HELLO! I have come to helplessly windmill my arms in your direction and whine about babies. Enjoy!
Title card: This is my brain. On babies.
This sums it up nicely. On our honeymoon in Vancouver, Canada.
WHAT ARE YOU EVEN WORRYING ABOUT YOU HAVE PLENTY OF TIME
I know. I know, I’m only 30. But do you know what? By the time my parents were 30, they had a 10-year old kid. They had kept a human being alive for an entire decade. Well, now I’m 30, and all I’ve got to show for myself is a set of mismatched dishes and a very badly stained carpet. Sometimes I can barely drag myself out of bed in the morning, and when I do everything hurts. Dudes, I have started making grunting noises when I try to get up from the couch. The older I get, the less I can picture being able to fit a demanding baby/toddler/small child into this body and this life. And I haven’t even broached the whole “your eggs are already withering even as we speak!” hysteria yet.
I come from a long line of “early” birthers. My mom and her sisters were all done having babies in their 20s. My mother, in particular, started and ended at age 20. And while I have to admit it’s weird to only be 20 years younger than my parents, it’s also kind of rad. They were 38 when I graduated high school and left, giving them their house and lives back. Even now they’re only 51, and their days seem to stretch out before them. In contrast, the beau’s parents are roughly twelve years older than mine. They’re now in their early 60s, and we’ve been troubled to perceive a decrease in their mobility over the past few years. As hokey as it may seem, I worry about my potential kids getting enough time with their grandparents. My paternal grandmother passed away unexpectedly at 74, but because my side of the family skews young, I was able to know her for the first 20 years my life. I would hope my offspring has a similar opportunity to know their grandparents.
Other issues with putting off the baby-having:
- Trouble with labor/delivery: more health complications?
- Infertility — would my aging body fail us and we’d be faced with dumping a bunch of money into treatments just to fulfill the dream of having a pink, wrinkly, wailing, floppy, writhing bundle of poop? And if we were to do this, there’s a high probability that it could lead to:
- MULTIPLES
Now I’ve got age 31 knocking on my door and the weight of an early-procreation family legacy on my back. Which I’ve already failed at, obviously. The early procreation thing, not the 31. I think I’ll have no problem turning 31 in November, unless I inadvertently step in front of a moving train. But I suddenly feel like I’m very old and I’m very, very, very much running out of time.
BUT DO I REALLY EVEN WANT TO?
Someone forgot to wind my biological clock. Or maybe it’s digital and I just never got around to putting in the batteries to begin with. When I see babies, I am largely unmoved. I have no burning desire to nibble on the tops of their heads and gnaw on their little hands and toes, which are confounding urges most fellow ladies somehow seem to possess. Not me. If, god forbid, a baby and I lock eyes, I’m that woman who mutters in alarm, “Oh god, that baby is LOOKING at me,” and then steps behind my companion to hide.
This is not true for me and dogs. When ever I see a dog, I am suddenly a blubbering mound of jellied babytalk. “BUBBY!1” I shriek at my companion, tugging on his or her sleeve. “LOOK AT THE WIDDLE BUBBY! AWWWW! SO CUTE!”
Which in turn leads me to wonder why I’m even bothering to contemplate parenthood. Why don’t we simply move to a new pet-friendly rental house and get a dog?
LET ME GET BACK TO YOU ABOUT THAT ONE.
SO IF YOU DON’T WANT TO, DON’T BOTHER
Here’s the thing. I’m not so sure that I don’t want to. The beau and I always thought we’d be parents, some far-off day. I wasn’t particularly girly as a child, as my fondness for Matchbox cars and jumping off of roofs proved, but I did go through a phase where I pretended I had eight kids. They were four sets of twins. My best friend also had four sets of twins, and they were somehow ALL THE SAME STAIRSTEP AGES: eight, six, four, and two. What a crazy coincidence! No father was anywhere in the picture, because who cares about that. I named the girls after jewelry stones: Ruby, Sapphire, Diamond, and so on. There were a couple of boys, too, but I can’t remember their names. Sometimes my imaginary kids would act up, and I’d sit them down just like Danny Tanner on Full House and we’d have a compelling heart-to-heart.
