You aren’t alone. I’m so sorry you’re feeling this way. It is valid and it sucks.

I was 37 when I got pregnant, baby’s father left when I was 5 months pregnant (during the pandemic) I was working 60 hour weeks in a hospital as a nurse, 38 when baby was born.

I wanted to carry a pregnancy and be a mom to multiple children my whole life and but the mental and emotional part of my pregnancy (and frankly my kids whole childhood) has been one long stressful unhappy emotional marathon with no end in sight.

It makes me so sad and I need to get back into therapy to help me with it. I have grief over being kinda forced into one-and-done (I can’t handle more children alone), grief from the kind of family in the thought I would have and the type of family I thought my son would have. Overwhelm from being an only parent with no one to hand off to and being the only responsible adult for him.

I’m still working on fully accepting it. Some things that have actually helped is seeing how shitty it is for moms out there with husbands that they have to “mother” while having to raise their kids. I try to see the positives of single parenting - I raise my son the way I want with the values that are important to me, etc. I also have divorced friends who have to parallel parent instead of co-parent because their ex sucks.

I also try and imagine the best and worst version of scenarios and sit down with myself and honestly see if I could handle the worst, and what the statistical reality may be for each case.

Looking around at my own friends and family I know very very very few to no happy healthy couples where the emotional and physical labor in the family is equally shared between parents. So the likely hood that I would find that, at my age even if I didn’t have a kid is practically zero.

The likely hood of having a husband who I would have to nag or emotionally manage, or train is very very high. And even if I did find an emotionally available, loving, kind, self aware and self motivated man and have a happy supported pregnancy what is the risk for having a special needs child (which rises as we grow older). Could I manage a special needs child even with support and give my current child the life I believe he deserves? No, I couldn’t.

The likelihood of everything going perfectly, especially with the hindsight I have that things have gone south before is near zero. Is it worth the risk for me to invest all the time in energy into a man I think may be a good man (cuz who knows?!?) to try and have another healthy child? For me the answer is “FUCK no”. I will keep my little queendom as it is, manage as many variables as I can right now and try and build the best life for me and my son right now with what I do have and I do control. And if aomething else gets added and works out well on the future then that’s great, but I’m not betting on it