Consider This the Disclaimer

This week’s fine print: apparently being told you were “born to be a mum” does not count as formal training.

I have always wanted to be a mum.

Like, always.

I was also always the person who somehow ended up with everyone else’s children.

Family event? I’ve got the children.

Holiday? I’ve got the children.

Someone needs to do literally anything without their toddler attached to their leg?

“Give them to her.”

And along with that came the same comments I heard for years, from the ripe old age of 10.

You’re going to be such a good mum.

You were born for this

You’re so good with kids!

Which, in hindsight, is lovely.

It also created a fairly bold level of confidence considering I had absolutely no fucking idea what I was doing.

I knew I wanted children. I had never questioned that part. Looking back I had definitely romanticised the idea of a big family.

What I had questioned was when.

And according to the very organised little timeline I had created in my head, motherhood was still about two years away. Once I had finished studying, secured a house, and moved out of retail management and into my “big girl job.” Oh and of course, after getting engaged and married too. I was going for a more traditional way of life you could say.

Apparently nobody communicated this timeline to the baby.

Before any of that though, life had already become quite… eventful. Now bear with me here, I might ramble on but I want to set the scene properly. If you are only here for the mum stuff, I would suggest skipping ahead a little bit (I won’t be offended).

November 2024

My partner and I had been trying to buy a house for around a year and getting absolutely nowhere. We were young (20/21), but settled. We’d been together for four-ish years, both had decent-ish paying full time jobs, we were financially okay, and we were actively trying to establish ourselves. I am not one to sit still, I’m always running to achieve the next thing on my to-do list without stopping to appreciate the thing I had just achieved.

I was also a retail area manager. *sigh*

Which becomes important because this whole story decided to begin around Christmas (which by the way I’ve been told I am a bit of a nut job when it comes to summer, and Christmas).

If you’ve ever worked Christmas in retail, you already know where this is going.

No annual leave.

No breathing.

No concept of time.

Just sales targets, staffing problems and the vague awareness that everyone else appears to be enjoying Summer. To top it off, I worked for a popular upscale toy store. As you can imagine, chaos. Privileged (and very rude) customers, entitlement through the roof, and worst of all, a company that is in absolute shambles because they don’t have the right internal setup. Meaning I am doing the work of 9 different departments, all while trying to enjoy my favourite season ever.

At the same time, four members of my family were coming over from the UK for Christmas.

My family are not the personal space, “I’m happy to do my own thing, I might go tan and read a book,” type of family.

They’re more of a:

What are we doing tomorrow?

Waterpark?

Beach?

Day Trip?

Let’s make 10 different cocktails over the span of 3 hours for fun!

I am going to live in your back pocket for the next 8 weeks!

kind of family. (I lowkey love it).

So Christmas was going to be busy anyway.

But shortly before they were due to come over, my Grandad had a pretty severe heart attack.

For a while there was uncertainty around whether they would even make the trip. He had surgery, seemed to be recovering, and eventually the decision was made that he would be okay and they would still be able to come.

So they came.

And for a little while, life did that strange thing where something awful is sitting in the background, but everyone continues moving around it. Because only a few weeks later, early November, my gorgeous Grandad had another heart attack. He passed away.

For various reasons his funeral wasn’t going to be until the middle of January. Which left this huge, surreal stretch of time in-between. We were grieving. But it was also Christmas. My family had travelled halfway across the world, they may as well stay the rest of their holiday.

There were still outings and dinners and beaches and jokes and presents. They were some of the most enjoyable days, but there were also some heartbreaking ones. And some were a bit of both.

And all this time, I worked.

Because retail.

Because Christmas.

Long hours, constant contact. A questionably skilled team. Christmas in retail does not give a rat’s ass about your personal circumstances.

January 2025

Eventually, Christmas came and went. My family flew home in early January. I went away with friends for a week, came home, packed again and flew to the UK for the funeral.

And this is where, looking back, there were approximately nine thousand clues that something else was going on.

To be fair. It was the middle of a very exhausting and emotional time. So when I became about 600% more emotional than usual, I thought:

Yeah, seems reasonable.

There was, for example, a rather embarrassing incident involving my younger brother sitting in the front seat of the car.