Point is, even if my ideas weren’t always realistic, I’ve always figured I’d be a mom someday. I’m having a hard time balancing that supposition against the reality of my current lack of baby enthusiasm. If I had to couch it in figures, I’d say that 60-65% of us wants to have a baby while 35-40% of us doesn’t. Are those statistics enough to spur us down the path of procreation?
YOU DON’T EVEN DESERVE A BABY
And now the guilt comes crashing in. Because I, someone who does not identify as baby-crazy, am considering trying to have a baby when so many others out there who desperately want one, well, can’t. If I don’t want one that badly, then I don’t deserve to have one, right? I mean, probably not “right,” but this is the way my brain works. Like I’d be snatching some heartbroken woman’s well-deserved bundle of joy straight from the either and making it my own instead. Which doesn’t even make any sense, but my brain. This is how it works.
If I’m a reluctant mother, then I don’t deserve to be a mother. Clearly.
E;RGHESIUBHSLEHRGAUWEYBFAW’EIJ !!32!!!!!!!!!!!1111w4t4~
I KNOW, RIGHT?
FUCKING SHUT UP AND JUST DO IT, YOU MORON
I KNOW, RIGHT? Earlier generations didn’t seem to have a problem with overanalyzation. None of this blah-blah, wah-wah, my LIFE, what does it ALL MEAN, eeeennnnnnghhhhh. They just rolled with the punches, man. Once, marveling over the fact that my mother had a baby when she was herself only a “baby,” I turned to her and asked, “How did you feel when you found out? Weren’t you scared?” And she thought for a moment, then replied, “No. I just thought, ‘Okay, I’m going to have a baby now.'” GOOD HOLY CHRIST, how I long for that kind of mental clarity.
My generation, for the most part, was petted and praised and gently pushed in the direction of college and told, “You can be anything you want to be!” And we were like, “Rad! We’re awesome!” And then we got older, and we got jettisoned off to college, and then all of a sudden it was as if we were standing in the grocery store gazing at an endless aisle of glass jars. Did we want the standard grape jelly? Or did we want the raspberry jam? Or were we perhaps craving the zing of a zesty marmalade? What are preserves, anyway? Was it possible to get the raspberry without any seeds? And did we need the reduced sugar version? Except, you know, instead of foodstuffs it was various job and career paths, and instead of a grocery store it was our lives. And in the face of so many options, we desperately worried we weren’t making the right choice for us, so we elected instead to lie down in the middle of the floor and experience an existential tantrum (also cutely known as a quarterlife crisis), arms flailing and feet kicking, screaming and crying and sobbing “WHY, WHY? WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?” And then we did it all over again when we got married, and we’re doing it all over again when faced with the baby question. At least I am, dammit, and I’m getting really sick of this cycle.
We spend all this time thinking, and analyzing, and worrying, and so very little time acting. And I think part of it is a reflexive response from watching our parents make wrong choices and not wanting to history to repeat itself. But I think part of it also comes from being a generation that was somehow nostalgic for its own past before it was even old enough to graduate high school; a generation raised on memes, surveys, constantly updating social media, endlessly cycling pop culture, and cunningly personalized media that continuously demands to know: Who Are You? And we somehow grow accustomed to trying to answer that question via how we dress, how we choose to decorate our houses, what music we listen to, what products we buy (“I’m a Mac/I’m a PC”).
But yeah, that’s straying, uh, a bit off-topic.
The point being: we’ve completely forgotten it’s okay to turn off our brains and just do the damn thing, already. Like billions of humans have done before! Not necessarily to their benefit! But that’s okay!
Right?
