Welcome to Scared to Be a Mom. You’re not alone here. It’s our space to confess, vent, and relate.
I’m super scared.
Hi, you. It’s me, Jen Glantz. I’m really scared to be a mom.
That always tickles my heart to say but it’s the truth and right now, at 33-weeks pregnant (as of Jan 17. 2023), I only have time to lie about myself about a few small things: like that the acid reflux will go away soon and that I still have A LOT of time to figure it all out - “it” being how the heck I’m going to be a mom in T-???? days.
Some people dream of being a mom, of one day growing up and having kids.
But I was never that person.
When I was younger, I dreamt of being a poet, of working at Forever21, of meeting the lo0ve of my life as a contestant on The Bachelor. After I met the love of my life on a dating app, I dreamt of traveling the world with him, of becoming millionaires, of starting a dog toy business that would land us a deal with Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank.
When my people asked me if I wanted kids, I’d say yes: of course, one day. Because it was easier than confessing that I didn’t know, that I wondered if I would ever be ready, that I questioned whether I could do what seemed so impossible.
One day, I’d say.
And then when the day came to ask me again, I said: how about we talk about it another day?
The truth was, I wanted kids, but truly didn’t know when I’d be ready to shove aside my dreams of being a reality show contestant, a best-selling author, a backpack living nomad, to make room in my life to be someone’s mom.
One day.
When I’m famous.
When I’ve made my first million.
When I feel like my life isn’t such a dumpster fire.
When I get that next book deal.
When I turn 30…how about 35…actually, 42 sounds like a great age, ask me again before menopause.
When Adam and I started dating, I enthusiastically told him two kids sounded great.
When Adam and I got engaged, I told him two kids sounded great, when we figured out our lives.
About 9-months ago, I told Adam that even having one kid sounded like the scariest thing in the entire world.
And then all of a sudden, on a sticky hot day at the end of June, in an upstate New York Holiday Inn Express, I peed on a plastic stick, for the first-time in my life, and saw two sharp lines starring right back at me.
“It’s negative fore sure, “ I said to Adam while we puppy-tilted our heads at the equal signs.
“Oh yeah, definitely,” he said, closing his left eye to see if it would skew how he saw the results.
It’s quite impressive the lengths people go when they are nose-to-nose with the truth but simply don’t want to believe it.
Days later, I bought a test that didn’t have any lines on it. It just said pregnant or not pregnant.
A minute later, we found ourselves looking down and then looking up at each other.
I felt grateful that this could happen. I felt completely unprepared. I felt like I was going to cry, and I did, but the tears were shallow, the news happened so fast, they hadn’t even had a chance to properly form yet.
But more than anything, I paced around our apartment, having an argument inside of my own head.
“Jen, WTF.”
“How are we going to do this?”
“When are you going to admit to yourself - to anyone - just how scared you are to be a mom?”
Two days later, I admitted it.
Not to my husband, not to my own mom, not even to my best friend.
I told it to the insurance customer service representative who I called to ask WTF I should do now that I’m pregnant.
“Okay, well thank you for calling United Healthcare,” he said.
I thought he’d roll out a red carpet of spoken congratulations. I thought he’d tell me - by the sound of my voice alone - that I’d make a good mom. Instead, he kept things very professional.
“You should first find a doctor and give them a call.”
“Okay, fine. But what next? How do I do this? What’s going to happen to me when I’m pregnant? How am I going to give birth? Can you explain how in the world I’m going to be able to take care of a newborn? I’ve never changed a diaper before.”
He went silent. I checked to see if he had hung up, but he wasn’t allowed to. The call was being recorded for quality assurance, you know. He had to deal with me.
“Okay, Ma’m. I’m still here. I’m just checking to see if your insurance plan includes a therapist. You might also want to speak to a therapist.”
Welcome to Scared to Be a Mom
A brutally honest corner of the internet where we all share the many different emotions, thoughts, challenges, and fears we have around a humongous change in our lives.
We spend so many years of our lives learning geometry, Shakespeare, chemistry, and long division. But nobody really ever teaches us WTF is going to happen during when we’re pregnant or when we’re a parent.
Figuring it all out feels like you have to become a full-time investigator.
To find out what I desperately needed to know, I had to spend hundreds of hours reading Reddit forums, begging friends with kids to tell me what could happen to me during labor, watching TikTok videos about perineum massages, and hunting on Google to figure out what a baby actually needs when they are born - which spolier alert: is a lot more than I thought.
There were times I felt so alone, so unprepared, so confused, so overwhelmed, so guilty - sooo many things.
But I don’t want to feel that way anymore and neither should you.
So welcome to a place where you can learn some of it, vent all of it, and feel less alone.
It’s a place where we can share fears, the things that frighten us the most, and all the ways we are trying to figure it out.
Dive in, there’s a lot on this website
From personal diary entries to confessions from real humans, WTF do I need lists, and a whole lot more.
& If We Haven’t Met Yet…
Hi, I’m Jen Glantz. I’ve spent most of my career writing and creating things that hopefully make people feel less alone in their lives.
I started a business where people hire me to be their bridesmaid.
I wrote a book about how all of my friends were getting engaged while I couldn’t even get a second date, another book about my life as a hired bridesmaid, and a third book about finally becoming a bride.
I have a pick-me-up Monday morning email I send to thousands of humans and a podcast called You’re Not Getting Any Younger that helps people make bold moves in their life.
I live in a tiny Brooklyn apartment, blocks away from my favorite pizza shop, with my husband (Adam), my dog (Goofy), and about 12 boxes of size 1 diapers that I panic bought last week.
As of today, January 13th, 2023, I’m 32-weeks pregnant and on a scale of 1-10, i’m a 10 when it comes to how freaking scared I am about being a mom.
Thank you for being here, for reading all of this, and for confessing how you feel too.
While there’s so much we can never know about the future, we can know this:
It’s always a wild adventure that’s crazier, messier, stranger and way more beautiful than we ever could imagine.
Scary too.
Love,
Jen
