MrsH
Registered: 03/13/08
Posts: 40
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Reply with quote | #1 |
Hi everyone, hope you are all doing well. 
Lately, the "should we have kids" conversation has picked up between DH and I. I find myself rather ambivalent or wishy washy about having kids. It's like one day, I really want them and am really excited about having kids... it is all I can do to not toss out my birth control.... and other days, I just think "no, no, I don't want kids right now." Previously, this has worked in my favor because DH has always not been ready for kids. But the other day, he said "let's have a baby!" right out of the blue (now he's starting to sound more like me!) Of course, this had to happen when I'm in my "I don't want kids right now" stage. 
The thing holding me back right now is the fear of how my life will change. I don't fear being a bad mom, or not liking it, I feel our marriage can withstand the stress of having a new baby.. but I think since I am finally out of school after 8 long years and have the time and resources to pursue the things I want to pursue (I'm currently training for my first 5k with the end goal of a half marathon), I'm afraid of giving up my freedom or my lifestyle - the lifestyle where I dictate when I get to sleep, wake, work out, hang out with friends, go visit my family on a whim, and so on. If there is any truth to discovering yourself in your 20s, I am definitely in that stage. I finally feel stable in my career and am making leaps and strides in moving up the totem pole, I've figured out my identity as a wife, I have a good circle of friends and I can't even really describe what becoming a runner has done for my emotional and physical health. And I have a hard time thinking of all of that changing. I know I don't have to give up these things - I certainly won't give up these things. But I am afraid of a baby changing everything....which it will!
DH and I probably at least 2 years away. I do predict he'll want a year after he's done with his MBA to just "play," kind of like what I'm doing. The idea of having a child seems so foreign to me and one I have a hard time grasping. What will it be like? How exactly will my life change? I think there is also a fear that - like engagement - I will be the one who constantly doubts and questions things. Like BabyofSix's recent post, I connect these transitions with the life/death cycle and I feel that becoming a mother will push me and those I love further down the road towards death.
Sorry if this is confusing... I just kind of need to get these thoughts out!
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letsbehappy
Registered: 06/25/08
Posts: 13
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Reply with quote | #2 |
Hello Mrs. H!
I haven't written in quite a while, but your words could have been mine up to six months ago. They could be mine now and I am four months pregnant! I am in my 30's and with that provides more stability but in some ways more time to not have the obligations that some of my friends who are moms have had.
My pregnancy has rocked me to the core. I have been sick, exhausted and still questioning- "Am I ready for this?" I have always loved working out and need exercise to unwind. Unfortunately my busy schedule and sheer exhaustion has forced me to scale back above and beyond what I hoped for. I guess your pregnancy prepares you a lot for motherhood. It's like the different trimesters simulate the ups and downs of being a mom.
The more I reflect, the more I know that my time without kids has also been filled with ups and downs, sacrifices, sheer exhaustion and happiness. I also know (if this makes any sense) that I am not my friends. I don't have to have the same views as them, I don't have to raise my child like them, and I certainly don't have to place any more expectations on myself because society thinks I should be a certain way now that I am going to be a mom. I have never judged the way they have lived their lives and raised their kids. They are all different and have made different choices. Just like before I was married, they think they can just tell me everything I need to be like as a mom.
When I think of all the things I love to do with my husband, with my friends and on my own I know that these are things that my friends don't really like to do anyway. I really don't feel sorry for them for not getting to do certain things that I have been able to do since I have waited to have children. I have never said, "Well I have to do this because I don't have kids." I do things that I know will help me become a better person. I say all this because we will always create our own destiny. I believe a lot of our fears stem from the idea that once we have kids "our lives are over". We know this to be untrue, yet we feel as if we are prisoners to our kids. I always laugh at my friends who say, "get it out of your system now because once you have kids your life is over" or "you will NEVER be able to do that once you have kids" Why do we have children if this is the case. What a miserable existence! Again, I say this because we know we can still run those 5k's, we can still hold down jobs (or not), we can still have stability, but our balance will change. Our freedoms will change, but we will grow and evolve into stronger women than we were before.
