I’ve been with my partner for eight years and we’ve never planned for – or given each other a solid answer about – having kids. In the past, this has allowed me to live at my own pace. Whether it was taking a gap year, doing an extra year at university or quitting my job to start a new career, I never worried about the long-term implications of how my life choices might ‘delay’ me because I wasn’t thinking about how they might affect a family.

Now, as almost all my friends from school have had children, my feelings about motherhood are shifting. Until earlier this year, I would tell myself I was just too focused on my goals, too selfish, too strict to ever be a good parent, and I would leave it at that. At the moment, I can’t escape the idea that I might have been looking at it all wrong.

Suddenly, I’ve found myself moved to tears by stories of parental love, like the story in Catherine Newman’s book We All Want Impossible Things. I have dreams of being pregnant and feel an overwhelming sense of empathy for anyone who has carried, and then lost a child. Consequently, that once-clear boundary of ‘no kids’ is beginning to blur. Seeing the sacrifices that come with having children terrifies me, but I also see the joy, the love and the indescribable bond that I might be missing out on.

“I never wanted children. Now I’m struggling to accept that I might. Here’s why changing your mind on motherhood feels so complicated”