THE MORAL OF THE STORY
Right now, we have this tentative timeframe called “a year from now.” A year from now, we’re supposed to suck it up and go for it. A year from now, according to my feverish brain, I’ll be in the latter stages of 31, and hopefully I’d get pregnant within a few short months, and then I’d have the baby when I’m 32, and then we could wait a couple of years, and try again, and hopefully we’d get a second one just in time for my 35th. Done. And of course, hardly anything ever goes according to plan. Of course, we might run into trouble, or a change of mind, or a change of heart, or a freakishly-timed “accident.” But we SORT OF HAVE A TENTATIVE PLAN.
Which is a good thing, right? Plans are good! Plans are comforting to us A-type people (there I go defining myself again). But no. Oh, no. Because now my brain has decided I have a year of my life left before it is over. I have a year of my life left to somehow save all the money in the world while also simultaneously spending it on all the trips we won’t get to take and all the things we won’t get to do while we’re parenting babies.
I really, really envy those who have just gotten married at 26 or 27. Your late twenties stretch out languidly before you. You have a few years to spend nestled in the secure space of two. Just two. I am terrified of no longer being two. I am terrified of having everything change. I am, even though everybody says it’s not so bad, and that really, it’s quite wonderful after all. I know this, logically, but my heart wants to fight against it. I want to protect myself and my partner from intrusions.
I nearly had a panic attack the other day when I realized that, if we go through with this baby shit, there very likely won’t be another Portland. As in, there won’t ever be another vacation like the one we just took. Another vacation where we wander from restaurant to bar to restaurant to bar again, completely by whim and completely at our own leisure. And while I know that we could still, logically, partake of delicious vacation food and drinks post-children, children have special needs and routines and food requests and sudden tantrums, plus they’re not even allowed in bars. Some of them, anyway. They will probably look at us askance, for example, if we try to drag children into those speakeasy-type bars where the bartenders are all wearing bowler hats.
Or maybe I won’t even LIKE bars anymore after having babies, maybe I’ll just want to stay in all day and watch Dora the Explorer until we all pass out at 6:00 pm, and suddenly I’ll be driving a white 1998 Dodge Caravan and I’ll have this burning desire to decorate my house with inspirational country angels and I’ll have a Wal-Mart credit card and I’ll insist on being taken to Golden Corral for my birthday dinners. I’M ACTUALLY PRETTY SURE THIS IS WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN IF I GET PREGNANT. IT’S A SLIPPERY SLOPE, YA’LL.
Ugh. I don’t like this, and in the end I don’t know what to do. I’m totally stressing over the upcoming Final Year Of My Life. I feel like if we’re going to do this thing, we have to do it pretty much now. I feel like I can’t just “relax” and “see what happens.” Because if I haven’t gotten pregnant in ten years of birth control, it’s unlikely to suddenly happen NOW. And I’m not going to go OFF birth control and “see what happens” because then that’s essentially the same as saying YES LET’S HAVE A FUCKING BABY, and I could end up pregnant by next fucking month, and THEN where will we be? Am I ready for that? Are we ready for that? Is our bank account ready for that?
[NO. ALSO IT PROBABLY NEVER WILL BE, SO…]
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha wheeeeeeeeeee!
Are you thinking about babies? Are you thinking about deleting my blog from your reader because I wrote a post about babies? TELL ME ABOUT IT.
P.S. I promise you guys, if I do get knocked up, I will try my level best to be the funniest, most irreverent mommyblogger I can be.
1 A cross between “baby” and “puppy.” I know. I know.
Definitely don’t hate you for this. I have no doubt that you having kids would mean that bourbon was brought back for teething (did it ever leave?) in the best possible way.
I call kids buppy! I get weird looks.
And sometimes I miss the unreliable birth control of yore, because then your decision was made for you! And you didn’t have the ability to control everything to the point that you became neurotic! (It’s not just me, right?)
SING IT, SISTER. I am on that crazy train. We have a ‘5 years from now’ plan which gives space, but still…five years older!!!!
