I remember sitting with a client—a surgeon who’d tried for three years to conceive through IVF. She whispered, “I finally got what I wanted, and all I feel is dread. I keep thinking about my surgeries, my research, the life I built.” She couldn’t reconcile wanting this baby so desperately with suddenly mourning the self she was about to lose.
During my years as a full spectrum doula and health educator, the number one feeling my pregnant clients reported wasn’t joy or even fear—it was ambivalence. Especially during the first trimester, woman after woman would confess, often in hushed tones laden with shame, that they didn’t know how they felt about being pregnant.
Some had tried for years to conceive and were confused by their lack of pure elation. Others faced unplanned pregnancies and weren’t sure how to feel. All of them thought something was wrong with them.
Nothing was wrong.
They were simply experiencing the most common—and least discussed—emotion of pregnancy.
Ambivalence is different from fear, which we culturally understand and even expect during pregnancy. It’s different from joy, the only emotion we seem to celebrate. Ambivalence exists in the messy middle: the simultaneous holding of contradictory feelings, the not-knowing-how-you-feel that actually makes perfect sense given what it means to have a child, especially in America.
Even deeply wanted pregnancies trigger ambivalent feelings. A woman might feel joy about her baby while grieving her changing body and disappearing independence. She might love feeling the baby move but resent the physical limitations pregnancy brings. One woman came to me at 14 weeks, unable to stop crying. “Everyone keeps congratulating me,” she said, “but I had just gotten promoted. My partner and I were planning to travel. I’m supposed to be happy, right? Instead, I feel like I’m watching my life disappear.” She loved her baby and resented her pregnancy in equal measure—and thought she was a monster for it. This emotional complexity is normal—it’s the simplified narrative we’ve been sold that’s actually unusual.
Why American Motherhood Intensifies Ambivalence
Maternal ambivalence exists within a particularly challenging American context that transforms normal mixed feelings into sources of shame. We operate under what researchers call “intensive mothering ideology”—the expectation that good mothers should be entirely child-focused, find complete fulfillment in motherhood, and experience everything as natural and instinctive. This narrative leaves no room for reality.
The structural factors in the US amplify these feelings. Without guaranteed paid maternity leave, affordable childcare, or universal healthcare, American mothers face extreme stress that makes it harder to access joy alongside the challenges. When you’re exhausted, financially strained, and isolated, ambivalence isn’t just normal—it’s inevitable.
Our culture emphasizes individual responsibility over collective support. Mothers are expected to manage virtually alone what other societies treat as communal responsibilities—unlike in France, where the government provides sage-femmes for postpartum home visits, which are considered a basic civilian right. Here, that support only exists if you can pay out of pocket. This lack of support infrastructure transforms normal ambivalent feelings into feelings of personal failure.
Add social media’s curated perfection of motherhood, and suddenly everyone else appears to be thriving while you’re struggling with resentment, boredom, or regret. A mother of a toddler, newly pregnant with her second, confessed: “I know what’s coming this time—the sleeplessness, the isolation, how long it takes to feel like myself again. With my first, I had ignorant bliss. Now I have knowledge, and I’m terrified. Is it wrong that I’m not excited?” She was holding both love for her growing family and grief for what she knew it would cost her.
Because fertility struggles are common and reproductive rights remain contested, there’s also pressure to be perpetually grateful if you can have children. This makes acknowledging difficult feelings feel like betrayal.
Here’s what struck me most as someone who grew up around the world: America is the only place where it seems normal for two people—the pregnant person and their partner—to care for one baby. One baby needs multiple sets of hands. In this context, ambivalence isn’t just understandable; it’s a rational response to an impossible situation.
Moving From Ambivalence to Clarity
When someone tells me they’re pregnant, I never say congratulations. Instead, I ask, “How do you feel about it?” This simple shift creates space for truth. Ambivalence isn’t something to push through—it’s information. When you treat it as such, it can guide you toward clarity. Here’s how to work with, rather than against, these feelings:
Build Your Community First
Before getting pregnant, map out your support network. Who will be around that doesn’t require payment? Do you have friends also thinking about pregnancy? There’s a reason friend groups often have babies around the same time—the communal aspect makes the experience more manageable. Having someone to call at 3 AM who understands because they’re living it too can be the difference between isolation and connection. If you don’t have this network, it’s worth pausing to consider how you might build it. Join groups and cultivate friendships with people in similar life stages and have honest conversations with family about what support might look like.
Assess Your Readiness, Honestly
Parenting requires intense discipline and structure. Your child becomes the primary focus, and your world reorganizes around their needs. If you’re still figuring out your career, cherishing spontaneous weekends, or have personal work to do, factor that in. For those carrying unresolved trauma, pregnancy can trigger an unexpected reckoning. You might find yourself grieving the childhood you didn’t have while trying to imagine the one you’ll provide. The prospect of parenting can surface old wounds—how can you give what you never received? This reparenting work is profound but exhausting. If you’re still in the thick of healing your own childhood experiences, adding a baby to that process deserves careful consideration. Where are you in terms of having your own needs met? What might you resent giving up? What are you genuinely ready to embrace?
The Truth About Ambivalence
Here’s what I want every person considering pregnancy to know: It’s okay to not know. But it’s important to understand why you don’t know and to explore whether there are things you can shift to move toward clarity—or whether you simply need more time. Deciding whether parenthood is for you is a crucial question because it’s not for everyone. When we make this massive decision from a place of unexamined ambivalence, resentment often follows, existing alongside whatever joy appears.
You can create certainty by exploring these dynamics honestly. Ambivalence about pregnancy doesn’t make you ungrateful or broken—it makes you human. In a society that offers little support while demanding total devotion, mixed feelings aren’t just normal. They’re a sign you’re paying attention.