motherhood 2 years in: how did this happen

I sat down to journal “a little bit” in the weeks leading up to my kid’s 2nd birthday in Feb 2021, and what came out ended up being more of a novella instead of a journal entry. This is part 4 of 4.

Trigger warnings for conception story, pregnancy, some anxiety + depression topics.

When I stopped taking birth control, it was more than a year later that I actually got pregnant. People say – doctors, I guess – that your body needs time to adjust and get back into its normal rhythms. And that it normally takes 3 or so months before you can or will get pregnant after you stop certain kinds of birth control. My doctor told me that I was able to become pregnant 24 hours after I took my last pill. I guess both are / can be true. 

[Stopping here for a trigger warning: this is not a story of loss or fertility struggles or any kind of conception hardship. It’s probably the opposite of that, if there is such a thing. If you think reading that might be upsetting for you, I encourage you to stop here.]

After one year of no baby went by, MP voiced concerns. Was it time for us to…do something? Else? In addition? I immediately said no, because I knew – on some level – that I was sabotaging just a t…