I Just Wanted A Big Family

(MY story #2) Three sons under five. A foreign country. No family nearby. A husband constantly travelling for work. And me – a self-confessed control freak – self-diagnosis that came much later.

That’s a perfect recipe for disaster. And that’s exactly what happened.

My older sister has always been my role model. By that point in her life, she already had four children and never once complained about being tired or feeling alone in motherhood – not once. She worked full time, sometimes two or even three jobs simultaneously. Watching how effortlessly she seemed to handle it all, I believed it was simply in our genes. I wanted what she had. I wanted a big family – four or five children felt like a dream. I could already picture us all gathering at Christmas, my grown kids arriving with their partners and their own little ones. That was my vision.

I had my first son at 29 – early enough, I thought, to have a few more before forty. Alus was my “case study” baby, the one I learned to be a mother on. Two and a half years later, my second boy was born. The moment I saw Olek, I felt something euphoric – I just knew I wanted more. He was the perfect baby: feeding well, sleeping through the night by six weeks, communicating his needs with surprising clarity. I was completely in love, and I felt genuinely empowered as a mother to these two beautiful boys.

Life felt full. I was running a Polish Mothers group in Brisbane, organising a Polish playgroup, helping with the Polish Saturday School, and fundraising on top of it all. I felt fulfilled – as a mother and as a woman.

Then I fell pregnant for the third time. I almost missed the early months, I was simply too busy.

As the weeks passed, a different kind of tired set in. Not ordinary tiredness – something deeper. Exhaustion I hadn’t felt before. And with it came irritability, anger, and at times a rage that frightened me. None of this had happened during my previous pregnancies, and it felt out of character.

Blood tests revealed a thyroid condition. I started medication, and my mood gradually improved. But the guilt – the guilt over how angry I’d been with my children – stayed with me long after the anger faded.

Then came the next blow: I was told I couldn’t give birth naturally due to placenta praevia. A caesarean was now unavoidable. This was the last way I ever wanted to birth a child to this world…

At 32 weeks, I started bleeding and was rushed to hospital.