Hi there,

I have been suffering lately with terrible panic attacks and anxiety over having children. I have been married for just over 2 years and we've been together for nearly 11 years. We moved in together and got married and I only had the slightest of nerves the night before my wedding, which everyone does but now it's come to having children, I am suffering crippling anxiety and feel I could even be sabotaging my marriage due to my fears. I sit and stare at my husband and freak out that my fears over having children might be because I don't really want to be with him but when I am rational, I know full well that's not the truth. I love him and could barely ask for him to be any better suited to me - except for him to be a millionaire! I then sit there and feel awful for thinking these things about it him, which he has no idea about obviously!

I turn the same worries over and over in my head - whether I'm up to the job, would it love me, would I love it, would I get post natal depression, would I regret it, will I spend the rest of my life in a panic because I’ve done the wrong thing and the list goes on.

The stupid thing is, I love kids, I adore all the children in my life and my husband and I always take our nieces and nephews on holidays with us and are constantly ‘borrowing’ children as we want to do all the family things, trips to the zoo, theme parks, camping etc so it seems ridiculous that I can't bring myself to have my own!

In my rational moments, I know I would be disappointed to never have children and experience being a parent but when the anxiety sets in I have actually been sick with fear about being pregnant. I also get panicky about going out sometimes and I hate that!

I did get pregnant last December but lost the baby very early on by miscarriage. When I saw the positive test I nearly fainted, even though we had been trying, I just hadn’t thought about how I’d react when it eventually happened! I could barely breathe, I started to sweat and I was sick. I spent the whole night waking up as my heart was almost beating out of my chest. I keep thinking that these feelings were for a reason and that it must be because I don’t actually want kids! When I think about being pregnant, all I can think of are these horrible feelings that I had when I saw the positive test result!

Looking back though, I was still pregnant for 4 more days and by the 3rd and 4th days, I was thinking of all the fun things I was going to get to do, like buying things for a nursery, choosing a name etc and when I saw Mary Poppins in London during this time, I was thinking of how my baby was listening to the show too.

I can’t seem to remember these moments when I’m struck by the panic, all I remember is the panic I felt and I am focussed on it and why I felt so terrible about being pregnant when I found out.

I need to get over this as I hate myself for being weak and stupid when so many millions of women have done this before me. It doesn’t seem to be something people talk much about, although I found a name for it 'Tocophobia - fear of being pregnant' but I worry I’m in a minority!