Baby Talk
I’ve been thinking about babies a lot recently. Whether I want them or don’t. I still haven’t come to a decision, but it’s gotten me thinking. One of the reasons I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately is because I have family and friends that are looking at me like okay any time now, it’s your turn to have babies. No, it’s really not. Just because I’m married now doesn’t mean I’m going to start popping out kids immediately. It’s not the 50’s anymore. I’ve also never been one to have that motherly instinct. Although, in my friend groups growing up I was always the ‘mom friend,’ not that that has much to do with anything. People have told me that I’d make a good mom because of the way I nurture my friends, but they’re my age, they aren’t babies. I’ve also never been much of a baby person. I don’t like dealing with diapers and drool and all that. However, growing up I always saw myself having kids in the future.
People don’t know if my husband and I have been trying to have kids or not. What if we’re struggling to have kids? I know we just got married, but what if down the line we struggle to have kids? That’s another reason I hate the ‘when are you having babies?’ question. No one knows our personal lives, except maybe our close family and friends. More and more people are talking about how they are struggling to have kids and there’s nothing wrong with that. We need to talk about that more, along with women dealing with miscarriages. And people need to be more sensitive to that. It’s not always easy for people to get pregnant.
I’ve never felt the pull to become a mom. I love my niece and nephew, but I can give them back. I do feel a connection to them, and I want the best for them, but they’re not my kids. When it comes to yelling at them or being stern, I try to leave that up to my brother or sister in law. And when they were little, I was always more like this: Oh, they have a poopy diaper? Nope someone else’s problem. The minute I become a mom that becomes my problem. I don’t want that yet. I’m not ready for that. I still want to be able to hand them off to whoever they belong to.
I’m also not a baby person. The fact that you have to hold their head whenever you hold them for the first couple months terrifies me. I don’t like that newborn stage at all. I’m always afraid I’m going to drop them or just break them somehow. They say that your instinct changes when it’s your own kid, but what if it doesn’t change for me? What if I’m just as terrified? There are so many what if’s that run through my mind.
Here comes the biggest but. I’ve always seen myself having kids. When I was a kid, I had this kind of fascination with babies, mainly baby dolls, but I never wanted to hold a real baby. Every time a family member had a baby, I never wanted to hold them. Even now I try not to hold babies. I always say no whenever someone asks me if I want to hold their baby. The only baby I’ve held semi recently was my husband’s niece. She was the only baby I was really excited to hold for some reason. I wasn’t as afraid to hold her, but I still avoided it for a while. I love when she reaches for me now. It makes me happy when she does that. That’s honestly probably one of my favorite stages of a baby is when they reach for you and start walking and talking. Every video we see of her is so cute and sweet.
Something we all should try to remember is life isn’t a race to the finish line. I know I’ve been struggling with that idea a lot lately. I see so many of the people I know on facebook announcing they’re pregnant or getting some great new job. I have to remind myself that I’m okay where I’m at in my life right now. I just got married. There’s no rush to have kids right away. Baby or no baby, it’s my life. And who knows maybe having a child of my own isn’t in the cards, but maybe adopting could be. Only time will tell. Everyone’s journey is different and that’s perfectly fine. Some people wait seven years to have a kid, my parents did that. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. They were both in their 30s when they started having kids. Maybe that’ll happen for us. Maybe it’ll be within the next couple years, who knows. All I know is that people need to find a different way to phrase their baby questions, if they ask them at all. You never know what a couple is going through in regards to their baby journey.
