UnBiological Clock

Baby Clothes!

    
   

Is it horrible that clothes are one of my main reasons for wanting to have kids right now?  I know that I won’t be able to keep the cute outfits on them.  And that they will only get covered in spit up and worse.  But who can resist a baby in a tiny little polo?

I admit that I liked to dress up when I was little.  Okay, I still do.  But after your wedding there is really no reason to spend the money on clothes to get dressed up unless you live in a big city.  Other than holidays and other people’s weddings, there are no valid reasons to buy very nice clothes until you have someone else to dress!  I’m sure that the fashionistas out there will disagree with me but I really can’t rationalize spending a lot of money on clothes for myself.  Maybe I have self-esteem issues.  I don’t know.  But I do know that I will have no problem buying my kids tons of clothes when they are little and have to wear what I want!  Call it Barbie syndrome if you like.  I just want to dress them up!

I also know that it is a waste of money because they will have more clothes than they will ever wear.  And the money should be going towards their future college fund.  But I don’t care!  If this is the one thing that gets me really excited about having kids, shouldn’t I embrace it? 

OMG!  They are sooo cute!!!

Baby Qualified

Looking for a new job has gotten me thinking a lot about qualifications.  I keep getting rejected from jobs that are a lot less complicated than mine was because they say they found someone more qualified.  Without getting into the details of my resume, I think that is does a pretty good job of describing what I’m capable of.  But apparently these people still feel that I’m under qualified.  And these are the same people who would leave their newborn with a thirteen year old neighbor girl so they can go get blitzed on margaritas at Chili’s happy hour!

I’m not saying that you should have to get a license to have children.  I don’t think that a government should have that kind of control over its citizens.  But I’m not sure if a suggested prenatal class is enough?  Shouldn’t CPR be required at least?  You’re sending this baby home with someone who may know nothing but then holding them fully accountable if anything at all happens to him or her.

So how do you know if you’re qualified?  I’ve taken a babysitting course and CPR but I’m not 100% sure that I can take care of myself let alone another human being.  I don’t eat right or exercise and I have a myriad of mental and emotional problems that I would rather drown with food, alcohol, and bad TV.  Just like the rest of my friends.  So how do the ones that do have kids and are great moms, do it?

Is there some magical transformation that I’m going to go through like the Hungry Caterpillar over the nine months?  Or is it all trial and error when the little bugger comes out and just have to be happy knowing that you won’t make the same mistakes on your second kid?  How am going to be the calm, patient parent that I want to be when I’m already freaking out and I haven’t even decided to get pregnant yet? 

Choices

Choices.  That is what every parent wants for their children.  They want their children to have better choices than they did.  But isn’t it better for the parents to have choices, too?

Isn’t it better for a mom to decide to go back to work because she wants to, not because she can’t afford to stay home?  Or if she can afford to do either, shouldn’t she stay home because she wants to not because people will make her feel guilty if she doesn’t?  I never gave a thought to staying home with my kids when I planned my future.  I wasn’t going to college to be a stay at home mom.  I guess I always figured that when the time came that I would just do what felt right to me.

But what about the women who don’t have the luxury of that choice?  What about the women that have to go back to work just to make the mortgage?  It makes me wonder because good childcare is so expensive.   How much money is precious time spent away from your child worth?  Should these parents have waited longer?  I know that sometimes God sends us a little miracle that we weren’t expecting but should that limit women’s choices?  I guess it bothers me that it falls on the women to make the tough decision.  The decision that people will be judging her for the rest of her life for making.  No one ever asks, “You just had a baby.  Are you staying home?” to a man.

Wal-Mart Kids

I had the pleasure of going through Wal-Mart with a family of four today.  We met around the vacuum bag aisle and I didn’t see the last of them until I was past the pasta.  I was trying to remember what letter my vacuum bags were and if I need allergen protection (I had already lived so long without it…) and I heard the joy of a screaming child running through a store.  It was the wild abandon of the playground voice followed by a tired mother’s plea to come back.  I don’t mind kids in stores if they’re not crying.  The laughing and running are all in good fun and it’s not church for heaven’s sake.

So we moved on to the frozen food section where a little boy was talking up a storm and his father (assuming it was his father and not some random forty year old man that his mother took him to Wal-Mart with) was completely ignoring him.  As I continued to browse one skillet meals the kid went to further and further lengths to get his father’s attention which resulted in the child getting yelled at and spanked.  I don’t want to get into the spanking issue but I do believe there is a time and a place for spanking and the grocery store isn’t one of them.  So the child started to wail and the mother tried to placate him.  By this time I was trying to shop as slowly as possible to avoid running into this family in every aisle.

But of course I ran into them over and over again where I finally saw the mother take the kids on ahead because daddy had to take an important call amongst the cereal.  Now I try really hard not to judge people.  And it is really hard at the Wal-Mart.  Trust me.  But this guy was middle-aged wearing sweat pants in a grocery store on a Wednesday morning with his much younger wife and his two small children.  And he was treating them like crap.  It was all I could do to tell this winner to take his cell phone and shove it.