I too suffer from the ‘my life ends when parenthood begins’ syndrome.
We keep using the excuse that we are just living here, in a different country from either of our families, for a few years, then we will start our life. Meanwhile six years later and we have renewed our residency visa again. Perhaps it is time to bit the bullet…..
alkcn***ueihnc8ncuob874hkfjn##auggc!!!!!
aaahahahaha oh thank you. this is not me exactly, because I totally have the baby-crazy, but I still have the timing crazy too, and the millennial neuroses. just the fact that we call ourselves neurotic is so.. millennial. heh. check out this series on zan’s blog if you want to hear how many of us are thinking about babies and feeling crazy over it: http://oversized-cliches.blogspot.com/search/label/infant%20inquiries keep talking about it! I’m definitely looking forward to your hilarious take on pregnancy and parenthood, when/if that time comes.
Ooh, thanks for the link. I had not been introduced to Zan’s blog or this blog tag, and it will be incredibly insightful.
Hahaha, when we got married our pretend timeline was “five years”. Then, a year later, we’re still saying “five years.” Reducing it to four years seemed too much like an actual countdown, which was panic inducing. We’re going straight from “five years” to pregged.
Some of my friends, people my age, are done having kids. They have all the kids they will ever have. These kids are now in public school. My mind is constantly blown by this fact.
We’re neurotic messes but I think I choose that over not having choices any day. Choosing is good. And as much as it’s making you neurotic right now, maybe a time line is good too. It keeps babies sort of front and center (without crying in your house) and will let you make an even better decision when you reach the “go off birth control” moment.
P.S. You will be forgiven for writing about babies. But DEFINITELY don’t apologize for this post. It’s good to hear from someone else who doesn’t have a biological clock and to realize that lead a range of choices 1) no babies, 2) wait and see, or 3) plan for babies.
a) I like lists.
2) If age had nothing to do with it, I’d be happy to push this baby business off for another four, five, six years. However. 30 is around the corner. And while I don’t think 30 is old by any stretch of the imagination, I do want to be a young parent. More energy, more time with your kids (and as you mentioned, more time after they get out of the house), and, let’s face it, your body recovers better post-pregnancy the younger you are. (And I don’t just mean aesthetically.) So the time is upon us. Himself made some reference to maybe the end of next year. I kind of freaked out, even though IT MAKES SENSE. I find the whole damn thing mildly terrifying.
z) Yes. We all think WAY too much. We’ve got the luxury, the time, of thinking. That’s not to say that previous generations didn’t wish for that luxury, or that time. But sometimes it’s crippling. Who the fuck cares! Preserves are good! Jam is good! Turns out, we ARE ready for this jelly. We need to grab it and head to the checkout counter. No returns, no refunds. (I’m not saying that I CAN do this. I am the chronic overthinker. Sometimes, however, I wish I could slap the eff out of myself and send myself up to the register.)
This kind of made my head explode.
get. out. of. my. head.
30 going on 31 in november. just this weekend made the firm “in one year decision”. mind officially blown.
YIPES! We made ours this past weekend too… Sunday, in fact. Hello, decision-twin! When’s your November birthday? Mine’s the 23rd.
its the 27th and we decided on sunday too! decision-twins indeed.
I have a medical allergy to children. Ain’t enough Claritin in the world to fix that.
LOLS
Your conversation with your mother sounds exactly like the one I had with mine. I pretty much just stared at her for five minutes while I contemplated that my mother didn’t agonize over when it would work, or how it would work, etc. etc. Oh the choices.
I had the same conversation with my mom only it was about marriage. When I asked her if she was scared or nervous she said, “no I just did it”. Insanity! Also I wish I could have just an inclining of that calm insanity.
