ON BECOMING A YOUNG MUM

The first question I'm usually asked after someone finds out that I'm pregnant is, Was it planned? Although the way it's asked is often more like, It wasn't planned, was it? Most people I've told find it surprising that people could be so forward and, well, rude. In all honesty, I find it amusing more than anything. Was it planned? Hell no. I'm surprised people have to ask.

I never thought I would be a mother in my twenties. It's not that I didn't ever want children, but suffice it to say I rather enjoyed heavy drinking and sleeping till midday. Also for those who are wondering (and for those who have asked me, as a follow-up to the planned question), I'm certainly not pro-life and would have had no moral objection to not going through with an unplanned bump in the road... Though to my surprise, despite this, this was not the option that ended up feeling like the right one for me this time. And so here we are.

Certainly there are many positives about being a young mum. Having the energy and enthusiasm of youth is the first thing that comes to mind, not to mention a youthful body that will (hopefully) bounce back from the physical onslaught of pregnancy and childbirth without as much trouble as it may a few years later. There are times though at the end of the day, after having done my best not to fall asleep at my work desk then crawling home to do the nightly domestic chores, when I look at the clock, see that it's 9pm and surprise myself because surely it must be midnight - I am exhausted. And I wonder, if I feel this tired with all my supposed energy and enthusiasm of youth, how do other women do it? How will I do it as I inevitably get older?

I do worry a fair bit about money and, in only a vaguely related way, about my career - the latter has been a far greater source of anxiety than I had predicted in the early days of my pregnancy. After years of understanding the glass ceiling and the continued prejudice against women at an intellectual level, I finally understand this at a very practical level. The subtleties and nuances of discrimination that I have faced have astounded me. They have not come from a place of outright malice, but I see that where I was once highly respected among my coworkers and (arguably more importantly) among my superiors, I am now preemptively turned down on working on meaningful projects, I am not given due credit for tasks that I have worked on, I have been written off as though I have already gone on leave. I worry about being bumped off the ferris wheel of working life, and wonder how I will be able to get back on post-baby. Would I still worry if I were five or ten years older and already had an established career? Almost definitely yes, and maybe even to a greater extent.

For me, the one thing that I do come back to when I despair about potentially losing the "best years of my life" on child-rearing is that when my children grow up, I will still be young enough to relate to them in their young adulthood. I will hopefully not be too out of touch, and I hope that they will not feel a great generational divide as I did with my parents. And, maybe, I can reinvent my forties and fifties as the "best years of my life".