I fear all the things you do but keep reminding myself, this is my life and with my husband (and family and friends too to a different degree), will do our best in raising our child. You know what makes you tick and what makes you feel best. Keep enjoying life and discovering new things that enhance your life. What a gift you will give your child (not that that is happening anytime soon!) to have a balanced, open-eyed and stable view on life.
P.S. Running is therapy for me too! I can't wait to get back to it full time!
P.P.S. Am I alone, or do you agree that society's views/generalizations/cliches create our fears?
__________________
LMC |
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ThinkBee
Registered: 08/02/08
Posts: 6
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Reply with quote | #3 |
Hello! I lurk here now and then because I'm in the same place as you, Mrs. H. One day I am totally excited to have kids and the next I'm terrified. My flip flopping almost amuses me, it can be so drastic. It's also at least two years away for me. However, we just bought a house where we will likely have our first child. We are moving in two weeks so this has been on my mind a lot, worrying me a great deal. It's pointless to worry, I know. I have the added pressure of having an almost sister-in-law who is ready to start popping out babies as soon as she gets married in June. So of course, my mother in law won't stop ask me why we are "taking so long." I'm only 26, it's crazy. But now is the time that it's starting, it seems. I have several friends who have babies or are pregnant now. It makes me think, is something wrong with me? Why am I so scared of this when other are just over-the-moon excited? I am really happy and excited about future nieces, nephews and such. I just don't feel ready to do that myself. If it happens by accident, I could could deal, but that's not what I'd prefer.
For me it's more of the magnitude of bringing a life into the world and the possibility of screwing it up that gets me. I would say that I have a wonderful marriage, we communicate very well, solve problems in a healthy way, are settling into our life well, and we have the support of two wonderful families. It's better than it ever has been in many ways, we are strong. But I still do obsess about my relationship, trying to make sure it's perfect all of the time on every level, worrying about the distant future, the possibility of divorce, the possibility that said children's lives would be ruined by a potential divorce or even if their parents didn't have the best marriage in the world. I realize that is illogical, it's just become a terrible fear of mine that won't go away. My worrying and obsessing makes me very miserable at times. I want to get a handle on this before we have kids, ideally. It's hard for me to talk to anyone about this because I fear they would think "that woman should never have children," or "she's in the wrong marriage" like if I really loved my husband and he was the right man to father my children I wouldn't have these worries.
Guess I cannot so much as help but maybe empathize in some way. I do have a friend who just ran a marathon and she has a 1-year-old son! Another friend of mine has a 7-month old daughter and is just starting her own business. My mom worked and went to graduate school when my sister and I were young children. You CAN keep living your life. There's no doubt that it's more of a challenge but it is possible to do.
Letsbehappy, congratulations to you. It is really encouraging to hear that you felt much the same way a short time ago and just decided to face the uncertainty and take the plunge. I'm sure that is what it will eventually come down to for me.
Society's views/cliches have a lot to do with my fears as well. I fear the appearance of pregnancy, as if everyone will suddenly be looking at me like I am some weird creature/phenomenon. It's also like a final step away from girlhood. Once you are pregnant, it's like that's it, you're a woman, you can't be "cute" anymore., don't even try. Get out your mom jeans!  Of course that isn't true, I see plenty of youthful, hip, cute mommies walking around...but I still have that image stuck in my head.
Thanks for letting me vent and add to the discussion here.
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MrsH
Registered: 03/13/08
Posts: 40
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Reply with quote | #4 |
LMC - Congratulations!!!! Wow, I am so excited for you! It helps to know you are dealing with these fears because I remember us discussing once or twice how we felt about having kids (probably a year ago now!) So it's always great for me to see those who have shared similar fears go on to face this transition.
