It's hard being a new mom (or even an experienced mom to a new baby) and sometimes we do things we know we shouldn't, despite what all the experts say. But this is a safe place to share your secrets (PM me)—we'll never tell.

This Week's Secret:

Ten years ago, when I was 17, I had an abortion. I had just been accepted at a good university, was working hard to earn money to afford it, and had just broken up with my boyfriend. It was a horrible time to have a baby. So my mother took me to the clinic. I know it was the right thing to do. I have since finished college and graduate school. I have a great career and married a man with a great career, and we have plenty of money, a beautiful home, and now have a daughter who is 2 months old. But I can't stop thinking about my first pregnancy. What might she (I assume it was a she) have looked like? She would be 10 now. It's affecting my ability to bond with the baby who is here. -- Anonymous

This doesn't make you a bad mom. It makes you a good one. You have now been pregnant twice, one of which came at the right time and the right place in your life and the other didn't. We make all of our decisions with what we have with us at the time. And at the time, it sounds like you made the right choice.

You have no way of knowing if you had gone through with the pregnancy what might have happened. You might never have finished school. You might not have had a career, though you probably would have had a job. You may not have met your husband. It's the same for all the choices we make in our life, both minor and major.

Thinking about the abortion doesn't make you weird or crazy. Nor does it mean you made the wrong choice. You are where you are now because of all the decisions you made, and to me, it sounds like you're in a place to offer a real, stable home to a child.

I would recommend you talk to someone, though. It sounds like a therapist might be able to help you work through some of these feelings.

Do you have any advice for this mom?

 

Image via Pattybot/Flickr