feel better in a few weeks.”

A few weeks passed. Then a few more. Then months.

I tried talking to friends and family, but my feelings were often dismissed as normal first-time-mom worries. At other times, I was made to feel like I thought everything was postpartum related. I felt alone, misunderstood, and scared.

I was in a new city with a newborn. My husband was working. I had no family or close friends nearby. Just me, my baby and my intrusive thoughts. And those thoughts were terrifying.

By the time my son was 13 months old, things had gotten bad enough that I was taking medication for OCD.

It’s still hard for me to think about the first year of my son’s life. Because here’s the part that makes me feel guilty even writing it:

I had a calm, happy, healthy baby. I had exactly what I had prayed for. But my brain was sick.

I look back at pictures of this tiny, beautiful little boy and sometimes wish I could climb into them and tell that version of myself to just enjoy him. Stop checking. Stop worrying. Stop waiting for something terrible to happen. But she couldn’t. She didn’t know how.

Because of my postpartum anxiety and OCD, my husband and I delayed trying for another baby. We wanted to make sure I was in a good place mentally and that my medication was safe during pregnancy.

Eventually, we started trying again.But this time, it wasn’t so easy.

We tried for months. We tracked ovulation. I knew exactly what day of my cycle I was on. I took pregnancy tests and stared at them from every possible angle as though a second line might appear if I just looked hard enough.

Nothing.

Then, at the end of 2023, I found out I was pregnant. It was incredibly bittersweet.

We had just lost my husband’s grandma and were still grieving her death. While she was in hospice, she had asked us to have another baby. And now we were. Our kids would be three years apart, which wasn’t exactly what I had planned, but it was still close enough.

And then we figured out the due date. The baby was due on her son’s birthday—my husband’s uncle. After months of trying, losing Yiayia and promising her we’d have another baby, it felt like it was meant to be. It felt like this baby was supposed to be here.

But by early 2024, the baby was gone. There was no viable heartbeat. The baby had stopped growing. And in my head, I pictured that little baby going to heaven with Yiayia. That loss was hard.

I wasn’t only grieving a pregnancy. I was grieving the sibling I had already pictured for my son. The age gap I had calculated. The baby I had already started fitting into our family.

But there was something else I couldn’t ignore. During that pregnancy, my OCD had gotten worse. I could feel it happening. Maybe it was the hormones. Maybe it was the stress we were already under. Maybe it was everything combined. Whatever it was, I recognized that feeling. And it scared me.

After we grieved the loss of the baby, my husband and I made the heartbreaking decision to stop trying for another child.

It wasn’t a choice we made lightly. I had spent years fighting my way back to myself, working through medication, therapy, workshops, books, and countless hours of learning about OCD and how it shaped my life. The thought of slipping back into that dark place after all the progress I had made was terrifying. I wanted another baby desperately, but I was equally terrified of losing myself again.

We had a little boy who needed his mom healthy, present, and whole. And as painful as it was to let go of the future we had imagined, we knew we had to make the decision that was best for our family.

I wanted another baby desperately.

In the hardest moments, other moms in the “one and done” Facebook groups helped me see what I couldn’t see for myself. They showed me the beauty in having an only child: the freedom from juggling multiple schedules, the ability to pour all of our time and energy into one little person, and the certainty that he would never question how deeply he was loved.

And, eventually, we became okay with our decision. We were a family of three. We were complete.

Then, a few weeks ago, I found out I was pregnant.

Wait, what?!

Exactly.

I wasn’t supposed to be pregnant. This wasn’t part of the plan anymore.

And almost immediately, I started to feel myself slipping again. My husband noticed it too.

This was not good.

We spent days talking about what we were going to do.

And I don’t mean one big dramatic conversation where we sat across from each other and came to some beautiful, mutual conclusion.

I mean days.

Talking. Stopping. Talking again. Crying. Feeling angry, sad, confused and conflicted. Going over the same things we’d already talked about. Thinking about our son. Thinking about me. Thinking about another baby. Thinking about what happened last time.

Deep down, though, I think we both knew what we were leaning toward.

Then I went to my doctor and within two days, I had an ultrasound.

There was no viable heartbeat.

Again.

I was given medication to pass the embryo and pregnancy tissue.

Again.

And this is where grief gets really complicated. Because when I found out there was no heartbeat, part of me felt relieved. The decision wasn’t mine anymore.

But that relief didn’t make losing another pregnancy hurt any less. It didn’t stop me from grieving. It just made me realize that I wasn’t grieving one thing.

I was grieving so many things.

I was grieving another pregnancy.

I was grieving the baby we lost before this one.

I was grieving the sibling I always thought my son would have.

I was grieving the two or four children I had planned when I was young because apparently even numbers were very important to me.

I was grieving the baby names I’ll probably never use.

And I was grieving the mother I thought I would be.

Miss Honey.

God, I really thought I was going to be Miss Honey.

Instead, I’m a mom with OCD who often gets overstimulated. I raise my voice. I lose my patience, and I apologize. A lot. Sometimes my five-year-old and I are both dysregulated at the exact same time, which is about as productive as you’d imagine.

I need breaks. I need medication. I need to tell my child, “Mommy needs a minute.”

That’s not the mother I pictured when I was younger. And maybe that’s part of what I’ve been grieving without realizing it.

Not just the babies or the siblings. Not just the perfect family of four that exists somewhere in my imagination.

Her, too. The mother I was supposed to be.

I still wish my son had a sibling. I don’t know if that feeling will ever completely go away. I think there will always be a part of me that wonders what another little person at our dinner table would have looked like. Whether they would have hair like him. Whether they would have fought like crazy and then defended each other five minutes later. Whether he would have been the protective big brother I pictured him becoming.

I can be grateful for the family I have and still grieve the family I thought I’d have. Both things can be true. And I can grieve the mother I thought I would be without believing the mother I became is a bad one.

I’m not Miss Honey.

I’m messy. I’m anxious. I’m loud sometimes. I get it wrong. But I also love my son so fiercely that I’ve spent the last five years learning how to be better for him. I apologize when I’m wrong. I try again. I keep showing up.

It’s not the motherhood I imagined. But it’s mine, and every day I am grateful that someone calls me Mom.