What’s something you’ve done that you never thought you could?

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I never thought I would be able to have kids. Let alone five of them.

“Having kids?” you might be saying, skeptically. “Are you dumb? That’s so basic! This is supposed to be an inspirational prompt about people achieving hard things! Literally any woman can get knocked up and pop out a baby!”

— first of all, if that’s your impression, ha! I highly, highly recommend you go have a nice little chat about that with any woman who would like to have kids but whose body has difficulty conceiving, or maintaining a pregnancy to term, or delivering babies — there are tons of them out there! You likely already know a couple! — and they will certainly set you straight. “Any woman can have kids” is so far from the truth.

And besides, have you ever researched just how many fine details there are to the process of conception? I’ve heard some biologists even say it’s nothing short of a miracle that any babies are ever conceived and born at all, with how many precise little details need to be exactly aligned at exactly the right time in order for a human to be conceived, let alone a healthy, “normal” one.

But even besides any of that. Even before I knew any of that — because I really didn’t know much about babies or reproduction, beyond the bare, middle school sex ed basics, before having kids of my own, and like most people just assumed that if a man + woman had unprotected sex they’d probably have a baby, in normal circumstances — even before I knew any of the actual science of fertility, I just knew that I wouldn’t be able to have kids. I just knew it.

For several reasons. If at age thirteen-fourteen, basically right after the onset of fertility, you develop a persistent ED that keeps you underweight for nearly all of your teens and twenties, you will probably lose your fertility. Because in case you weren’t aware (because many people aren’t! Another popular misconception!), being underweight is not healthier! If you are a female of childbearing age, being in starvation mode actually stops your body from ovulating. Which means: no cycles, which means you’ll spend the entirety of your teens and twenties infertile, and will come to believe that this is just life now.

Indeed, I remember a family doctor telling me early on, when I was still in middle school: If you don’t start eating, it may ruin your ability to have kids one day. To which I, who at that age delighted in being just soooo cynical and jaded and grim, rolled my eyes and replied that I didn’t want to have kids anyway.

See, I had consciously decided to adopt that antinatalist point of view as part of the effort that I made, as a way to cope with the alienation that I felt in middle school as an adolescent with undiagnosed AVPD, to adopt a “dark,” “edgy,” “alternative” persona and presentation. See?, I wasn’t awkward, I was just antisocial! Not painfully shy, I just “hated people”! See?, I didn’t care. Being a misanthrope was so much cooler than just sucking at making friends. — Suddenly, I went from a weird and tomboyish but basically good-natured girl, who dreamed of having a husband and five kids one day (I had all their names picked out!), to a wannabe-punk poser begging my mom to buy me Hot Topic so I could attempt to look like Avril Lavigne (because, come on, she was soooo punk rock 🙄).

When at such a formative age you make such a concerted effort to convince yourself of a certain reality, it unfortunately takes root in you. It sinks into you like a poison. So that even after you get over your wannabe-alt kid phase, you have long since accepted, somewhere along the way, that you just aren’t the type of girl who could ever be a mom. You are bad at people-ing. You are weird. You’re not feminine. You certainly aren’t one of those “maternal types.” You don’t really know how to interact with a baby.

I just wasn’t that type. To this day, none of the girls I mingled with in middle school/high school have had any kids — not a one of them! Same with my husband. None of his friends, to this day, have kids. (We’re late thirties/early forties, for reference.) We were just never the types to have kids. We didn’t even associate with those types of people.

And if in addition to the ED and the being-a-non-maternal-tomboy stuff, you also had a drinking problem (fueled by the aforementioned undiagnosed AVPD), that’s going to mess things up further. It was like I just could not for the life of me seem to figure out eating and drinking (it sounds so dumb, when you put it like that, lol, the two most basic human functions; what, did I have an oxygen use disorder as well?! — Pathetic!).

Underneath it all, this whole time, I wanted very badly to have kids. But pretended I didn’t, because, well, I believed it was impossible for me, so to admit the reality of my wanting, that would have been too much to live with. And too embarrassing, to aspire to something so “basic”, when all your life you’ve been told you’re so “smart” and “gifted”! I had no choice but to pretend I didn’t care. Which bottled-up sorrow only exacerbated the drinking, which exacerbated the ED patterns, which further damaged my physical health, & etc.: vicious cycle.