You hit the nail on the head that yeah, I guess I do have this fear that my "life will be over" when I have kids. I feel caught in the middle between these two views. On the one hand, my mother in law constantly tells me that I won't miss my old life or my life without children once we have a baby. Knowing myself, I know that she's wrong... I know I will miss some aspects of a childfree life.. and I have been so open to grieving those losses when the time comes. But at the other end of the camp, I've run into people in my life who only seem to complain about their lives with children... the "Do it now, or your life will be over!" type of people. So adding to the fact that I know I will need to grieve a childfree life (however much grieving that may be), I feel this added pressure to do a lot of things. Every time I try to explain why I want to travel or why I want to do a certain thing to my husband, it comes out as me thinking my life will be over once I have children. By the way, ThinkBee, my mother and my MIL both seem to have ramped up the "when are you going to have a baby?" comments lately. I know I'll be 27 next week, but does that mean my ovaries are drying up? I don't think so.
I know my husband will be the most involved, loving and helpful dad/husband that he can be. It's one of the reasons I married him! But I still know in my heart that a large chunk of the caring for an infant will come from me. After all, I'm the one with the milk machine! I'm the one that carries the baby until birth, I'm the one who will be taking off work for a few months to stay home. I guess I just have this fear that my life will no longer be my own once we have kids. I worry about losing all of this newfound interest in running, I worry we'll never travel or have alone time anymore. I keep getting this image in my head of what I think parenthood looks like and all I see is my parents (which is not a bad thing, since they are terrific parents), but I just wonder who I will be when we have kids... and if I will lose myself. I have always maintained that I will be a working mom, not because we need the income but because it is something that I feel that is my OWN...does that make sense? I feel it will help me step away from being mommy and I will be able to just secure a part of my identity as long as I keep working. I guess what we see so often in society and in our own lives is the mother who sacrifices everything and never does anything for herself. It reminds me of that movie "A Christmas Story," where the family is sitting down to dinner, mom keeps having to get up and do stuff for the rest of the family, and the boy (the narrarator) says "My mom hasn't had a hot meal in 10 years..." or something like that. THAT is what I fear. Giving up everything that is my own, including my identity, for the sake of the family. I guess I saw this growing up with my own family. My mom is a strong woman, but she tends to put herself last.
ThinkBee I also have the view that being a mother will be the ultimate push away from girlhood. I almost feel like there is this line that I will cross and it will put me on the side of "adulthood" verses still feeling like I'm a kid playing dress up some days. I still do not really feel like an adult. I thought when I hit my mid-late 20s I'd finally feel like a grown up, but most days it still hasn't sunk in that I have a career, own a house, etc. By the way, when we bought our first home last year I also had the exact same feelings you did... we bought the house so we could grow into it. The first few months, I'd have these surreal moments where I'd walk by a bedroom and think "that is the bedroom our kid will sleep in..." We have one bedroom as an office right now, but we constantly refer to it as "the nursery," since that is our plan for it. I even talk in terms of "Wouldn't this be a nice color for the nursery?" Ack! It's a weird feeling. I think I will always obsess about our marriage to some degree... we are just thinkers and so it's natural for us to wonder how this will affect our marriage.
Lastly (this is long, sorry!), I just feel that having a baby will speed up my life, and that people around me will start dying. This is a weird fear. I haven't really figured out exactly why I feel this way, but I just do.
Anyway, thanks for having this conversation with me. It helps to know I'm not alone!
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ThinkBee
Registered: 08/02/08
Posts: 6
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Reply with quote | #5 |
When I told my FSIL recently that we wanted to have kids closer to age 30, she laughed at me and said in front of everyone, "by then your ovaries are going to be all dried up!" She's, um, generally a good person, but difficult, and annoying (also sort of dumb, 30 is a fine age to have kids!)! It's going to be hard for me when she starts having kids soon (if she is able of course). She wants to be a stay-at-home mom, have like 4 kids. My MIL seems to think I should be just like FSIL, which is nonsense, of course, we are two completely different people. It's going to be a lot of pressure on me that I'm going to have to learn to ignore.
I'm with you Mrs. H, I don't think I could just be a mom and not work because I need work not just for the money but to maintain some individuality. I feel that I will be a better mother to my children if I have that. I am happy that I will be able to share my own professional accomplishments with them someday, tell them about where daddy and I traveled and the things we did before they were born. And I think we all know ourselves best, definitley trust that.