I was feeling all of those same, exact things! And then one night we got drunk and we were like “yeah, let’s DO this!” and . . . that was in April. My body, seriously, stopped ovulating in that instant or something. Meaning, I have not had my period since April thus making it impossible for me to get pregnant. At times it’s infuriating and depressing and other times it’s a relief. Like the very LAST thing I want to do is go the whole fertility treatment route. Absolutely no way. So now I’m just thinking that it will happen when it’s supposed to happen, or it just won’t happen. The decision is made for me, I guess. Even though it still pisses me off sometimes. I want my decision back!
Lyn. I’m so disappointed in you, really. When every other wedding blog I followed started to go all “Baby? Baby. Baby!” on me, you were the lone reed of tequila-tinted where-should-we-live? selfish-preservation I turned to.
AND NOW THIS. THE BABY QUESTION POST. I AM SO DISAPPOINTED.
Sigh. You know I’m kidding, right? Well, 95% of me is kidding. The other 5% of me isn’t sure.
But to the point…I got married at 27. And you bet your ass in 5 years I’ll be making this same kind of list. It’s like anything in life – the more time to plan = the more time to leaf-blow all that craziness into the future.
I want to be your lone reed of tequila. Actually, that sounds amazing. Let’s get some hollow reeds and drink tequila through them. I AM CERTAIN THAT WILL END WELL.
So can I just say, I like that you put all the rambling thoughts, pros and cons, all of it down into one post. I’m not married yet but will be soon and I have a huge tendency to overthink things so it’s helpful to know I’m not alone in turning the question of “babies? if so when?” over and over in my head.
No hating here. For my money, I think women especially need to want it. However different the world is now, inevitably being a mother is harder – the guilt, the judgement, the chores, the freaking everything. So if we’re going to get impregnated I think we should really want it.
By this, of course I mean *I*.
But what do I know? I don’t have children myself and I can’t speak with the wisdom of the other side.
Whatever you decide, I hope you keep telling us bits.
That is SO MUCH of my struggle. “If I’m not 100% sure that I want this, why am I even going on about whether or not to do it?”
I… can’t really answer that.
If I had an answer to that I reckon we wouldn’t worry so much. I honestly reckon that this anxiety makes it so much worse.
“Are you thinking about deleting my blog from your reader because I wrote a post about babies?”
Deleted! Okay, just kidding. But it does kinda-sorta surprise me that a lot of women I know (mostly IRL) are pretty “meh” about baby-having… yet they almost all assume they’ll do it eventually, that it will either become more appealing (at least to one of them) or they’ll just suck it up and become parents. The opting-out option is mostly glossed over, as if it isn’t REALLY a valid option.
Sorry, that’s just my own insecurity flaring up, I guess. 😉
That’s a really interesting point: that opting-out isn’t seen as an option. I think it was, for us, but we were thrown for a loop by the whole percentages thing: in truth, slightly more of us wants to go ahead with it than the slightly less that doesn’t. So, does that mean… yes? And the pressure of age has been wearing on me in ways that I don’t think would happen at all if we were currently in our 20s.
THAT SAID. I’m turning what you said over in my head. We agreed that if we tried it and it didn’t work — for some reason, we didn’t get pregnant — we’d shrug and go on about our lives. I don’t know that it would be easy, though. For me, from my perch on this fence, saying no is about as hard a decision as saying yes.
Also I do think I’d be vastly relieved to never have to go through pregnancy.
The social pressures, though… boy howdy.
Definitely get the percentages thing – I think more people are % for + % against than admit it, though obviously the amounts vary.
We’re more like 70% against, 30% for-ish…or maybe that’s 30% worried we’ll regret not doing it. Which means we aren’t… probably… right? About the only thing we know for certain is that, if we were found to be infertile, we would NOT take measures to adopt or do infertility treatments… which seemed like a pretty big sign (for us) that we don’t want kids THAT much. But it’s really confusing. One minute I have a strong gut feeling and the next day it’s done a 180.
