Elephants

Seriously considering having children has become a giant elephant in our relationship, both metaphorically and literally.  It started last year.  Sometimes I like to shop for vintage stuff on eBay and last year, I came across this adorable vintage figurine of a Mama Elephant with her two babies.  I bought it.  I didn't lie, per se, about what it was for, I just didn't go on and on about it.  But the truth was, I bought it for a nursery.  Not one I'm currently decorating.  Or even one I plan on decorating in the near future.  But I figured I would never find it again and if I wanted it for a someday nursery, best buy it now.  I haven't really thought about a nursery since.

Then, a few months ago, I was in Target.  They had these adorable animal shaped chalkboards in my favorite place in the store: the dollar bins at the front.  Like the elephant figurines, I figured it I wanted them for that nursery one day, I'd better buy them when they were still around.  I bought four and hid them with the vintage ceramic figurines.

It's all become reminiscent of my early wedding planning, the stuff I started doing before we were even engaged (including starting my wedding planning blog, Not the Marrying Kind...yes!  Shameless self-promotion!).  Before I was asked and answered and became affianced, I would look at wedding planning blogs and magazines and bookmark them in a folder ever so cleverly titled "Secrets & Lies."  That's not mysterious AT ALL.  I should have named it something like Data for Work or something.  But I felt like I was sneaking around and doing something bad even though we'd talked a great deal about marriage and I knew it was coming down the pipeline soon.

That's how I feel now.  We've talked about kids.  Oh, boy have we talked about kids.  And up until the past six months or so, I didn't feel like my body even wanted them.  But that has changed.  The past six months I've definitely had physical and mental automated responses where I quite literally craved having a baby.  It's so freaking weird.  I mean, I know that's my "biological clock ticking."  But, who the hell would have seen that coming from the girl who made her sister tell her about giving birth as a form of birth control??  Seriously.  I'm the same girl who all throughout undergrad had NIGHTMARES about getting pregnant and having to tell my family.  And I'm the same girl who feels extraordinarily reluctant to have children, despite the perfectly comfortable marriage, the financial ability, and all the other check, check, checks you go down before you get yourself knocked up.

So the real question is why the hell am I buying elephants for a baby's room that doesn't even exist?  If I know I don't really want kids or at least not for a while, then why am I buying things for the unwanted child's non-existent room???  And don't say hormones.  That's not an answer.  : )

Uncertainty

When I first got married, I had the enormous realization that, for the first time in my life, it would be totally acceptable to get pregnant. No one would judge me, no one would cast me out of society. In fact, the opposite would happen. People would welcome my pregnancy. People would (gasp!) congratulate me on getting knocked up. Craziness, I know.

But just because you can have children doesn't mean you want to have children. Or at least that's how I feel. I struggled with the idea of getting married before I became a wife, so in some ways, it only feels natural to struggle with the idea of having children before I become a mother. Still, I am completely comfortable without children. And I have never been a person who craved children and couldn't wait to start a family.

At my last lady doctor visit, the lady doc said to me, "I see you're married. So, you're not actively trying to prevent pregnancy."

To which I replied, "No, we are actively trying to prevent pregnancy." Because, well, we are. We use birth control and aren't ready to have children yet. We like our lives the way they are and we're reticent to change them.

Last fall, we got a puppy, Ollie.  If we wanted a glimpse of the hell that would become our lives with children, we have certainly gotten one.  A.P. (that'd be my husband for those of you not in the know...see this post for an explanation on the name) and I have both talked about how we may as well have children since we barely get any sleep with the puppy anyway.  The reality, though, is that we're not having children.  Not any time soon, anyway.  


There are my many, many reasons I don't want children, here are some of them:


1.  They cost a ton of money, and, well, I'm broke.  We're not broke, but I'm broke.  I have a ton of school debt still, which I feel immensely responsible for.  Which leads to number 2...


2.  If I were to have children, I would want to stay home with them.  Chastise me all you want for not wanting to be a working mother, but for many, many reasons that I will probably go into at a later date, I want to stay home with my kids.  Because I'm so broke from all the debt and because I don't want A.P. to have to pay that debt, I would feel extraordinarily guilty about quitting my job and having him be the sole provider for our family.  


3.  There is so much I haven't done yet.  Not that I think I can't do it after we have kids, but I know the chances of some of this stuff happening will decrease greatly.  


4.  We like our free time.  A lot.  A.P. and I come home from work and if we don't have to work more, we like to pursue our different hobbies, spend time with one another, watch TV, etc.  Not that those things would disappear altogether if we had kids, but for at least a while, they'd fall to the bottom of our lists.  And frankly, we need them.  Work is a huge, frustrating part of our lives.  There would be no end to our stress and I think we'd be pretty miserable.


5.  We already get little sleep.  Some Fridays I come home and just crash on the couch.  Two weeks ago, I got off work early.  I came home and fell asleep from 4-9pm and I could barely wake myself up at 9pm.  A.P. and I spend a good deal of our weekend sleeping because we're constantly sleep deprived during the week.  If you were to add a child into that mix, well, I just don't think we'd sleep again until we were either 50 or dead.  


6.  It may sound selfish, but we like our childless lives.  A lot.  We like spending money on whatever the hell we want.  We like traveling whenever we want.  We like that we don't have to find a babysitter to go to the movies.  We still feel like we do too much and enjoy doing it too much to give it all up for something that we quite honestly don't know if we want.


I wish I had a nice, rounded out list of 10 things, but I think those things are reason enough.  I know there are some people who would just laugh at this list.  And that's fine, I guess.  But it is how I feel.  I've never been someone who knew from the get go that they wanted children.  If anything, the older I get the more I don't want kids.  My hormones say otherwise, but that's a story for another day.


So where is the uncertainty?  Well, it's having kids.  It's what we're told to do, what we're expected to do, what we're biologically put on this planet to do.  Babies having babies, man.  It's the way of the future.  Seriously, though, coming up with reasons to have kids isn't hard.  It's the allure of liking my life the way it is that knocks those reasons on their ass.  And quite honestly, what I worry about most is that I will have kids and resent my kids because I had to give up so much for them.  I know that seems unlikely, but sometimes I felt like my mother felt like that about me and my siblings.  And I think I felt it more because there was such a huge age gap between my siblings and me.  I think that after my parents' divorce my mother resented still having a young child at home when she could have gone out and dated and been free (which she did anyway, but I felt like I still prevented her from doing certain things).  I already worry about my capacity to love versus normal human beings.  I struggle with how that translates to children.  


Do you feel uncertain about having children?  Or if you have children now, did you feel uncertain before?  And if so, what changed your mind?