A seat that I wanted, and (rationally) believed was an oldest siblings entitlement.

Did this warrant a complete emotional collapse?

No.

Did I have one anyway?

Absolutely.

Full menty B.

Over the front seat.

Again: probably a clue.

Then it wasn’t just my emotional control that had started betraying me, food started turning on me too.

Aunties chorizo pasta? (a personal favourite)

Gag.

Pork?

GAG.

A roast dinner?

You expected me to say gag, but please, this is always delicious. Don’t be silly now.

Apparently whatever was happening inside my body was very selective. But I also started feeing generally off. I convinced myself I had contracted COVID (again). Suddenly, I got car sick (hence the menty B), and I was soooo beyond tired.

But I was overseas for my Grandad’s funeral, it was freezing, I was emotional and everything had been upside down for weeks. Plus my partner had to stay back in Aus as he wasn’t able to take work off.

At this stage, pregnancy wasn’t exactly at the top of my list. I mean TMI but I had just had my period… a weird one with little bleeding that lasted 9 days, but still a period… right?

Again, probably another clue.

Then came the flight home.

As we started descending into Melbourne, I suddenly felt very sick. Potential vomit incoming sick.

It lasted for a few hours, until I got to baggage claim, and then, it disappeared.

At that point I thought…

Hang on.

My Partner picked me up from the airport that night. We bought a pregnancy test. And what do you know.

3-4 weeks.

Pregnant.

Two years ahead of schedule.

I had always wanted this. I just hadn’t expected it now. So the feeling wasn’t sadness, it wasn’t regret. I was happy, but my god did the shock take over first.

My partner? Scared shitless.

Fair enough, really.

We were both young, almost 22. This wasn’t part of the immediate plan, and I think it took longer for the reality to sink in for him.

For both of us, actually.

There was also this strange thing happening in my head. I was so beyond excited, but I felt weirdly self-conscious about telling people I was pregnant.

I felt like I was announcing a teen pregnancy.

I was not a teenager. I was nearly 22.

I had been with my partner for 4 years.

I had a full-time management job. We could afford a decent house. We had the money to support the baby. There was no actual scandal here.

And yet I still felt like people were going to look at me and think:

Oh. That’s… young.

I am not naive. I am sure some people did, especially those who were unaware that I was in a pretty good position in life for my age.

Your 20s are weird. Some people are studying, some people are travelling, some people are stepping into their careers, and some are settling down with whole ass families. Nobody’s doing it wrong or right, life’s just full of heaps of different opportunities, and people take different ones at different times.

Do I have regrets? Yes. But not the kind you might expect.

I wish I had embraced it more at the start, had more time to process. Not ran my mouth without thinking anything over (it’s a bit of a habit of mine unfortunately).

I told one of my friends the morning after I found out. Instantly.

Then another.

Then another when I went into work.

Apparently I had decided the appropriate response to a life-altering surprise was to operate like a breaking-news service.

Looking back, I wish I had slowed down.

The problem was I was so unbelievably excited and in shock. And apparently that made me incapable of keeping information to myself for longer than six minutes.

I wish I had given myself and my partner a little bubble first. A couple of days where it was just our news.

I wish I had thought more about who I wanted to tell first. How I wanted to tell people. Whether I wanted to do anything remotely cute instead of essentially walking around saying:

“Oh my fucking god. Guess what.”

“I’m pregnant HAHAH.”

“Anyways, how are you?”

But that is also a pretty accurate introduction to how I operate.

Think later. Speak now. Panic briefly. Figure it out eventually.

And honestly, maybe that’s a decent introduction to this blog too.

I’m not here because I’ve mastered motherhood.

I’m not an influencer, I don’t have a perfectly curated routine, I have a bit of a potty mouth, and I will absolutely not be telling you that buying a specific beige storage basket changed my life, (because I prefer a nice chocolate brown).

I wanted somewhere I could be completely honest.

Somewhere I could talk about everything that has happened and is happening, what I thought, what I wish I’d known, what made me laugh and what absolutely scared the shit out of me – without having to polish it into something prettier first.

Because I had spent years being told I was “born to be a mum.”

Turns out that qualification covered significantly less than advertised.

Consider this the disclaimer.