Okay ladies, I’m looking for some help here. 10 years ago I would have just called my mom, dad, or some other family member for advice but everyone is gone now....so I turn to my husband (who obviously has a biased opinion) and you. So please help if you can relate to any of my issues here.

I never wanted natural children, originally. Being a stepmom was always just perfect for me and I never wanted anything more than that, but now that I’m almost 40, I’m feeling like I do want a baby. My husband’s stance on it is whatever I want, he wants. He already has a wonderful child so he accepted the fact that we weren’t having any, but now that he knows I am leaning towards having a child he’s very excited. The want to have a child is now taking over a lot of my life and all I can think about the last 3 months. I am so scared though. Sometimes I even wake up in the morning scared saying to myself “Good thing you aren’t pregnant, you’d be a hot mess today” and I’ll feel that way for awhile and then the need and want to have a baby comes a couple hours later. It’s a true deep longing that I’ve never felt before. So I have a question, Is anyone else scared of pregnancy? I feel like I’d be worried so much about so many things that could go wrong that I’d never sleep or eat (because that’s what I do when I’m scared or nervous) and then my old body would just miscarry anyway from stress. I worry about my health during pregnancy, just because regardless I’m considered a “geriatric mother”, even though I have had several tests done to make sure my body can handle pregnancy and while i do have very mild mitral valve prolapse of the heart, that’s pretty common and no biggie, so all of the tests have given me the green light to conceive. The thought of being pregnant has always scared me though. The thought of throwing up scares me even more as it’s been a life time fear that i have gotten help for, but it’s still a phobia that controls a lot of my life, and knowing that the anti nausea meds don’t always work paralyzes me. Knowing that some of the anti nausea pills can hurt my baby makes me feel like a selfish witch in the first place for even wanting to take them at all. And knowing that the nurse or doctor can make a life altering mistake during labor that could hurt my baby or myself LITERALLY freezes me and makes me tremble. There are so many mistakes made while a woman is in labor. I’ve always operated out of fear and lost out on so many things in life. So many. I’ve robbed myself of so much. Also, the fact that my husband and I don’t have one single family member (other than his son who is only in 1st grade) for any kind of emotional support or advice scares me too. I’m a great stepmom and wife. I know I’d be a good mom, but every month my fertile window comes and goes and I always say to myself “You’ll feel better about it next month after you do some more research” or “After you do another test at the doctors you can start trying, you have to make sure your old body can handle this”. But I’m almost 40 and pretty soon “next month” won’t be a month that I can conceive.

Why can’t I just be a normal woman who doesn’t care about any of these things? I’d give anything to be like all of you, but I’m not. Maybe I don’t deserve a child. Enough with the mind games I seem to keep playing though, I’ve got to make a decision and stick with it. Any advice? Can anyone relate to any of these fears or am I bat crazy and need to give up all hope of being a mother?