...and that's a magic number

Getting here

For almost my entire life, I have known I wanted to be a mom. I say "almost" because there were a few years of ambivalence. I am inherently selfish. I like my alone time, I like sleeping in on the weekends, I certainly enjoy the freedoms that being child-free afford:

Freedom to spend disposable income on meaningless-to-anyone-but-me stuff.

Freedom to "pick up and go" on a moment's notice.

Freedom to just be whoever and however I want to be, no matter how crabby or selfish or bitchy or anti-social or lazy that might be at any given moment, without fear of how that would affect my progeny.

But fearful as I may be about any loss of freedoms, perceived or actual, I've come to discover that I fear being forever child-free more.

Who needs another pair of $15 Payless shoes when I can buy something fun for baby (like $10 Payless baby shoes!), or even squirrel that money away for school-related expenses? Who says you can't pick up and go - isn't that what car seats and diaper bags are for? Who says that having a baby won't fill me with such joy and wonder that maybe I won't be as crabby as I would previously like to have been?

Okay, maybe that last one is a bit of a pipe dream. Everyone has bad days. As much as nobody wants to admit it, I've been assured by all of my childed friends that yes, there are indeed days where you want to hurl the screaming mass of quivering flesh out the window and have lunch with your friends... or even just yourself. Or maybe not even lunch. Just something quiet and non-demanding.

But then I stop and think... for me, there has to be more to life than buying things and sleeping late and being anti-social. Some people prefer to remain child-free, but I don't think I'm cut out for that life. I understand it, and I respect it, and I think that if you're of sound enough mind to realize that it's right for you, more power to you - there are too many unwanted babies born today for wrong reasons. Some sense of familial obligation... thinking it's somehow selfish to not have children... fear that you'll forever mess up your life by not taking "the next logical step." If you know that you're not parent material, by all means, don't have kids. And for a few years, I wasn't sure if I was parent material.

But watching so many of my friends and coworkers become parents, I've realized... I'm not child-free material.

The ultimate decision to actively try to become a mother is the end of a journey I started a few years ago when I first started thinking that having a kid might not be for me. But as cliched as this may sounds, it's also the beginning of the rest of my life.

I have never been more at peace with a decision I've made than this one.

posted by kat at 5:16 PM