And then you have those helpful people (not *entirely* meant with sarcasm ;)) who somehow end up having kids and loving it, despite never really wanting them in the first place. Or vice versa. It’s enough to make anyone’s head spin.
Though as much as I bitch about it, I’m glad I have options.
For us too — I needed to be sure that if, for whatever reason, we never had children and it was just the two of us forever and ever amen, that we would be happy with that. Once we decided that we were, I felt as if I could breathe a little bit better. Still watching the clock, though.
Are you inside my brain? Because if I was going to write a post about having babies – it would be exactly this. My hubs and I are both 29, although not old, are teetering on that cusp of “we need to start THINKING about procreating if we want more than 1 kid b/c I don’t want to be 40 and pregnant.”
But then – we really like sitting on the couch and watching TV at our leisure. And going to flea markets at our leisure. And not scheduling our weekends around nap time.
On the other hand, my sister is 26, got married over Christmas, and is currently 8 weeks preg. For them, the decision was easy. For us, we like drinking beer and doing what we want whenever we want.
Have you read Taking Charge Of Your Fertility? READ IT! It great even if you’re not trying. It gives you all the info on natural birth control too so that if you want to come off the pill, but you’re not ready to get pregnant then you can understand exactly whats going on with your body and your cycle and how to control everything. It’s a fabulous book for control freaks.
Also you’re crazy but so funny about it. Also this post is so right on.
Excellent tip, lady. I actually have an Amazon order in the works and I’m adding this to my cart. Even though I’m slightly panicking that buying a book about fertility will mean I will HAVE to get pregnant.
One thing I’ve learned: people will accept crazy as long as you’re funny as well. Otherwise they just look very concerned.
Oooh, are we recommending books? Someone recommended Maybe Baby: 28 Writers Tell the Truth About Skepticism, Infertility, Baby Lust, Childlessness, Ambivalence, and How They Made the Biggest Decision of Their Lives, which I’ve added to my to-read list. Not sure how good it is, but we’ll seeee . . .
I am 31 and just got married this summer and now I will cry in the corner bc you and I are in the exact same spot except I’m a whole year older which is like a lifetime at this point. My new husband wants to be out of debt and not renting before we have kids. Out of debt AND not renting! Which means we are going to be like 80 when we send little Timmy off to Kindergarten and will never get to enjoy retirement. And if the NY Times publishes one more artivle about shrivelled ovaries at 35 and no, women, plastic surgery and yoga and wearing sunscreen does NOT extend your fertility, I am just going to curl up in a ball until there is some sort of immaculate conception.
Oh lady. I am there with you, except 3 years ahead, and we know we want kids, but it doesn’t make it any less scary. And the knowing part, that came late too, somewhere in my early 30s. I don’t even like kids. I’m the 3rd of 5 kids and my mom ran a preschool when I was younger, so, I know kids, but I figure I’ll like mine right. RIGHT?! I’m actually wary of those folks who aren’t scared at all.
One of things that has made it less scary is watching my best friend do it first. She has a 3 and a 1 year old and they’re awesome and, even better, she hasn’t really changed. Sure, she’s more tired, but she’s still her own person. She and her husband also still travel (sans kids, that’s what grandparents are for). It’s not grand trips like they used to take, but rather short jaunts, but they do it. That doesn’t have to be your last Portland-like trip. They also travel with their kids too. Both kids had passports before they turned 1 (her husband has family in France).
If you’re looking for some online, non scary “mommy” type bloggers, I reccommend Sweet Fine Day. Jenna is a gifted writer and I like how honest she is about what it’s like having 2 little kids. She also takes gorgeous photographs.
So this is long! One last thing (and I hope I’m not overstepping by saying this). If you’re set on your time frame, you might want to think about stopping birth control sooner. I was on birth control for 14 years and what no one ever told me is it can take months (for some people years) for your body to start producing a real, normal cycle again. I had no idea this was a thing and had second hand examples of people getting knocked up right away but, according to my doctor, it’s pretty common.
