The decision to have children..or not

I wasn't really the marrying kind either, Heeven. Mr. B and I had been together for so long our families gave up trying to get us married. Then one day it just made too much legal and financial sense for us go ahead with it. Romantic, huh?

You sexy bitch!

Yikes, I thought that would be edited. Didn't think the censor would let that through!


But you are ....

Are you scared because you are older and wiser? You realize that children are a big responsibility? Then being scared is not a bad thing - it means you are taking this responsibility seriously. I think learning the facts may help you out a bit.

Ohmygosh. That's so gay!

Let's not get those rumors started again!

When I worked for a big company that I unaffectionatly called The Sororrity House rumor was that I was gay. I think it must have been because I didn't have any kids and didn't call my husband 20 times a day.

I loved being the "gay girl" because it kept all those bubble-heads at a distance.

Sorry for the digression...... just had to get that off my chest.

I was born without the "mommy gene". I also born without the "I want a big wedding complete with big pouffy dress gene". I'm glad my friends and family have children, and my two nieces lived with me for awhile, but otherwise my husband and I have decided to stick with dogs. I think being a good parent is really hard and I'm in awe of people who get it right, or even partially right.

I too am missing the maternal gene, and by God I'm missing the big wedding one too!

Have never wanted a child a minute of my life. If I had one I'd have been a terrible mother, and ended up on the 6 o'clock news for something horrendous.

Has nothing to do with liking or not liking them, I am, on the whole, unaware of their existance. Unless that is, if they are actually in my presence and are making noise. Even then, unless it is a bad noise, I don't pay attention.

If they are quiet, I forget they are there, and am apt to look up and think, "Oh my God, that child is still there"




Aidan, I have a serious question for you, something I've heard mothers say, but cannot fathom....



What exactly made that the happiest time of your life?

Was it the happiest time in spite of the lugging bags of diapers while pooped (both you and the diapers)? Or were those work tasks part of being happy?

When you, or anyone for that matter says, "I love/like babies" to the point where you want one, what is it exactly you are loving or liking?

Is it the way a baby looks?
Or what it does?
Or are you imagining what he's thinking?
The desire to raise a productive member of society?
Wanting to be physically near a baby for hours and hours (and hours and hours) even when you really are incapable at some time of physically carrying it off, like when you're sick, etc?

Oh, I know one could say "all of the above, and more", but each person must have some one thing that stands out.

What is it?

If you're missing the maternal gene Chai and can't fathom where the other mothers are coming from, I doubt you'll get aidan either.

It's not that I want to "get" you or anyone else.

I could describe to someone who doesn't like to take walks in the woods why it is I love it.

They may not "get" it, but I can give them particulars, and they would then know the facts of why I like it.

Just wondering what the actual appealing aspects are, and asking someone to name a few. I'm honestly curious.

I emphatically did not want any children from the time I was a teenager until I was in my early 30s. I was absolutely certain. I was also in a disastrous first marriage from the age of 19 to 24, with a husband who came from a miserable family background and was so dead certain he didn't want kids that he had a vasectomy at the age of 26. I was shocked, but he was right. He would have been a terrible father. So I was glad he'd made the decision for us. The LAST thing I wanted was a child with him. YIKES!!!

Then, suddenly and blessedly, I was divorced. The whole world opened up to me again. I had a future that wasn't going to be filled with misery! I was SO happy I hadn't had a child, because that meant I would never be forced to deal with my ex again. A few years later, I met a great guy and we eventually married. Things were finally happy and stable. But I still couldn't imagine ever wanting children. It was enough that I had a great husband.

Then, slowly, I began to think about our future. One day I realized that we'd been married for five whole years, and if we didn't have children, we'd probably have another 40 or more years of essentially the same life together. That is a loooooooooong time!

The thing is, spending 20 or so years raising a child looks like a lifetime when you're in your 20s. But by the time you're in your mid-30s, 20 years doesn't look all that long. You're still going to have plenty of years alone left after they grow up.

