When we were dating, we spent countless nights talking about our future. We spoke about marriage, our responsibilities as husband and wife, and the kind of family we wanted to build together. We agreed we wanted three children, three little fruits of our love, living proof that what we shared would stand the test of time.

Then we got married, and the children started coming. Our first baby filled our home with a kind of joy I cannot even put into words. It was a feeling neither of us had ever experienced before. Then our second came.

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My husband is a good man. He provides for us, pays the bills, and makes sure the children never lack anything. I will never take that away from him.

But there is a “but.”

His responsibility seems to end with providing financially. Everything else that comes with running a home falls on me. I do all the cooking, the cleaning, the laundry, the bathing, the feeding, and almost every part of raising our children. Even on Saturdays, when he is home and you would expect him to lighten my load, he spends most of his day watching football, shouting at the screen, “It is a goal, offside, go left, go right.”

If our youngest daughter needs her diaper changed while I am in another room, instead of getting up to do it, he will call me from the kitchen to come and change her. When our older children ask him for help, the answer is almost always the same: “Go to mummy.”

That has become the answer to everything.

I know many people believe that providing financially is enough, but living this life every day is exhausting. There are days I feel like I am raising these children alone, except that someone else pays the bills.

Now, here is where my dilemma begins.

I am seven weeks pregnant, and this pregnancy was completely unplanned. My contraceptive failed me, and I honestly was not prepared for this.

I want to terminate the pregnancy.

Even writing those words comes with guilt. We always planned to have three children, but we never planned for it to feel like this. After my second child, who turns two this July, I finally decided it was time to reclaim a part of myself. I had put my business and many of my dreams on hold to raise our children, and I was just beginning to find my footing again when I tested positive.

Now it feels like I am being pulled straight back to where I started.

My hands are already full, and I genuinely do not know if I have the strength to go through pregnancy, childbirth, sleepless nights, and starting all over again while trying to rebuild a life for myself. Sometimes I look around and see people my age thriving in their careers and businesses. They look confident, fulfilled, and settled in ways I sometimes wish I could be. I do not envy them, but I cannot ignore the feeling that I have fallen behind while everyone else is moving forward.

I do not want motherhood to become my entire identity. I want to be a mother, yes, but I also want to build my business, pursue my dreams, and have something that belongs to me outside the home.

My husband does not see it that way. He wants us to keep the pregnancy because, in his words, “This is what we wanted from the beginning. We always said we wanted three children. Why do you want to snatch our dream from me?”

I understand where he is coming from, but I also wish he could understand where I am coming from.

From his perspective, he is right. But from mine, he is not the one who carries the pregnancy for nine months. He is not the one who wakes up at night, who breastfeeds, who recovers from childbirth, or who holds everything together at home while trying to rebuild a career. His life continues outside the home, work, meetings, plans, progress, while mine circles almost entirely around the children and the house.

The truth is, I have even considered terminating the pregnancy without telling him. I have thought about doing it quietly and giving him another explanation afterward because I know he would not agree.

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I know many people would call it a sin and judge me for it, but I am the one in this house. I am the one who lives this life every single day, and I can tell you, it is exhausting to walk in it. Others would say it is my body and my choice.

But I honestly do not know what to do anymore. Are my reasons valid enough to end this pregnancy, or am I allowing exhaustion, resentment, and frustration to make a decision I might regret for the rest of my life?

—Favour

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