For as long as I can remember, being an ambitious person has been a core part of my personality, one I’ve worn like a badge of honour. My school reports said I was “going places” and “destined for great things”. Throughout university and starting my career, I prided myself on being the most driven and focused person I knew. Today, I’m still always the person who asks for more; who pushes themselves to be better and is eager to leap to the next impressive milestone.

The other thing I’ve always known is that I want to be a mother. While many of my friends ummed and ahhed (and still do), I’ve always been resolute in how much I want a child. That feeling solidified when I met my husband nearly 10 years ago. Now, not a day goes by without us speculating out loud about what a child that is half of each of us might be like; how we’ll decorate their nursery; what we’ll call them. As we inch closer to being ready to start a family, the excitement is building (will they have my blue eyes and his dark, curly hair? Should they call his mum ‘Granny’ and mine ‘Nanna’?), but so is the stress. Not about the late nights, constant wake-ups and all the ways my body will change – though these concerns are also permanently on my mind. My biggest worry of all is that there’s still so much I want and need to do before I become a parent, and I’m running out of time.

The idea of a baby bucket list is nothing novel. The moment you share that you think you want kids, every well-meaning parent you know will implore you to do everything while you can. Travel the world, they say, and stay out until the early hours. Make the most of the simple pleasure of an uninterrupted shower or a quick trip to the shop, two things that are considered almost impossible with a newborn. You’re supposed to bask fully in the parts of life that will surely become so, so difficult once you’re plunged into a life of feeds, dirty nappies and soft play at the weekend.

It’s not bad advice, per se. In fact, it’s probably quite smart. But the more ambitions that mount up, the harder it feels not to buckle under the weight of everything I have to achieve before getting pregnant. On my to-do list? Visit Japan (for practical reasons: a baby on a 15-hour flight doesn’t sound like a good idea). Save for and buy a house (too many stairs and not enough room in my current one-bed flat). Learn a new language (Arabic, so that my Egyptian husband and I can raise a bilingual child). Improve my fitness to set myself up for the best possible delivery. Then again, I haven’t lived in another country – should I move for six months to try it out? And is it a good idea to try to make more friends and safeguard myself from loneliness before I inevitably grow apart from the ones I have? Also, haven’t I always wanted to try skydiving?

That’s before we even reach the most crippling goals of all: everything I want to achieve in my career before I become a mum. My One Big Dream is to be an author. In the same way that I fantasise about bringing my future child home from the hospital, I also daydream about walking into a Waterstones and seeing my name on the spine of a novel. So, I want to write and publish at least one book pre-baby (because you can’t do a book tour with an infant on your hip) and I should probably try to get a promotion at work because what if I’m not able to afterwards? After all, the ‘motherhood penalty’ is very real: while men get pay rises when they have kids, study after study shows us that pregnant women and mothers are seen as less competent and less committed than other types of employees.

If everything I hope to achieve sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. The thing about having an ambitious nature is that the checklist never really stops. When one goal gets ticked off, another even more ambitious feat simply pops up to replace it. And judging by my calculations, I have about 1.5 years to achieve all of my career aspirations before successfully getting my son or daughter off for their third nap becomes the only goal I care about.

Let me be clear: I am fully aware that I’m the one who started this race against the clock. I pressed ‘go’ on the invisible timer that tells me I’m not doing enough, fast enough – and I also have the power to press pause. So why don’t I simply give myself more time, especially considering that, biologically, I do have years to spare? Why don’t I stop living to the arbitrary timeline in my head and relieve some of the pressure that I’ve put on myself to do everything all at once?

It’s a very good question and one I don’t know the answer to. What I do know is that I’m hurtling towards ambition burnout caused by constantly analysing my progress, working late nights and early mornings, and trying to always stay one step ahead in the hopes I can future-proof my ambitions before starting a family.

It’s a feeling I know I’m not alone in. In 2020, a YouGov study revealed that fewer than half of women in the UK believed it possible to rise to the top of their careers while still being a good parent. Even just within my friendship group, while not everyone is sure about whether they want children, we all have expressed some fear over how the jobs we’ve worked so hard for might be impacted by becoming mothers.

“I’m in the ‘panic years’ before having children – but my biggest worry is whether I’ll have to sacrifice my ambitions”