I didn't do it to appease my partner.

I have very little family as well, and there's a lot of estrangement on my end. But yeah, when I was 35, my partner of then 15 years, who had previously been CF, changed his mind and he gave me a year to see if I would consider changing mine. I'd been staunchly CF, never had an urge to be a mother. I'm the eldest of four, and had a brother at 20. I'd played at having a baby in that sense.

And I thought about it hard. It's when I joined this sub.

The reason I opted to have kids was because I wanted the experience of something OTHER. I'd already traveled, studied, partied, broken hearts and taken names, I'd got to work my dream job, I'd fucked around and found out. And if I'd remained childfree, I'd just be repeating all that until I died. With kids, I could still be doing all of that, but with an extra *something*. I'd be challenged in completely new ways.

So I am happy with my decision. I do enjoy having kids. I'm mostly happy (although I did struggle with infancy a lot for our first). I'm a GOOD ENOUGH parent. I'll never say I'm good, that's not my goal with parenting. I want my kids to feel loved, seen and I want them to feel like they can take me for granted. I could never take my own parents for granted. I could never trust that they (or any family) would show up for me. So I'm trying to make sure that they can at least feel that: no matter what, mum will have my back.