Out of my 5 pregnancies, only the last one was really “planned” (and it was so difficult to get and stay pregnant that the experience was all-consuming for over a year!) . The two before that were kind of “let’s see what happens” and the 2nd one was an “I would like a baby at some point so I’m choosing not to use birth control” and the 1st one was a birth control failure.
Do I love my kids any differently? No, I love them both. Actually I feel I even have a bit of a stronger bond with my daughter (my first) because I was a single mom with her for 2 years and we were all each other had for that first little while. We went through a lot together and we’ve come a long way.
Expressing this to my daughter, now entering her preteen years, is a different matter though!
She has started pulling the “You didn’t even want me, I was an accident” card and as much as I try to reassure her that I am glad I had her, I don’t want to lie.
It’s true, I did take pills specifically for the sole purpose of preventing her existence! I can’t deny that. I can’t pretend that at 17 years old, I said to myself “Hey, a baby would be great right now!” But that doesn’t mean I love her any less now that she’s here! In fact, I’ve really empathized to her that she must have been “meant to be”.
My daughter has changed my life in so many ways, and mostly for the better. I still went to university, even if it was a year late. I still started off a good career. I still found a spouse I fell in love with and wanted to spend the rest of my life with and who accepted her as a child of his own with no biological ties.
And I’ve tried expressing to her that without being made a mommy at 18, I would have never created YoungMommies.com and helped any of those women who have come to the site and groups for support. Her reply was “well, someone else would have made it” and I’m sure that’s true, but it wouldn’t be the same.
Once I decided for sure that I did NOT want to have an abortion, I made a full commitment to be the best parent I could be. And I’ve loved her like crazy even before she was born.
And I hope that even though right now she feels less wanted because of how she came to be, that she understands someday how much she was needed and how much she was loved.
