And Now We Have Everything: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready

by Meaghan O'Connell

Motherhood was the farthest thing from the lives we were living but still out there waiting for us, the great “eventually,” the great “inevitably.” Of course we had more important things to do first, or that was the party line. We had our careers.

The problem was that with every year of being by ourselves, of moving forward with work, of getting used to our freedom, of learning how to be happy, we got closer to needing to have a baby (Time’s up!) and completely upending the lives and selves we’d been building.

Part of me loved this feeling of being steamrolled by life, of being totally fucked. I was rueful, ready to lie down. It was funny, wasn’t it, to face something this big? To go through with something that was so clearly a bad idea?

How had I coped with difficulty before? I would go for a walk with earphones in, disappear into the city, and come back in a few hours when I felt better.