Parenthood was supposed to feel meaningful. Nobody warned you it might also feel disorienting, lonely, financially overwhelming, emotionally destabilizing, and nothing like the version people post online.
This Is Not What I Planned is the honest, research-informed guide to the transition nobody explains clearly enough: what happens to the adult during early parenthood.
This is not a parenting manual about sleep schedules or developmental milestones.
It is a book about you.
The identity shift. The exhaustion. The relationship strain. The invisible grief of losing the version of yourself you used to recognize. The financial shock nobody prepared you for. The love that exists alongside all of it.
Written in a compassionate, deeply validating voice, this book combines emotional honesty with documented research on matrescence, postpartum mental health, caregiver burnout, relationships, career disruption, and the first three years of parenthood.
Inside, you'll discover:
- Why early parenthood can feel emotionally destabilizing even when you deeply love your child
- The real financial and career costs many families are never warned about
- What research says about postpartum identity changes and matrescence
- How relationships often shift after a baby-and how couples survive it
- The difference between normal overwhelm and postpartum mental health concerns
- Why feeling conflicted does not make you a bad parent
- What actually helps during the hardest phase of the transition
For first-time parents, expecting parents, exhausted partners, and anyone quietly wondering, "Why does this feel so much harder than everyone said it would?"
You are not failing.
You were never meant to do this without honesty, language, support, and context.
This book gives you all four.
