I did not grow up wanting children. My mother was one of the unhappiest people that I knew, and her misery was taken out on us. I was scared from a very young age of doing the same thing to my own kids, so I opted out. Of all of it: Nuclear families, marriage, parenthood. It helped that I was queer. I had very few male partners throughout my adult life and enjoyed romantic relationships outside of (on the margins of?) patriarchy, and the added benefit of not having to worry about getting pregnant.

Things shifted for me several years ago. My fiancé really wanted kids, and I got excited about the idea. We started to research our options: adoption, medical insemination, male friends who would be up for coparenting or giving us their sperm. She wanted to carry the first child, which was great. Pregnancy seemed hard.

Our relationship didn’t last, but my desire for kids did. And when I fell in love again—for the very first time in my life, with a cisgendered male—we once again talked about children.

In theory, parenthood sounded interesting. We enjoyed brainstorming theoretical names and grew more social with the kids of our friends and neighbors. I still had a lot of doubts, though, so I was relieved that our timeline was in the future. Plus, it was unclear if I could even carry children: I had a long history of reproductive health problems and had been told it was unclear if I would be able to conceive.  I expected a long and twisty pregnancy road ahead, probably requiring a lot of interventions, and, most importantly, giving me ample time to reconsider.

Turns out, though, I am just as fertile as my mother. She had always gotten pregnant on the first try, and after a romantic drunken evening at a friend’s wedding in northern Minnesota, so did I.