The reader’s letter is commented on by our permanent expert, writer and psychologist Tatiana Salvoni.
“I love my husband, but I don’t want children. That is, of course, I want in theory, in a couple of years, but not now. And these “in a couple of years” already last four years. I am horrified at the thought of a decree. Immediately I start thinking: what about my job? My life? What, after giving birth I will sit at home? Will I sit on the reservation? And clean up the poop? No, don’t think, I’m not against moms and poop. I’m even sure that when I have a baby, his poop will be the cutest poop in the world for me. But! I immediately have a fear that with the birth of a child my own life will end: now he will be born, then to kindergarten, then to school … But I have never even been to Italy. And she dreamed of celebrating her 30th birthday in New York. I have not seen the world. As far back as I can remember, I have always worked, moved, mortgages … And only everything seemed to be working out a little, it seems that you can breathe a sigh of relief and spend your entire salary, for example, on a Furla purse. At the same time, I understand that the bag and New York are not the main thing. But I don’t want children yet, but my husband is pressing. What do you say here? Sometimes it seems to me that something is wrong with me, because I am not childfree, in principle I love children and want to, but purely hypothetically. “
The girl’s healthy, normal approach to such an important and responsible issue in life is quite obvious. And fear – this word is more suitable than fear – is also quite adequate. A healthy fear, with the help of which the psyche probes its own readiness for such a big and important change in life. Yes, indeed, a child radically changes life. And it changes it unpredictably. If a girl has just completed one unpredictable stage in her life, then she needs at least a little rest, to gain a resource, as psychologists say. To join a new one.
Someone else’s experience plays rather an informational role here.
One mom will talk about the hardships and horrors of motherhood that can really be scary. And the other will say that “this is unprecedented happiness, especially in the evenings, when you put the baby to bed after a busy day, after bathing and playing, he closes his eyes and hums something to himself, sucking on his chest, and rolls such an unimaginable tenderness, such a feeling of emotion, you stretch it, drown in it and savor every moment. And nothing can compare with this moment in terms of the intensity of the experience of the state of happiness. “
Yes, – I will add from myself, – there is fatigue, and sometimes the nerves are on edge, yes, exhaustion, yes, all the time it seems that somewhere life is passing by, and at the same time you understand that here and now the whole Universe is in your hands, life itself is in a concentrate, and the more love you give to him, the more love then this whole world will receive from him when he grows up. If you want to save the world – give him a happy child. It is work, almost imperceptible, hard, sometimes painful, but it has tremendous compensation – this is the feeling of incredible, almost chemical happiness, and the feeling of the fulfillment of one’s female destiny, destiny.
But other people’s feelings and difficulties are just someone else’s experience. A healthy person understands that he will be in a completely different way, internally knows his limitations and his strength. Pressure from the outside leads to a feeling of shame, they say, I’m not like that, I’m supposed to want to, and even my husband presses. But this is an imposed false shame that only harms. You need to protect yourself from it. And it is important to have a heart-to-heart talk with her husband, explain that, first of all, a child needs a realized and reassured mother who is waiting for him and is ready to give him her maximum attention and love. You can even agree with your husband about specific dates, for example, let’s postpone the topic for the next six months or a year. If the period of uncertainty lasted quite a long time before, then you need to at least restore the nervous system. Because uncertainty is the most difficult to withstand, it is very energy intensive.
In general, fears of having children are natural. After all, there is not only a lot of uncertainty and uncertainty, how everything will go, how I will cope, whether I can or not, but also a purely physiological fear of pain. Of course, the child covers everything, and when a willingness to become a mother comes within a woman, she is ready for any experience.
However, I must also mention unnatural, inappropriate fears. They can be recognized by an internal contradiction. That is, a person realizes that he wants a child, goes to this, rejoices when he sees two stripes, and inside, in parallel with this, panic and overwhelming anxiety grows. It happens that this fear covers not a woman, but a man who has previously demonstrated in every possible way an incredible desire to have a child. Then you need to understand specifically in this situation, which is the source of fear.
I will give examples from the practice of psychologists.
The family really wanted a second child, but when the second pregnancy came, the husband was just ready to run away from home in horror. Marital relations went wrong, scandals began out of the blue. During therapy, it turned out that for him this was just an absolutely unknown situation. He himself is the only child in the family and it turned out that he grew up surrounded by the same families with one child or no children. He was elementarily scared, because in his internal “vocabulary of actions” there was no such experience and understanding of what to do. How to behave with another child, with a wife, how to be a father of two, and so on.
In another situation, the young spouses could not get pregnant for a long time, and when it finally happened, the wife began to have panic attacks and fears. During therapy, it surfaced that her mother had abortions before she was born, and for some reason she stuck in her as an unconscious attitude that one cannot give birth to the first child, but like a mother, you need to have an abortion. It’s like a family scenario. And she had a feeling that someone was about to force her to have an abortion, take away her baby or harm her pregnancy. And this manifested the so-called loyalty to the family system.
Another girl was afraid of getting pregnant, since almost immediately after her birth, her father left the family. And through different mother’s words, she gained the confidence that it is worth giving birth and the man will leave. And she seemed to sacrifice motherhood for the sake of maintaining a relationship. After six months of therapy, she became pregnant. They already have two, but still refuses to officially register the marriage, now she has become afraid of the stamp. As if if there is no stamp, she is so calmer. Our psyche is amazingly playing with us!
I can also share my fears, they were in the first, in the second case. Moreover, in the first, it was just a fear of change and responsibility, completely covered by the joy of waiting for the first child. But with the second baby, as soon as I saw two stripes, I suddenly suddenly remembered all the pain of the previous births I had experienced. I was overwhelmed with this fear – oh, I will have to go through it again! The fear of impending suffering at the physiological level was simply paralyzing. But – firstly, I really wanted a baby. Secondly, I immediately turned to therapy and the church for help, and thirdly, I did not hesitate to ask for support. People, as it turned out, are happy to help. And I also discovered that if you go towards fear, understand … In a word, act, then everything around will magically transform. It was the second pregnancy that taught me an active life position and gave me more self-confidence.