I was angry.

Yesterday I was very fortunate to attend a 1 day conference on Career Mentoring in Graduate School. First, I would like to give props to the organizers of the conference for providing childcare. That options made it a lot easier for those of us with kids. Kudo’s to you. This conference was quite helpful in providing encouragement, inspiration, and most importantly tools to succeed as women in science. One of the more interesting workshops that was on making transitions in your life, analyzing beginnings, and endings. For me it was a very emotional workshop as I admitted, possibly for the first time even to myself that I was angry that I was pregnant.

Yep I said it. I was angry. I was resentful that having finally found a lab and a supervisor where I could learn and grow as a scientist, I would have to leave. Worse than that, I had to admit that I did not want to be pregnant or had not even wanted to start trying to be pregnant. But it was the only thing Mr. SM had ever asked for. Mr. SM had been very supportive of my education career paths, when contemplating on whether to do a phd or not, he not only encouraged but pushed me to do it. I would not be here if it were not for him. He had only one wish / request – we didn’t put starting a family on hold. So despite my lack of desire we started trying. I hoped it would take a while, and tried minimizing the chances, but it happened right away.

I don’t know why these feeling came up, maybe writing about being a mom, remembering what it was like to be just me – non-mom, is what flooded back the true emotions I felt when I found out I was pregnant. It was not happiness, it was frustration, anxiety and sadly anger. Anger at possibly losing my project (I did), anger at not being able to work as hard or long, anger at having a baby interrupt MY LIFE. There was also a hope…and this the hardest to admit – there was a hope that it would not go through. Maybe I would be the 1 in 4 whose first pregnancy is a miscarriage. I hoped for a miscarriage. Its is not easy for me to write this, it is not easy for me to bring out my darkest secret into the light. I am ashamed because God still gave me my monkey. I did not, I do not, deserve the perfectly easy pregnancy and wonderful baby that is the monkey. If I knew then what I know now, I doubt I would’ve had those feelings, but what right do I have to be so fortunate when others, others who would not have been angry or hopeful for the bad, are not so lucky. What right did I have to the wonders of motherhood, that others had ripped from them? Would I have mourned the shadow baby? I do not know. I just know all day I count my lucky stars and am grateful that God does not listen to all our prayers. Congratulations to Kate on her amazing new blog that I am sure that will help so many. I apologize for not knowing how lucky I was. How lucky I am.