I feel badly for saying this, but this post made me laugh out loud with glee. It’s such a good feeling when you realise that you’re not alone.
Good luck with your decision either way. Although, goodness yes. I wish I could stop thinking about shit and just roll with the punches for 5 minutes sometimes.
So many thoughts. Too many to post as a comment right now, so I’ll just leave you with this:
I’m 26. We got married 3 months ago. It really doesn’t feel any less worrisome, timeline wise. I keep thinking, well if I had just gotten married at 22 this would be so much easier! Except I totally know that it wouldn’t. So you know, there’s that I guess.
1. I want you to be a mommyblogger because you would be so fantastic.
2. I am not a kid person, less a baby person. I haven’t been alone with a child in greater than 10 years. Maybe 15. Shit. Though, I wasn’t a dog person until I had a dog. I am banking on the same being true with a kid. That and the oxytocin.
3. I got married at 32 and it runied the timeline that I had in my head.
4. Pregnant and miscarried at 33. I decided I really did want a kid then. It really did take that to make me sure.
5. Then again, I am not totally sure. Good thing baby isn’t coming for 2 weeks. I have time.
6. I am pretty sure that the older you get the more realistic you are about kids. Probably hurts the cause.
7. I also grunt when lifting myself off of the couch. Before pregnancy and now 100x worse.
8. We also mostly just figured we wanted to be parents and have a kid. So we needed to have a kid to do this.
9. We started to take a few trips in the last and final year. I felt the same way. We always stayed at places that didn’t allow kids and drank a lot.
10. I have no advice.
Oh, Meghan. The fact that you are not a kid person but are two weeks away from HAVING one makes me feel a million percent better. Is it weird that when I think about having kids, I think about when they’re babies and all cute and stuff, then the next bit I’m really interested in is when they’re like my age and have the relationship I have with my mum? Because babies aren’t babies for ever, and (I really bloody hope) you don’t have to like kids to like your *own* kids.
As for timing… gah. Too hard. Lyn, please just decide for me. Thanks.
Meghan, I’m pretty sure that if i ever have a kid, I will need you to come move in with us for a while. Like, from the day I take the pregnancy test until it turns 18.
I hope you’re free.
I’m with Kerry and Kirsty on this one. You are my heroine.
ALSO: I love your no advice. Let’s all have no advice together!
Agreed. How awesome is it to see yourself, your own thoughts and fears and freakout reflected in other smart women, all over the freaking place.
God bless the interwebz.
So I loved this post and all its comments. I’m 27 and we’re vaguely planning to start trying for kids when my IUD’s five years (although they really last longer than that) are up, which will be when I’m around 30 or 31. I can’t remember. And even with that wonderful envy-inducing buffer of time, I still feel this bizarre pressure to get my ya yas out before it is time for babies.
I also worry that when Collin and I move away from Pittsburgh and I don’t have my forever-young friendgroup to arrest my adolescence, I will want babies IMMEDIATELY but not really be ready for them in a $$ and responsibility kind of way.
We got married and decided that we’d do two more big vacations before kids. And that our honeymoon in St. Lucia didn’t count. So we went to Europe for 3.5 weeks. And then a month later my husband announced, many rum and cokes in, that he didn’t want to wait that long. And then I almost drove in to a snow bank. (True story.) And we waited 7 more months and now? Well, uh, I’m excited to have small kids in a few years, but the baby phase that I’ll be dealing with next spring really under-excites me.
As somone expecting, I think it’s okay to not be thrilled at everything. I know I want kids, but I love my life SO MUCH right now it’s been hard to say goodbye to the idea of 3 week whim vacations. To sleeping in and going to Seattle for a weekend for fun and getting drunk on Saturday night for fun. But… I want to raise children, and I’m turning 30, and um, here we are. I love my life, but I know that by the time I’m “ready” to have kids I’ll be 47 and it will be too late. And I’d probably be dead by the time they are grown ups, and that would be sad. And so we leap, and now we’ll see.
