When You're Not Ready to Have Kids Yet Because of Depression

I want to be a mother. Of course I do.

If you know me, I doubt you think any different. I have always loved children and I think I’m a pretty nurturing person. I like to take care of others. I really like holding babies. There has never been a time when I have not thought that I would grow up to be a mom; that I would throw all my love and energy and joy and sanity into raising a family; that my husband and I would have cute babies who would grow into happy kids who would turn into sullen teenagers who, hopefully, would become the kind of adults who will love us and take care of us when we are old and creaky and grouchy. It’s always been our plan.

Ah, the plan — that silly thing we occupy ourselves with making and remaking and pretending we have control over, until one day we realize that here we are, that carefully curated plan cast to the side, as we have busied ourselves with the actual, beautiful grind of just living our lives.

Before we got married, my husband told me (less than halfway joking) that he wanted to be “done having kids” by the time he was 30. Well, almost six years later, I am on the last legs of 30, he’s not far behind me, and there are no kids on the horizon.

I’ve grown accustomed to the questions, whether they are nosy or curious or needling or serious. “When are you thinking about having kids?” “Are you guys thinking about trying soon?” “You know if you wait until you’re ready, you’ll never actually have them.”

Please don’t get me wrong, especially if you are a person who has asked me, or someone like me, these questions yourself. I’m not offended. We’ve been married for almost seven years, and I’ve never been secretive about my desire to have kids. I’ve even offered a (very vague) time frame in the past (“Oh, maybe in a year or two… ”) so it seems pretty normal that as I rounded the bases past 30 I’d have to be at least thinking about it.

I know that I don’t need to own a home before I start a family. I know that I don’t need my finances to be in impeccable order before I think about getting pregnant. I know that nothing will actually prepare me for motherhood, because motherhood is unto itself one of the most breathtakingly difficult and wondrous things this life has to offer. I know that. Don’t tell me I shouldn’t wait to be ready; “ready” is a highly relative term.

There’s a lot of good awareness rising up lately about why it can be insensitive to ask a woman whether and when she is going to have children. She may be struggling with infertility. She may have grown up with parents who didn’t show her what love and family should be like. She may have miscarried once or twice, or so many times she can hardly count.

But did you ever think that she just might not feel that she is well enough, mentally, to responsibly bring a child into this world and care for it the way she knows she can and longs to, and someday, hopefully, will?

Of course that’s not to say that people with mental illnesses can’t, or don’t, have happy, nurtured, cared-for children. They do! All the time! My point is simply that just as with any other medical condition, some of us must work harder or think more carefully or wait longer to get to a healthy enough place to have kids.

On the surface, some days, I have my act together. I work full time, my house is reasonably organized and clean, I have a plan for dinner that doesn’t involve using an app on my phone to order it, I get all my errands done. I am acting like any “regular” adult who does these things all the time, and I think, “I’m so ready to add kids to this picture.”

Then soon, maybe the next day or the next hour even, the dark, vicious shadow starts to swirl in the air around me, encroaching on my mind, my space, my heart until it settles inside me, cloaking my bright light of optimism, of hopes and goals, in impenetrable darkness. “Of course you can’t be a mom,” the shadow tells me. “Look at you. You didn’t even shower or make your bed today. What makes you think you can be responsible for growing tiny lives and hearts and dreams when you can’t even make yourself a cup of coffee?”

Thankfully, the darkness doesn’t come as often or stay as long these days, especially compared to several months or a year ago — but it does still come. The doubts and insecurities that a healthy person might have about parenthood multiply tenfold, or more. How can someone who worries about being five minutes late for a dinner reservation possibly handle the concerns and anxieties of being a mother? How can someone who has had days of being unable to get out of bed, much less face the obligations and duties of everyday life, possibly bring a healthy child into this world and not mess it up?

Not to mention what the shadow tells me about the genetics of all of this. “Depression runs in your family. Do you really want to bring a person into the world who will experience this kind of pain and sickness? Do you think that’s a responsible thing to do? Do you think that’s fair?” No, I tell it. It sounds awful. Why would I ever knowingly give someone life when this is how they could feel once they get here? What kind of a mother would I be if I did that? What if my child had it worse than I ever have? It will be my fault. It is, in fact, desperately unfair.

Again, I beg you not to misunderstand; I don’t take these thoughts as truth. Depression lies, as we know, and it lies well, making us feel uninspired, unimportant, incapable, unworthy. I know that I will be a good mother, if I am ever blessed with that opportunity. I know that my husband will be an outstanding father. Any child we have will be showered with an absurd amount of love not only from us, but from grandparents, aunts and uncles, family and friends. We will care for those kids, and love ‘em, and raise ‘em to the best of our ability, and no level of depression will change that. And I’m well aware that I can no more control passing on mental illness genes than I can the genes that may (or may not) pass along blonde hair and blue eyes, or near-sightedness, or the wide Finnish feet my husband’s side of the family always jokes about.

So the reason my husband and I are choosing to wait, to not have children at this exact moment of our lives and in our marriage, is not the fear that these thoughts are true. It’s the reality of the illness that causes them, the truth about where I am in my slog through the swamp of depression. I’m learning about myself, about my illness, about ways to treat myself better and cope with my emotions and change my behavior to allow for improvement in how I feel and think and live. In this way, no, I am not yet ready to become a mother. And yes, someday, hopefully soon, I will be more ready — at least psychologically — to step up to the task. And I need to be more ready, because there’s also the idea of what my hormones will do when I become pregnant, the need to taper off of medications I’ve come to rely on and, of course, my super-increased risk for serious postpartum depression. It’s a lot to think about; so yes, I want to be more ready than I am right now. I want that baby to grow inside a happy, healthy mama and come out to be mothered by a woman who is strong, and graceful, and resilient, and rational, and self-loving. There are ways I can work on becoming those things for that baby now, so that I am more ready to evolve healthfully as a mother when the time comes.

But one of the biggest lies we learn from our culture, from social media, from the entertainment industry, is that life is a race — that we must keep up with the neighbors — that we must meet all of life’s milestones at the same time and in the same way that everyone else does.

A dear friend once shared with me the quote, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” (Google tells me that Theodore Roosevelt actually said it.) But I’m learning to live it. My children, whoever they will be and whenever they will come, will benefit far more from a mother who learned to live and grow and breathe and cope within her mental illness, rather than one who rushed into parenthood because she felt like it was supposed to be the right time. I will content myself with the knowledge that as I wait and work on myself, my health, my recovery, my soul, I am becoming the mother that I will someday, Lord willing, actually need to be.

I’d love to be ready now. It’s hard to watch cousins and friends and former classmates announce pregnancies and start to grow their sweet families. Some days it actually really sucks. But most days it’s just another day to cherish being married to my best friend, have the chance to sleep in on weekends, be overly affectionate to my cat and focus on becoming well. “Ready” means different things to different people. Maybe these words can add a new layer of context, an extra tinge of compassion, the next time you wonder why that happily married, baby-loving couple hasn’t made their own just yet.

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