So, it isn’t until you’re moving in on thirty and the old biological clock is ticking louder and louder that you finally have to admit: there’s only one thing you had ever really wanted out of your adult life. Everything else — the pretense of Going To College so you could eventually Get A Cool Job, was all a sham. Hell, you never could have even told anyone exactly what that “Cool Job” was supposed to be. Because you never actually wanted a career. You finally have to confront that.

Which meant you had to get real: the vicious cycle could not continue, if you and your husband were to get intentional about wanting a child. You were in no condition to try to be a mother. All this time, you’d hoped that it might happen accidentally, so that you wouldn’t have to feel responsible, so that you would never have to own your feelings of inadequacy or change your behavior. (I’m very passive, not a fighter — I’ve always preferred for things to just happen, to fall into my lap. But at almost 30, it was evident that that tactic wasn’t working out.)

So, you had to restore your health. Or at least try. Thus, you begrudgingly took your last (God willing!) last drink ever, and began to focus on eating healthfully, and pretty soon found that, lo and behold, your body actually functioned just the way a woman’s is supposed to, when she’s not starving. And a few pounds and a couple months later, to your utter shock, you find you are pregnant for the first time.

So we had to move to a new house, since we were living in a rather icky little apartment at the time. What size house to shop for? — Small is fine! It’ll just be the three of us! I got lucky enough to have a kid — me, against all odds — the prospect of another one after that seemed so laughably remote! No, I’d long ago told God that if I could just have one, just one of my own, I’d be satisfied, and that was the truth; I simply didn’t have room in my brain to think about the possibility of additional kids. And it stayed that way… right up until an hour or two after my first was born. I looked at my husband and was like I think I want more.

That was six and a half years ago… and now we’re expecting #5.

You might still be sitting here thinking “eh, big deal.” And you’re entitled to think that — please, enjoy the privilege of your ignorance! But any other woman out there who’s ever longed to be a mom, but believed it impossible for her, and felt anguish at watching all the other women around her get pregnant left and right — she will be able to relate to me. She will understand my utter astonishment and wonder at how I found myself here. And how bizarre it is. I, the person Least Likely To Be A Mom, am soon to be a mom of five — just like I envisioned as a starry-eyed preteen.

There are still moments, almost daily, when I am struck by the sheer unbelievability of it: that I, of all people, should have ended up in this life. I was supposed to be doomed to a childless life of retail slavery until death. That was the fate I always foresaw for myself, aimless as I was while trying to pretend I didn’t feel called to motherhood.

And here’s another big surprise. Turns out it doesn’t really matter if you’re not a maternal type. Turns out, with your own kids, it is different. They are not like other people’s kids. They are the best, most important, most deserving people you’ve ever met. (And besides: plenty of “maternal types” go on to not be biological mothers at all, like some of the nuns who belong to my religious community and attend our parish; I’ve met several who are way more feminine and affectionate and caring, in general, than I ever was or will be.)

“Still not a good answer to this prompt; having kids isn’t hard work” — suit yourself, if you enjoy thinking that! I can assure you with confidence and glee that I don’t care if you think that. I’m not a fighter, but I’ve had to fight, in one way or another, for each one of these kids. Having kids has never been “just a thing that happened to me.”

In fact, I genuinely pity those who don’t see motherhood as a life that’s divine and meaningful and worthy of the utmost respect. Society loves to push this idea that only dumb and useless women become moms, that moms of many kids are basically livestock and tragically oppressed by the patriarchy — while all the smart, talented, enlightened, and worthy women go on to have careers and make money. I’m so sorry for all of those still laboring under this delusion. It almost got me, too. Luckily I was saved from it just in time. But why me? Of all the more deserving people?

It seems so unlikely, all of it. I really believe that God must have great designs for my kids, to pull such strings to make sure that they were born. I wish I could send this post to younger self, but alas, I’ll have to just hope that maybe it will reach someone in a similar predicament, who might benefit from reading it.