Being Called A First-Time Mom Made Me Anxious

But I’m Learning to Accept It

The title, I hate being called a first time mom but not for the reasons you think on a background of a woman holding her belly with one hand and a wooden heart with another. By Marie Shanley

Pregnancy was a beast for me. I started with awful nausea that prevented me from eating for 2 months. I went into early labor 32 weeks in, and the remaining 8 weeks were spent overtired, afraid, and trying to meditate as much as possible while I experienced contractions almost every night. And as I went through all of that, I got on edge anytime I’d hear the words, “Oh, you’re just a first-time mom?”

Lovingly, the forums I joined used the acronym FTM or FTP (first-time parent), which I eventually also came to loathe.

So now, being called a FTM, while absolutely factual, is also anxiety-inducing. I know I’ve never had a baby before. But I’ve also felt unheard, had my worries reduced to ‘just’ anxiety, and had to argue that my needs were valid — all of which get worse if people think your worry is only due to inexperience.

So, Instead of Supported, You Feel Dismissed.

My anxiety often earns me the “overthinker” label from others, but personally, the hardest aspect of it is being unable to trust my intuition. This manifests itself in my assuming I do everything wrong or, at the very least, wouldn’t know what the right thing to do is. This only gets worse when a nurse walks into the triage room I’m in, declaring, “So this must be your first pregnancy?” before asking me anything else about the situation that caused my hospital-phobic self to enter a hospital.

She’s already assumed I just don’t know what contractions feel like, that these are Braxton Hicks, instead of the fact that I have been dilatating and having contractions for the past two months every night.

I always assumed I mistrusted my judgment. I shamed myself for being too weak and overworried to not just brush something off. I really wish that also didn’t come from doctors, nurses, and even other previously pregnant people around me.

Did I Mention Anxiety?

Once you conceive, you’re anxious about being able to carry to full term as you learn that miscarriages are more common than not. Then, as nausea set in, I was worried I wasn’t eating enough to keep the baby, but once the nausea was gone, I was worried I had lost the baby.

Then, you learn about all the things that can happen during labor. All the judgments people will assume if you decide you don’t/do want an epidural if you don’t/do want to deliver in a hospital, if you mention that you are/aren’t comfortable with the idea of having a C-section… there is no winning. There are only carefully made personal choices that often result in needing to be flexible anyway.

Having to make those tough choices while someone thinks your opinion doesn’t matter because you don’t know enough anyway does not make them easier.

It Is OK to Not Know

For me, this swelled over the course of my immediate postpartum period, culminating with our pediatrician gently asking me, after I burst into tears in her office, if I ever heard about postpartum anxiety. Oh boy, did I?! But as part of being a first-time mom as well as a mental health advocate, I was too proud to admit it because of whatever else that might mean about me when I talked to people about my experience.

Because admitting I didn’t know or that I had a mental health problem meant someone could take another choice away from me. Because it would imply something about me to them.

So, Here’s My Reminder To You

You may be doing this for the first time, but you DO know some things. You know a whole lot about the body you’ve lived in.

You know what your body feels like outside of pregnancy. You know when things you're experiencing are not adding up to what you’re reading others to have experienced. And yes, you definitely know if the baby inside of you seems to be moving less compared to when they were planning soccer with your organs 24/7 since 12 weeks of gestation. But for most of this, you can’t be certain about any of those things until they are in hindsight.

But it’s so easy to believe the folks who tell you (you know they have experience) that something’s in your head.

Until your baby comes out and kicks you in a very familiar way on the outside, as you felt around 12–14 weeks. Or you go into labor with Pitocin, and it feels exactly the same as it had for the past two months, almost every night. I am now ever more convinced that my water broke, but kiddo’s head was in the way because once my water was broken by my GYN, it felt exactly like it did the day I went in worried it broke early after a particularly bad night of contractions. I was freakin right.

Society tends to dismiss women’s health issues.

Which, if you’ve had a decent amount of them growing up, forces you into a weird game of “Did I make this up, or do I need to go to a doctor who might tell me I made this up until I provide enough evidence otherwise?” Which who even knows what that evidence would be?

I was diagnosed with endometriosis when we thought only 1–3% of women worldwide experienced it. I needed to trust my gut to keep searching for a doctor who would believe me for long enough to want to try to help.

Now, I am ever more convinced that I did know what was going on, while others just didn’t have the capacity to validate me.

I was right to be worried, and telling me I wasn’t only made me more so. But whenever a doctor took the time to sit with me, give me space, and validate my fears and exhaustion, whatever I was dealing with usually felt a whole lot more manageable—better for them and me when treating me.

Now that my child is on the outside, I’ve followed the same intuition to rush him to doctor’s visits he may or may not need. To know when he needs to fuss it out in bed to help him learn to fall asleep vs when attending to his crying because he truly needs something.

I have been wrong in both kinds of scenarios because what do I know? I’m a first-time mom. I am happy to be wrong and self-validating rather than wrong and self-loathing for “doing it wrong.” Because, at the end of the day, I have to live with the consequences of being wrong. So safe over sorry sounds like a point towards self-validation to me.

In this article, I refer to being a mom and a parent interchangeably to try to remain inclusive. I understand that not all birthing parents are moms, but since I am, that is what I can relate to and explain the best. You are valid, and your experience is valid as you know it to be.