He must have had enough when trying to get my shells and cheese I ran into them.  I really like shells and cheese otherwise I would have avoided the aisle altogether. Well, the toddler girl had picked up a small box goldfish and this was apparently a criminal offense as the father ripped it from her hands and screamed at her.  She was so upset that she started to cry, backed into my cart, and bumped her head.  I bent down to see if she was okay (See, I do like children!) and her mother scooped her up.  I apologized and the woman looked down and scuttled away with her children.  Her lovely husband followed.

Now why am I writing this in my blog about debating on having kids, you might ask?  Every time I hear a wailing child at a store, I wonder why the mother even brought him.  But there are mothers out there that have no choice but to take their children everywhere.  This man had a choice to have children or marry a woman who did.  What bothers me is why did someone who so obviously can’t stand kids have them?  Or did he not start out that way?

A Baby Changes Everything

“A Baby Changes Everything”.  Isn’t that some annoying new Christmas song?  I know that a baby changes your body and obviously your life but the change that concerns me the most is when they say it changes your relationship with your spouse.  Now I’ve been with my husband since we were sixteen so we have been through our fair amount of changes but I get nervous about a relationship even as rock solid as ours.  All the parents I know say that they would die for the children.  That their children are THE most important thing in their lives.  I understand this but I wonder what about the person on the other side of the bed that you decided to take this journey through life with.

I was talking to my husband about how when we have kids that we may need to put our relationship with each other before our relationships with them at some point.  He was a little taken aback.   I had already broken the cardinal rule of parenting: Never admit that there is anything in your life that may be just as important to you as your kids.  You are a bad parent if you do.  If little Dick or Jane aren’t the center of your universe, there is something wrong with you and your kids will no doubt be degenerates.

But the books warn you that your husband will look at you differently and that you need to make an effort to make time for him without the baby.  That seems pretty reasonable to me but there is so much guilt for the thought of putting someone else’s needs before your baby even for a second, let alone for your own needs (That’s an entire other blog for another day!).  I worry about “The Baby” consuming our lives to the point where it is all we talk about and before you know it, we are barely even friends other than the common goal of keeping our offspring alive.  I know that most of the fears are irrational and will not come to pass but a little part of me wants more of this pre-baby time with my husband.  I want our bond to be as strong as ever when we go into to the years of no sleep, diaper changing, and midnight feedings.  And I don’t want to worry if it will still be there when we come out on the other side.

Ready, Set, Baby!

The other day, my husband and I were watching something with a father talking about how his son was his life.  How he would do anything for him and that life wouldn’t be worth living without him.  I didn’t think much of it but it must have had quite an effect on my husband.  We were driving somewhere and he started talking about how he wasn’t ready to devote his entire existence to someone else yet.  He came to the conclusion out loud that he wasn’t ready to have kids.  It was cute because then he looked at me and said, “I’m sorry.  You’re not ready yet, are you?”

Luckily, I’m not.  Or that might have been an entirely different issue.  But it got me thinking about how do you know when you’re ready?  Now I think it is pretty awesome that my husband is mature enough to know that he isn’t ready for kids.  He knows that there is still traveling we want to do and that he works too many hours.  But some people would see this as being selfish because they say that you will never be ready.  They say that until you have kids you won’t make the time for kids.

I think that is a fair argument but as long as you’re still young enough to wait, why not?  Isn’t it better to get that traveling out of your system instead of constantly leaving you children with a babysitter?  Isn’t it better to be in a place in your career where you can have someone else put in the longer hours while you read your child a bedtime story?  I guess that I just don’t get what the hurry is.  I have already said that I would prefer to be a younger parent but other than that I see no good reason to rush into things.

So how do you know when you’re ready?  Well, as far as I can tell there must be some sort of hankering to hold a baby and change the focus of your life.  I just hope that we are smart enough to recognize it when we feel it.

Baby Friends

From the time a close friend or relative has a baby, it feels like there is a timer on when to have your own kids.  Especially if it is a sister or a best friend that you envisioned raising your children with.  Once she starts, there is only so much time before your kids will be too far apart in age to play together, go to the same school, or be in the same clubs.  And maybe it was all fantasy anyway to think that life could turn out so perfectly that your children would be best friends, too, but there is still a little part of you that feels like play time, if not biological time, is ticking.

When your friends start to have kids, their priorities change.  They must.  So there will be less time for drinking and hanging out.  Doing it together seems like the logical step to keep the good times rolling.  But what if you’re not ready?  Do you have kids just because all your friends are doing it?  (There’s the bridge your mother warned you about.)  Or do you risk being at different phases in your lives later on that may make your friendships harder to maintain?

Right now, my husband and I relate best with couples who decided not to have children.  They are in their forties and love to travel, pursue hobbies, and only have to worry about each other.  That is the lifestyle that we are happy to fit in with right now.  But we also know that the day we have children, we will see less and less of these friends.  There is a reason that they didn’t have kids and it wasn’t so they could be around ours all of the time.  I respect that.