It occurred to me that I wasn't sure I wanted to spend the whole rest of my life never being part of a family again. And by that age, I had finally figured out that I could do things on my own terms. Having a child didn't mean my life would be like my mother's. Not at all! I could finally visualize doing it differently, in a way that would work for me...for us. And really, this guy would be a terrific father. A kid couldn't ask for more.

And so the psychological reversal began. I began to be curious about pregnancy...the whole "creating a new person" thing. I thought I might be cheating myself if I didn't allow myself to experience this at least once in my lifetime. After all, there really isn't another life experience anything like it. Everything I'd accomplished seemed like fluff in comparison.

So we started talking about it, and decided we definitely should do it. We were scared, thrilled, anxious, excited, and about a hundred other emotions. But we were going to do it!

Uh. Maybe not.

A few months passed, and I still wasn't pregnant. A year passed, and still nothing. We were tested and found out we had infertility problems. We started treatments. I finally got pregnant! Then I had a miscarriage. A year later, I managed to get pregnant a second time! Then I had another miscarriage.

At this point, they told us the next step would cost us $10,000 out of pocket (no insurance would cover it), and would have only a 5% chance of generating a pregnancy...never mind our chances for a successful birth. On our own, they said, we had about a 2% chance. Highly unlikely.

So we went home and talked. We were tired of the whole rigamarole, and investing in further treatment didn't seem like a good bet. I mean, the idea was NOT to have a child and be poor!!! So...we decided to forget about this brilliant idea to have a child. We had been perfectly happy before we thought of it. We could be perfectly happy without one.

And so, we resumed our normal lives. And we were happy. After all, we had a great life.

Three years later, out of the blue, I got pregnant. It was strictly against the odds, and our doctor was frankly amazed. Not as amazed as we were, though! The pregnancy was good, and I felt marvelous. This was a minor miracle (okay, a major one for me), and I felt miraculous every single day of it. Nothing I had ever imaged even came close to the reality of it. I had a new reason to wake up in the morning, to eat breakfast, to go for a walk, to work, to do...everything.

SonofEva is an amazing creation. For fourteen years so far, I have watched him explore and dream and grow and get sick and cry and pick at his food and bang his head and create and learn and empty my bankbook and get filthy and grin at me, and I still cannot believe it. I did that. Me!

If I never did another thing in my life, this....THIS...was worth it.

Moving post, (((Eva))).

[quote="Eva"]If I never did another thing in my life, this....THIS...was worth it.[/quote]

My son is only 20 months old, but I feel the same way!

This is a new life, part of me, and part of my husband.
He has my looks, my hair, and my stubbornness already starting to show.
But at the same time, he is not me, and he is not my husband.
He is himself, his own personality, his own life, very special!

I never thought I could love anybody like that, so unconditionally!

@mushypancakes: you have no need to pressure yourself.
You are only 28. You have another 10 years to have a child, or even to decide whether you do.
Do you get the feeling, your partner can only be happy with you, if you end up having children?
I hope not.
I hope he gives you the time and space you need to make that decision and sticks with you no matter what.
I think mine would have!

Chai, you and Mr. Tea seem to have a good, loving relationship. While there are of course a lot of differences between romantic love and love for one's children, there are some parallels too, so I'll see if I can describe it in those terms.

Imagine that you haven't seen Mr. Tea in a while and you're really missing him. You go to a train station to meet him. You scan the crowd -- not him, not him, not him. Then all of a sudden, right up close, there he is. You see his face, and he smiles at you.

How do you feel right then?

I think it's pretty similar to how a parent feels when you see your child. Only it's even more intense/ more common -- it's not just when you haven't seen them for a long time.

