How it Really Feels to be Pregnant Solo

Solo pregnancy is filled with peaks and valleys, as I would imagine any pregnancy is. I’m nearly half way through my pregnancy and it still doesn’t feel real to me. Sometimes I use the word “weird” to describe how it feels seeing my baby on an ultrasound, my brain doesn’t fully grasp that there is actually a little life growing in me. 

I find myself wondering if I would feel the same way if my baby was made with a man I loved. Would it feel more real? Would I feel more of a connection that this is happening knowing that the other half of him is my life partner? These are some of the valleys that run through my mind as I navigate pregnancy as a single woman. Sometimes I wonder if my donor is really who he says he is. Did he lie about his family? Are those his real pictures? Will my son actually look like him? All things that I can’t confirm or change now as his genes have already started a new life. 

I’m by no means in denial that I am pregnant, I have my to-do list that I am spending my summer tackling, preparing as much as I can. Heck, I even bought diapers yesterday. But I still have those little moments at night where my heart starts racing, and it hits me that I am really having a baby alone. That the family life I envisioned for so long, isn’t happening that way. 

I cringe slightly when people use the word “badass” or “rockstar” to describe my choice of motherhood. Because I don’t view it as my choice. I recently read a fellow SMBC’s reasoning she gives people when they ask about her becoming a solo mom. She says she reached a point in her life where she was faced with two options, settle in a relationship to start a family, or wait and risk never being a mother. She didn’t like either of those options so she created a third one, having a baby solo. And that is exactly how it feels to me. 

I know in my soul, that once he is here, I will reach the highest peak, and none of that will matter anymore, but for now I am still living in that purgatorial bridge between the life I envisioned and what will soon come.