I don’t know if it’s the crazy dream I had the other night (I was four months pregnant and escaping a soul-stealing joker), but lately I haven’t been able to get my mind off of mommyhood. Maybe it’s that the warm weather exposes more swollen bellies than winter coats allow, or the girl in my office who was due yesterday. Or maybe it’s that I’m getting married, and that seems the next logical question to answer. I just can’t shake it this week.
So I devoted this morning’s bus ride into work to seriously exploring what I thought. I put together all the snippets of related subject matter thought dancing around in my brain’s “opinion” file section. I weighed it against what advice my parents and grandma gave me when we announced our engagement, and what fiancé thinks. I’m not sure where I stand, but here are the contending pieces of information.
One, I have always thought it would be wonderful to have kids young. Even before I had the security of a man to legitimize long-term baby plans. I like the idea of having my brood, running around with them, grounding them, and dressing them up, and then having a whole second half of life to enjoy afterwards. I have loose plans to go to law school before age 50, and I’d like to stick with them, but not without having kids born and bred and able to stand on their own two (god willing) feet. Aside from that more selfish reason, I like the idea of having kids when I am still able to remember how cool Saturday morning cartoons are, and am still physically able to have a baby on one hip, a knapsack slung over my shoulder, holding the hand of another little one as I transport the family unit around on my own two young-ish legs.
I’ve heard from women in their late twenties and early thirties (and most recently, Drew Barrymore), talk about their biological clock ticking. I don’t want to have babies at a point where I’m rushing against the clock- I have enough deadlines otherwise. But in the same way that these women revert to that goal after achieving some other ones, I feel like I’m in a good place and would be very happy to have kids. I have a career and direction, and I wholly believe it can be continued with kids in tow. Who’s to know if I’m writing in a cubicle or writing in a kitchen with kid throw up all over me? It’s writing…I’m not worried about that changing if I take a break to incubate and pop out kids. Typing will still be typing and my words will still be my words.
My mum and dad and grama advised me to wait, after I get married, to think about kids. They say I should travel, “be married” and do “me” things first. I can see the merit, but as much as I try to convince myself otherwise, I still can’t shake it. I would love, love, love to have kids soon(ish). I love living with the fiancé, and we have plans to travel in a non-exotic way, plus the wedding will be approaching our seven years of togetherness anniversary. We have a whole year and a bit before the wedding to experience domesticity sans offspring, and then there’s still the incubational nine months if I’m even lucky enough to get pregnant right away. I guess this carpe diem twentysomething just doesn’t like the idea of waiting for the sake of it, when everything I feel (and fiancé too) seems to say “do it now!” (And by now I don’t mean this evening, I mean after the wedding-ish). (Ish is my way of not boxing myself in with timelines, which are sometimes silly).
Does this sound like I’ve made up my mind? Yeah, I guess it’s heading that way. But still, “time will tell…”