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Starting my parental journey, part 1

To be clear, I am not pregnant. Nor do I currently plan on being pregnant soon. However, I promised myself that if I was 30 and still single I'd start to explore my options for having a child either on my own or later in life with a partner. Well, 30 came and went, but 31 is still here so close enough I figure.

My first step was to make an appointment to discuss options with a doctor because I could do all the research I wanted on the internet, but I knew it would overwhelm me. As I write this, I haven't had that appointment yet so no news there. Now I made this appointment in February (hey, I was still 30 then!) and it was originally scheduled for October (yes, an 8-month wait for an initial appointment), but last week the appointment got moved up to this week and things got moving!

The timing feels right in a certain way. Two people I care about are having babies in the next month, someone else I love is expecting next year, and I also know multiple couples either trying or getting ready to try. So doesn't it fit that I'm going to start talking about getting pregnant now?

The first thing they had me do was fill out a medical history form. Now, I understand why I had to do this, but it assumed that I had already been trying to get pregnant and asked about how regular my periods were despite the fact that I'm currently on birth control. I grew nervous that they wouldn't be aware (despite my explicitly saying so) that this appointment was for talking about future fertility options, not about infertility concerns.

The next thing was to watch a series of videos. The first series was about "wellness" which mostly meant diet, exercise, and weight. I got immediately overwhelmed. What it felt like was: "Eat a lot of this, but not too much. Oh and only certain kinds. Also, be sure you're taking the supplements you need, but also supplements are not well-regulated. And don't be too fat, that's bad--why don't you exercise???" I started to cry and reached out to some friends for comfort. I was reminded that people of all shapes and sizes get pregnant and that being overweight won't determine that I can't have children. I am so grateful for these friends already supporting me on this journey even though I'm at step 0. The friends also helped me get perspective because I started to feel like if I couldn't even make it through these videos without crying, how on Earth could I have a child? Now this might seem silly to some, but my anxious brain can spin anything into a catastrophe so clearly crying about wanting to be a mother meant I'd be a bad one (yes, I know, goofy).

After finishing the videos, it was clear to me that they should've been in a different order. Why was the second to last series of videos the intro one? I also noticed that while they had racially and genderly (not sure what word to use here) inclusive depictions of doctors and patients, the figures did this weird back-and-forth shuffle that made no sense and was rather distracting. They also didn't really have inclusive sizes of people.

Anyways, I can't promise I'll keep updating you all about my journey, but I figured I'd share that I'd begun it and maybe I will keep everyone updated as things progress.

(Prompt by me)

"Pregnancy/Baby Bump" by Alabama Extension


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