In the last few hours, the British newspaper Daily Mail has published the heartbreaking testimony of a woman who recounted, firsthand, the personal and economic effort she made to become a mother and that everything didn’t go as planned.
Alice Mann, a fantasy name that the medium invented so as not to identify her, regretted once her dream came true because, as she herself admitted, everything was a real nightmare.
His testimony was as follows:
“For almost a decade I have dreamed of this, I thought, looking at the crib with tears streaming down my face. For so long, all I wanted was to be a mother, to have my partner as a father. Now my dream was come true. And it was a nightmare”.
“After ending a serious relationship when I was 35, I worried that I would never meet anyone else and never have children of my own. I did everything I could to make it happen. At 36, I froze my eggs; At 40, still single, I tried to conceive myself with donor sperm.”
“Then I met someone when I least expected it, and we went through it together, enduring IVF, natural pregnancy and miscarriage before deciding to find an egg donor. Whenat 44, in my eighth cycle of IVF, and the first using a donor egg, I finally got pregnant, and I continued to be pregnant, I didn’t dare to believe in my luck.”
“But after a relatively easy delivery — a planned C-section, considering my age and the size of the baby — our son was here.”
“When they put it on my chest, I didn’t feel that rush of love people talk about. Rather, I was incredulous that, after such a long time, here it was: it was ours, we were parents. I remember three days later, in a postnatal bubble of hormone euphoria, her lying on her crib in her sleep weeping with happiness and marveling at this miracle we had performed. It’s so perfect,” I whispered, amazed.
Heavy spending and regret
According to the story reported by the Daily Mail, the mother marveled at the miracle, but after a few weeks he admitted that he did not feel amazement, but rather “resignation, resentment, horror and misery”.
Alice believes she spent about a hundred thousand dollars in her efforts to get pregnant.. The new mother was wracked with guilt, especially since she knew how much some people wanted to be mothers.
Looking back, Alice thinks she can “rationalize those early feelings” thanks to the “perfect storm” of lack of sleep, hormones, and C-section recovery. She admits that she “didn’t allow herself to think about what life with a baby would really be like.”.
The baby’s father felt the same way as she did, and the pair took turns reassuring the other. Alice remembers mourning the “relatively carefree” existence she had led before giving birth and responded to messages asking if she “loved being a mum” by saying: “No I hate it.”
Alice later learned she was not alone in her feelings and psychologist and parenting specialist Catherine Hallissey explained: ‘It’s hard to talk about how common this reaction to the culture shock of motherhood is, as it’s taboo to admit that things aren’t how did you think they would go . .
Although Alice “isn’t quite at the point of using superlatives to describe motherhood yet,” she said things have started to look up and her son “has started to become a source of joy, rather than misery.”
“The life we have today is different from the one we left behind. It is no worse, as I thought it was in the depths of my misery; It’s not better, as many would have you believe. It’s just different,” she mused.
Source: Clarin