This post made me swoon so hard for you.
I so relate to most everything you said in this post. Except we are both older… and we are not far enough along in our thought process to have a timeline. So complicated…. Sigh.
Back with another thought! One of my best friends got pregnant accidentally right after her wedding and while she wouldn’t have planned it that way, she’s happy with how it turned out. She’s much more stressed trying to plan the second one than she was dealing with the unexpected pregnancy. Choices, man. Then if it all goes tits up, it feels like your fault.
I get married in less than 3 months… And three weeks after the wedding I turn 30. So… I totally echo all sentiments. I just don’t know. I also have no advice but I thought you might like to know of another person feeling the same!
So you know where I’m at on all this.
I don’t think there are any hard-fast rules here, just personal preferences.
And 31? Girl, you’ve got time. Trust me. TRUST ME.
But but but but but but but if I wanna be done by 35, then I have to start, like, YESTERDAY. This terrifies the shit out of me.
We are taking a last-hurrah trip to Cambodia in 2013 when I’ve just turned 33. Immediately after that, baby-making commences. And yet, each day closer to 2013 scares the bejezus out of me. I want kids less and less. My biological clock is NOT ticking at all and I’m scared as hell about the loss of autonomy, my happy couple life, and sleep. But, well, my percentages are yours and have been slowly shifting away from baby-desire. Jason’s percentages are 100% yes on Baby. It seems we’re having a baby and I’m the only one slightly horrified by it. But not horrified enough to run out on this marriage (which is essentially what would happen if I said no to a baby.)
So yeah, complicated. But I also hope that I can build a happy life with them and raise the munchkins really well with lots of culture, nature, and a healthy appreciation for reality and laughter. And I’m also counting on lots of dinner parties/communal babysitting to keep my social life going. And I refuse to become a boring helicopter parent. I will put my marriage before my kids because I’m convinced it makes me a better mother in the end. Is we’re sharing books, “Bad Mother” is a great one on that topic:
http://ayeletwaldman.com/books/bad.html
I take faith in the idea that “motherhood” isn’t some monolithic experience. I can define a life that works for me, damn the PTA mothers’ dirty looks and judgment.
I relate to so much of this. I’ve always been the ambivalent one. My husband has always been 100% yes. Now that we are serious about this, though, I’m surprised that my ambivalence is gone. It seems, once I’ve decided to do a thing, it damn well better happen (preferably on my time schedule). I perhaps have control issues. 🙂
Bad Mother is a great book. I was blown away by the hate she got from it. I am terrified of the Mom judgement mainly because I know I don’t have it in me to live up to the selfless ideal. I don’t know if you follow Daily Worth but this (http://www.dailyworth.com/posts/839-How-a-Very-Newly-Single-Mom-Rethinks-Spending) is what I’m talking about. The comments made me want to stab something. Are we really meant to lay down our lives and goals and self at the alter of baby? It’s not that I think it’s wrong if someone wants to, it’s just that I can’t ever foresee being one who wants to.
Thank you thank you thank you for writing all of these things out that I’ve been thinking. The thought of babies terrifies me, but for some reason I feel like it’s in my future.
don’t… just don’t. i’ve been plagued with the baby talk since when i was ENGAGED.
earlier this summer, the husband agreed to let me take on an internship because i promised ‘babymaking’ after it, when i actually would have time to be home. although i’m not ready to give up alcohol/coffee/sushi/didiimentionALCOHOL. i kinda ‘let him’ have sex with me when i’m not really ovulating-ish okayfinethatwaskindaTMI. just because i am not ready for this whole new commitment when i just signed my life away, like, a year ago. no.
point is: it’ll happen when it’ll happen. which hopefully means i will no longer feel a need for a beer or an ‘out time’ once there’s an itty bitty person IN MAH BELLY.
I read the later post before I read this one, and have to say WORD to all of this one too!