I’m Pregnant and Worried About Losing Myself
Sharing my body has sparked an identity crisis
I’m currently pregnant with my first child and, while I’m over-the-moon and can’t wait to meet the little freeloading stranger who’s been squatting in my womb the last several months, I am admittedly overwhelmed with the experience.
I’m in my mid-thirties and this pregnancy was wanted, it’s not like it came as a surprise or even at an inopportune time.
I spent my twenties and early thirties doing, more or less, exactly what I wanted to do: chasing my dreams in New York, traveling, creating, experimenting, and stocking up on life experiences. I had an entire phase of my life that my friends and cousins who settled down early and never left our home town won’t ever know. I don’t mean this in a braggy way — I don’t think they necessarily feel like they missed out on anything, I think getting the hell out of Dodge was never really on their radar.
But that doesn’t change the fact that I feel very fortunate for the decade I spent getting to really know myself before being (somewhat) ready to share my body and my life with a child. I’ve gone through multiple iterations, shed layers upon layers, and have grown a lot. I don’t think you ever stop evolving, but I feel much more fully formed at this point than I did five or ten…
