So I am 18 weeks pregnant. I realize how truly amazing this blessing is, and how hard so many work for it. But I have a problem.

I don’t feel a connection to my baby and pregnancy...

I feel like I should be happier and more excited. Everyone asks me what the babies name will be and how I’ll be decorating the nursery and when my shower will be and etc etc etc. I have no answers. I don’t really think about it. I feel like I should be and I’m being like selfish or ungrateful.

I’m married and I’m very happy in my marriage. But my husband also doesn’t show a whole lot of interest in the pregnancy. He’ll occasionally touch my belly but not often. I guess I just always thought a husband was supposed to want to be all over the baby while pregnant, touching the belly and such.

Also, I’ve been having a lot of dreams and thoughts. I keep having dreams of things I used to do in my past and the things I will miss doing once the baby is here. I have dreams of exes that I haven’t spoke or thought of in years. I dream of my dad, who passed exactly a week before I found out I was pregnant, about how he won’t meet her, about me telling him and him being upset one time, happy another.

I think my personal stability is also holding me back from being happy about my baby. I haven’t went to college or have a career due to my husbands job (military) that keeps us moving over the last 4 years. Before we found out about the baby I was looking into starting classes in the new place we were moving, but now I can’t enroll because she will be here in the middle of the semester. I can’t start the job I had at our last location because it’s a long hiring process and she’ll be here right after I’d finish my training.

Also, I’m only 21. My husband is 22 and has a career and bought our house and a vehicle and is doing so well in the military for how young he is, and here I am, living off of him. I feel like I’m not good enough to be my daughter’s mother. Like, god forbid something we’re to happen to my husband or our relationship, I have nothing to show for the last 4 years. If my husband decided to leave me today I would have no where to turn. And that’s not who I am. I had such a great plan to join the military myself before we were married but something bad happened that stopped me and ever since it’s been part time jobs or working in a day care.

I don’t know. I just feel like it’s not real. I don’t feel like my pregnancy is as good as everyone else’s. Everyone else is so much more prepared and happy and I’m just not. I don’t feel as in love as I think I should be. Is this normal...?

Finally, feeling like this already makes me feel like absolute shit because so many others would KILL to be pregnant, I know this. So please don’t crucify me over that. I’m so sorry for the struggle so many of you may be going through and I hate that I feel this way..