Seeing your baby's face -- just the face, just looking at it -- is an endorphin factory. Then when you start factoring in your baby reaching for you because nobody else will do and then settling in happily like there's no place in the world she'd rather be; smiling at you with this blissful grin, because of something you've done to make her happy; doing all of these amazing things (and yes, the definition of "amazing" gets stretched when you're a new parent, but that's all part of the endorphin factory...) for the first time...

Even if nature has supplied all of these endorphins so you don't say "this crying and pooping is driving me crazy, I'm out of here," the endorphins are pretty powerful.

I remember when I was at a meeting when sozlet was a baby and my arms were just aching. There was this physical feeling of bereftness that was only assuaged when I got home and picked her up and held her for a while.

I don't know if that was endorphin withdrawal, or simple bonding, or what. And endorphins aside, there is a lot that is amazing about the experience, I think. Like, the first time I saw sozlet -- immediately after she was born -- she was flaring her nostrils in a way that looked EXACTLY like my grandma. Whether it was because I was high or not, so much about her seemed touching and amazing.

Aha!

Now that makes a lot of sense Soz...thanks.

Excellent posts! All so true.

I have two children. I never viewed them as mine. They were a gift, a wonderful gift, and I felt so amazingly awed that god/mother nature/ whatever would find me worthy.

It's like walking into a brand new classroom and seeing a blank, perfectly clean, never touched blackboard. You hold a box of chalk in your hands.

Where do you start?

Should you open the box of chalk at all?

What should you draw?

Whatever your decision, you find yourself standing back and looking at the blank slate and seeing that it is not blank at all and it magically begins to create its own masterpiece, incorporating any powdery lines you may make into its picture.

Cool, glad that made sense to you, Chai.

And thanks for further details, mushy.

Speaking for myself, if I'd waited until there was no ambivalence I don't think I would have ever had a kid. (I was deeply ambivalent all the way through, including endorphin highs once she was born alternating with "oh my god what have I done??!" freakouts. That faded after a month or so.) The problem is that the flip side of that isn't useful -- if you go ahead when you're ambivalent, that may well be the wrong decision. Just kind of have to hash it out individually.

I agree that you have time. I chose "before 30" kind of arbitrarily, and my living situation and preferences caused constraints. (As in, I was moving at age 29 and wanted to have a baby in familiar environs, so I thought that meant having a baby before I moved, or else then waiting another couple of years AFTER moving to allow new place became familiar.)

And when my baby nursed and went to sleep in my arms, her scalp would sweat and the babysmell of good clean HER would be so strong. I swear, it should be an air freshener, except every mother's baby smells different.

Chai, I didn't want children either. I was talked into it by a wonderful guy who said he'd be there forever (and then died when I was eight months pregnant). When Babygirl was born they showed her to me and I fell in love. Then I learned about the sight, the smell (the good smell), the little smiles -- I was seriously hooked on the high that was my Girl.

Yeah, it's frustrating. And tiring. And sometimes stultifyng. For years, my line was, "I'm a single parent -- of course I don't get enough sleep!"

She's eighteen now, and managing her own life. Bless her -- I'm very proud.

I love how this thread has developed! Thank you for sharing all this sweet stuff.

It's reassuring that others are saying I still have time to decide. Good. That's what I thought, but then, sometimes this issue presses more heavily than usual.

All food for thought.

nice thread...

I don't want kids. I'm too self-centered, I'd rather travel and have the freedom to do what I want, when I want....and I don't want to have to be legally tied down to one person(or two, including the kid). To me, the odds of really being happy in a marriage with kids is so miniscule, why bother trying, when it doesn't work out the woman walks away with part of my paycheck? If 50% of marriages end in divorce, how many of the other half are actually happy? F**k, I have friends who have been married for just a few years or less, and I can tell it's not "bliss" for them. Plus I don't want to try to stay with someone just because there are kids involved.

No problem with a long-term monogamous relationship, but I want to be able to just walk away if it doesn't work out, without having lawyers and my money get involved. And I'm not religious, so I think that whole part of it is a sham.