I do not feel like an adult at all It's totally like playing dress up, haha. So I feel like I need to grow up, get rid of every last insecurity and mental health issue, make sure my marriage is perfect, and all of these things before I have kids and I just don't know if that's realistic. I recoil when I hear things like, "make sure your marriage is strong before you decide to have a kid," "take this time to work on your marriage." As if I'm not already obsessed with working on my marriage! Honestly, I have no clue what I should be doing to work on my marriage or make it better. I'm constantly looking for problems with it that do no exist. It's good, we barely fight, we are both very responsible people, we love each other tons, I know we'd be good parents, especially my DH. Is that good enough? How do you know if it's good or strong enough to handle a child? Oh I could wrack my brain all day about these things
I get the thing about being closer to dying, too. It's like, a few years ago I used to be able to remember my childhood like it was yesterday. Now my memories are fading. God, even my memories of high school and college seem distant and blurry. It freaks me out sometimes. And to think that my parents, who still look about 30 to me, will be grandparents? It is frightening. Grandparents...that is the last stage of life most of the time. But I have also heard so much about how wonderful it is. The other day I even started thinking happily about being a grandparent myself, ha, how weird am I? I was thinking imagine if we retired somewhere by the beach, and our kids and our grandkids would come for vacation, and we'd all play in the water and the sand and how wonderful would it be to see all the life we had created...just because we had met and fallen in love so many, many years ago. That's what I want, I guess, from life. I guess it's just a matter of finding a positive way to look at things....
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MrsH
Registered: 03/13/08
Posts: 40
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Reply with quote | #6 |
Yeah, my MIL thinks that because she was having babies at 20 yrs old, then everyone should be having babies at 20 yrs old. What's wrong with being 30 years old? Because that's when I plan on doing it!
I totally agree with everything you've said. I also wonder what people mean when they say "work on your marriage," or "it'll really test your marriage." I mean... I fully expect that having a baby is going to be stressful... I even expect a baby to expose some weak spots in our marriage that maybe we don't recognize right now. But I also look at it as a big opportunity for growth and more strengthening of our marriage. I am excited about how this might change our marriage and have us grow as a couple... but I know that it is most certainly not going to happen without some hard work. And how exactly can you "work" on your marriage in preparation for something like having a baby when we have no freakin' clue how exactly a baby will affect our marriages in the first place?? It's like asking someone to study for what might be a test on a particular subject, but you don't know what the subject is for sure.
I too also have a hard time believing my parents are in their mid-50s and could be grandparents. So it is unfathomable to me to think about being in this same "group" as my parents. I also worry a lot about how having a child will change the relationship I have with my parents. I like being their kid; I worry that the relationship will suffer or that it will change immensely when I have my own kid. I guess I feel like it will make me not be someone's kid anymore... and that makes me sad. Since meeting my husband I feel as though my life is in fast-forward mode. I know a lot of people look forward to turning 30, but I feel like I'm holding on to my 20s because life seems to be moving at the speed of light, and I fear having a child will just make things speed up even faster.
This is tough stuff. And my BIGGEST fear is that I'll never be able to move past these fears, and will be stuck in neutral forever. It was fine to feel these things when DH was insistent on not having kids for a few more years. Now there's all this hint of being ready sooner than I anticipated and I feel the pressure ramping up.
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tangomija
Registered: 05/14/09
Posts: 2
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Reply with quote | #7 |
Oh, man, I should have read this post before just posting my own thread at the top called "the next step"...
Wow, I am so glad you all wrote what you did. I feel so many of the same feelings myself.
Thanks again..
Heidi
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Amberleeski
Registered: 03/16/08
Posts: 59
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Reply with quote | #8 |
L--
Congrats!!!!!!!!!! You know how to find me if you ever want to talk! I went through terrible sickness with both of my pregnancies. Don't worry--it will come to an end and it will be soooo worth it, you mark my words!
Amber C.
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