I was 26 when I had my first son, Mason. I was literally in labor on our one-year wedding anniversary. When Mason came, I just got this new sense of confidence. If I had any confidence before that, it was because I had been in fitness for a little bit and I was feeling confident there. But outside of the fitness umbrella…definitely not. I really feel like that burst of confidence kind of prepared me for what would come next…

I don’t even know if I want to call it a miscarriage because I feel like miscarriages happen earlier on. Mine was so far into my pregnancy. It’s like a death…that’s what it was to me because the baby was so close to being full term. So that was a loss. We called him AJ. It was a boy. I remember having a hard time getting pregnant. Then, we found out we were pregnant and I was super, super happy. Everything was fine. It was a really good time in my life…

Women like me are not supposed to be mothers—we are not the mothering type. And when I say women like me, it’s women that party like I party and work in fast-moving industries. People told me, people close to me told me, that they could never imagine me as a mother. Those milestone years that one may attach to motherhood, for me had passed—25, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35—all those years had passed, and I hadn’t had children…