Then there are my friends who already have kids and keep asking when we are going to have them.  I don’t know!  But I do know that if you are already had your third child that they probably are not going to overlap.  Does that mean that we can’t be best friends anymore?  Just because you will have preteens when I have toddlers, doesn’t mean that we still can’t get together and enjoy each other.  Do our children have to be friends?  Do they have to affect every part of our lives?

Validation

Not working fulltime has given me the opportunity to discover some things about myself.  I love having time to talk and email with my friends and family on a regular basis.  I will worry about anything and there is no use trying to get rid of one worry because another one will pop up in its place.  And I hate housework.  (Okay, I might have already known that one.)  I can see other women as successful and accomplished as homemakers but not myself because I know that I’m not good at it.  And when I’m not good at something I don’t like it.  So now it’s time to go back to work fulltime because we can’t pay all the bills without a second income and my novel is nowhere near done let alone ready to pay off.  What kind of jobs am I qualified for?  Well, I have a degree in cinema which is pretty much worthless outside of LA unless I want to edit porn.  But I do have a minor in business administration that got me a job as a secretary … excuse me… administrative assistant (a PC term for secretary).  So I will go back to supporting someone else’s life work and dreams.  The question is, “When do I give up and have a child to validate my existence?”

  That may sound like a jaded question but I uttered it with a laugh to a friend before the holidays.  I know that I want to have children.  But I always thought that it would be after I had started to accomplish great things.  You know, after being the first woman to win an Oscar for directing but before I was elected the first woman president.  I’m sure that this all sounds very conceded but aren’t we all raised to dream big and think we can accomplish anything?  And I know that it is my own fault for not starting to accomplish those dreams but I guess I didn’t realize that life was going to be so hard.  That there were going to be so many things that you couldn’t control and that no matter how hard you try, sometimes you really can’t do want you want.  So when do you let go of your dreams and put all your effort into a child to achieve hers?

Baby Buck$

I had a friend say to me when I left my job, “Don’t wait to have kids until you can afford them or you never will.”  With estimates of raising a child today going up to $355,000, no wonder no one can ever afford to have kids.  Of course I speculate how accurate these estimations are especially considering that if you didn’t have kids and made more money, you would probably blow it on something else.  But doesn’t it make more sense to wait until you are financially stable to have children?  Or is it better to be younger and more physically fit?  And is there really a trade off?

The all important ‘they’ say that money is the biggest stress on a marriage.  (I would think that with supposedly 70% of Americans cheating, adultery would be a bigger issue but maybe money fights are leading people astray.)  So wouldn’t it make more sense to not be worrying about money when having a child?  But according to conventional wisdom, you’ll never be able to afford them anyway. 

So let’s assume that the $355,000 price tag is correct.  Is that really much more than a very nice home in a suburb of a big city?  And you have 18 years to pay it off.  Why don’t people save up for having kids like they do a down payment on a house?  Are we really using the excuse that we don’t make enough money as a way of putting off having them?  And if so, why can’t we just say that we are having too much fun without a baby right now to have one?

And then there is the trade off for waiting to afford children.  Once again, you aren’t getting any younger.  Waking up with them, chasing after them, and keeping ahead of them are only going to get harder.  We are biologically meant to have children when we are young but are we mentally and financially ready?  Mentally is debatable.  But financially, do our kids really need everything factored into the equation?  Do they really need video games and cell phones?  Do they really need to have the latest style in clothes or their own cars?  What do they really need anything more than shelter, food, education, and love?

I guess what I’m trying to figure out is, what is wrong with waiting until you can afford kids?  And better yet, how do you know when you can?

House Husband

"One of us should stay home with the kids until at least kindergarten."

"Sure.  How about whoever is making less stays home?"

"Sounds good to me."

Little did I know that the "whoever is making less" was going to be me.  It came as a surprise to both me and my husband!  I have always been the motivated party in our relationship.  I was the one with the good grades and extracurricular activities.  My husband skipped class and graduated by the skin of his teeth.  But I graduated with a bachelors in cinema which is not high in demand outside of Los Angeles.  And who wants to live in Los Angeles?  He graduated with a degree in direct marketing.  And there just happens to be one of the biggest direct marketing databases where we moved. 

Now I don't resent my husband's success.  His intelligence and charming personality are what attracted me to him in the first place.  I love seeing him in a job that he excels at and really enjoys.  It is more that neither one of us expected me to end up a secretary.  Not that there is anything wrong with that!  But I did not go to school for four years to be typing someone else's meeting agendas or planning his exciting business trips.  "You shouldn't have gotten a degree in film!" you are probably screaming at me right now.  And you're right.  My marketing minor should have been an accounting major and then this wouldn't even be a topic of conversation and I wouldn't have this blog!

But I still probably would have always wondered if I missed out because I didn't stay home with my kids.  My husband had his mom home with him and I had the best babysitter, more like a grandma, in the world so as child I feel like I missed nothing.  But as a parent, I wonder if I will feel the urge to stay home and spend as much time as possible with them.  Then I question if my staying home would deny my husband the same pleasure.

I guess most women and men don't really know how they will feel until they are in that situation.  I know that sometimes in life we are so sure of what we want that we forget what we need.  I just hope that when the time comes we do not only what is best for the child but what is best for ourselves.