okay this has been a really long time coming um i feel like i've been holding on to this like huge
secret uh yeah can you see that i'm pregnant
i'm not really gonna do this i can't tell you this is something that i've wanted my whole life
it's only something i started seriously thinking about lately i spent my 20s being totally selfish
motherhood was the furthest thing from my mind and i was really happy that way
after spending four years of my 20s working at a job that kept me in the office for most of the
day i quit that to take a chance on my dream of traveling the world and starting my own business
i was very independent i traveled by myself to almost everywhere i went just following my whims
and my blog was my baby for the longest time and i pushed any kind of long-term plans far from my
mind living in the moment was all i wanted without responsibilities they had no place in my life
but i did want to share my life with someone and i thought maybe once i met them my feelings towards
parenthood might solidify and when he came along he just amazed me by how stable he was
he's so content with life and so emotionally solid something it had taken me years of therapy to even
touch we traveled the world together hitting almost every continent our relationship was the
most grounding and nurturing thing i've ever experienced and i left no question in my mind
that he would be an amazing father but i didn't know if i would be a good mother i still don't
so it's probably worth emphasizing at this point that this is a very happy thing like we're very
excited and this is what we wanted we tried for a baby it just happened a lot faster than i thought
it would i'm 35 years old and when i turned 35 i basically asked like on instagram all my friends
i knew like everyone who was a parent to like kind of give me the dirt you know okay let's reel talk
about something real quick if you're down one of the biggest ones for me is whether or not to have
children because it's kind of time to decide and i'm finding this to be like an impossibly
difficult decision because i had never really felt very strongly one way or the other and now i don't
want to make the wrong choice and so anyone out there who has kids tell me the dirt like if you're
willing tell me what it's really like if it's worth it if you would do it if you could like
make the choice over again i just wanted to find out if this parenthood thing was really for me
what kind of finally made us decide to go for it is i just kind of started to feel like i would
regret it if i didn't and now that i'm 35 it seems i've crossed this like magical threshold
where apparently it could be more difficult to get pregnant um once i am pregnant could
have bigger problems with the baby more higher chance of miscarriage like all these scary things
and so when we did decide we wanted to do it i was just like well maybe we should start it could take
years who knows and then surprise it just happened the first month we tried and so i was just really
surprised and taken aback by that and it became very real very fast and i know i'm really really
lucky for that very i'm very grateful but i have to tell you i'm kind of sad i didn't record myself
seeing for the first time that i was pregnant i was just so convinced that i wasn't pregnant
after just the first month of trying garrett and i were together for a very short period of time in
french polynesia then he left and went home and i continued on with my trip i was scuba diving i was
swimming with a tiger shark i was eating raw fish every single day i was drinking copious amounts of
coffee and i i was feeling all of this tenderness in my breasts and the cramping that i usually get
when my period is coming so although i was late i just genuinely didn't think i was
pregnant because the symptoms to me were how you feel when you're about to start your period
then i told garrett that i was like a week late which is weird for me and my symptoms and for him
it was obvious that that meant i was pregnant but for me just still in my head it wasn't clicking so
it was very unceremonious the way that i found out the way that i shared it with him you know i feel
like people when they share their oh my god i'm pregnant videos they seem really sure the moment
they get that result that they're gonna have a baby but i really didn't necessarily trust
that i was actually still terrified that it wouldn't work somehow or something would go wrong
which is really weird for me because i'm not a worrying type really normally and i feel like
no one really talks about the difficulty of the first trimester how hard it is to for i
think most of us like go through it so silently to have someone growing in you and to not really
be telling anyone because that's another person you'd have to tell if it doesn't work out and
so i felt like i was holding on to this secret for the longest time when i could have really
used a lot of support and although i was really really happy i was also majorly majorly struggling
but life did more or less continue as usual i was still working which meant that i was traveling
and all the while i was so acutely aware that there was this little life growing inside me
last week i found out i'm pregnant so i've been in the bahamas for the last week working on a project
obviously something that i planned well before i knew and the morning sickness has been hitting
hard friends the people here have been incredibly sweet and i got where's my ginger i got
i got ginger root to try to help and one of them gave me a grater from her house
so very sweet just barely into week six now and no one talks about how scary this part is
and just every moment you just want to make sure that everything is fine and that you're
doing everything you can like i'm taking my vitamins oh my god but other than that i know
very little is within my control cross your fingers your toes with me that everything goes
fine it felt like the biggest secret because part of my way of dealing with it was by telling very
few people it felt very lonely and i knew that i needed therapy i knew that i needed to do things
to get myself back into a good mental state i started doing emotional freedom technique again
and my therapist helped me to realize that this life was worth celebrating no matter what the
ultimate outcome and then i finally saw them for the first time and so many of my fears melted away
and finally over christmas we felt confident letting more people know
is that true yes
now that it's getting closer i find myself
wondering just like who you're gonna be what our lives are gonna look like soon i wonder
whose eyes you're gonna have i hope that you have your dad's cheeks i hope that you have this really
calm demeanor for your own sake but most of all i just hope that i do a good job and that i'm a
good mom and that i never forget that motherhood is a gift oh my god oh god what's going on here
this experience has made me in awe of my body too there's a little guy in there now
makes me grateful every day
and i know i'm so unbelievably lucky so thanks for being with me on this journey so far and
i really hope that you're on board for the rest of it
you