This is a response to a friend’s blog post over her decision to “breed or not to breed.” While circumstances have caused her to take the other path than I have, I can relate to what she’s been going through. For many years I struggled to find other women that admitted to feeling the way I did and somehow felt guilty when I did not. I would have felt better if I had come across a blog post like this, so here is my confession…
C-, I just wanted to let you know you aren’t alone. I too never felt the mothering instinct. I am an only child, babysat once at 13 (it was a disaster and I never tried again), and really have no experience dealing with kids. I don’t dislike them, per se, but I’ve always felt somewhat awkward around them and never quite know what to do or say. I feel like they can detect that like dogs sense fear…I’ve never really had a child truly warm up to me much either. I find animal babies adorable but human babies? Um, you can keep them over there in that stroller, thanks. No desire to hold one or get near one here.
However, the difference between you and me is that I didn’t have to struggle with the decision over whether or not to have kids. I married a man who made it clear that it was something he definitely wanted and expected. (I know I could have not married him, sure, but I love him so much and we are so compatible in every other way I proceeded knowing it was part of the package.) However, he was willing to wait until I was ready, and having kids always seemed easy to push off into that hazy fog called “someday.”
My struggles were with facing up to the reality of what I had gotten myself into. It was easy to not think about it and blow it off for the first 5 years we were married, but after that I started to really feel the pressure (brought on mostly by me, not him). He was a “late surprise” baby – born ten years after his youngest sister. He told me childhood stories about his friends thinking his dad was his grandfather and that he didn’t want to be an “old dad.” Every year I held off, he got closer to becoming this and it weighed heavily on me. As my 30th birthday came and went, the knowledge that I only had a few years left before being considered a “high risk” pregnancy was looming too.
Looking back, it’s clear to me I went through the classic Kubler-Ross stages to finally get where I am today. It was originally applied to people facing terminal illness, but it can be applied to many significant life events and I can definitely see that with the decision to start a family.
After the years of denial (stage 1) and trying not to think about having kids I started to feel anger (stage 2). Why did I have to feel this way? Most women would kill for a husband that wanted a family…why was this so hard for me? What happened to my biological clock – and why wouldn’t the damn thing go off? I had friends who told me they wanted babies so bad it hurt and if a baby was nearby they could think of nothing else. I still had no interest in it at all. What was wrong with me?
The depression stage came after we started trying at the beginning of last year. Every time my husband and I would go out and have fun I would come home and sob, thinking about the loss of freedom a kid would bring and stamp out the best times I have – hanging out with him…drinking good beer, going out to shows, all of that. He would helplessly watch me with a sad face as I cried uncontrollably at the thought of doing what he most wanted in life. I felt terrible but I couldn’t hide my feelings.
I had always thought that when I saw that + on the pregnancy test I would lose it. It would be my jail sentence confirmed. However, when it finally happened I actually felt relief. It had taken us 10 months to conceive, and by that point I was starting to worry I had waited too long and was dealing with fears that I had let my husband down with my selfish procrastination of the (implied) inevitable.
Hormones are an amazing thing though, because now that I am pregnant I’m definitely feeling better about the whole thing. I have finally reached Stage 5: Acceptance. Actually, now that I am approaching the halfway point, I have to admit I’m starting to get quite excited about it all. I can totally do this!