Standing In Front of Closed Doors

When I was pregnant, I’d often fall into a pool of anxiety, thinking about how life would change when we had our baby. This felt confusing; we had spent years and thousands of dollars on fertility treatments, so the fact that anxiety was the chief emotion was hard to understand. Yet I was riddled with insecurity. Every night, I’d think about how the only thing that would wake me up between then and dawn was my own bladder, but in a few short weeks my sleep would be subject to the whims of an eight-pound supervisor. I constantly second-guessed my own abilities and wondered if I’d ever be able to truly handle the demands of parenting. It sounds dramatic now as I type it. But the fears were big. It felt like a challenge that I desperately wanted but also felt desperately unprepared for. Parenthood was barreling in my direction, and it had the potential to completely overwhelm me.