Sometimes pregnancy isn’t planned. Sometimes it comes as, well, a surprise as you could call it.
And in that situation, the parents were emotionally, maybe even financially, unprepared to care for new life.
This can cause panic and despair at first. And there are no instruction manuals on unplanned pregnancy. Well, there are but it’s not something that we’re taught how to deal with before it happens.
And that seems really odd since about half of all pregnancies in America are unplanned, according to the Office on Women’s Health.
Once you come to grips with the fact that you’re pregnant, you have to decide what you’re going to do about it.
Parents have three options, abortion, adoption, or parenting. And if you do decide to parent, what comes after that? How do you learn to be a good parent to a child you weren’t prepared to have?
Olivya of Her Holistic Path wanted mothers who are in this boat to know that they aren’t alone.
“No one teaches you how to love a child you didn’t plan to have. No one shows you how to traverse the emotional complexity of loving a child you weren’t happy about being pregnant with,” she wrote in an Instagram post.
Accepting your pregnancy and learning to love your baby once it’s born can be trying when things get tough.
“It’s even more difficult at those times when they’re having tantrums and pushing you to a point of emotional exhaustion,” Olivya explains.
It’s a major emotional roller coaster to go through.
One minute the situation is a disaster and the worst thing that could happen.
The next moment it’s a blessing to be celebrated.
“It’s confusing. When the same people who told you that you pretty much ruined your life are smiling ear to ear at your baby shower a few months later,” she writes.
One of the worst aspects of unplanned pregnancy is the constant worry.
The thoughts that bombard your brain 24-7: how will I be able to take care of them, how will my life change. And how do you protect your personal torment from affecting your baby?
“It is the lethal cycle of undealt with trauma. This stage of motherhood has forced me to look at my reflection in my daughter’s eyes and realize that no I don’t enjoy being a mother all the time, but this child has been the catalyst for major growth,” Olivya says.
And that’s OK. Because for all of those moments you don’t enjoy it, there are many more where you do.
“She is the mirror that allows me to look into my past and see the fears still controlling me now. When we heal our deepest pains we are speaking to our ancestors across the space-time illusion and holding a cross-generational conversation within our DNA that heals old wounds and rectifies long lost problems. Motherhood hasn’t just healed me it’s healed the mother’s that came before me,” Olivya explains.
Being exhausted is hard. Feeling like your sacrificing your dreams and goals to be a parent is hard. Taking care of someone 24 hours a day is hard.
But it’s also worth it.
“But I KNOW this little girl has brought me face to face with things that would have otherwise been ignored in my bubble of childless freedom,” she says.
She ended her post with a few words of wisdom for mothers of unplanned pregnancies.
“Dear mama, who is going through an unplanned pregnancy, don’t feel guilty, don’t feel afraid, don’t feel ashamed. That baby chose YOU to be its mothers at the perfect time. Surrender to the journey of unpredictability and let this new being show you a whole new part of yourself you didn’t know was there,” she says.
Olivya’s post was liked more than 13,000 times. You can see the original post below.
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https://www.instagram.com/p/Bl0BeFlh4N5/?taken-by=herholisticpath
