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Sunday, December 5, 2010

Day TwentyEight:Prego.

What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?

According to my subconscious, I'd birth a boy child, be sad for a second about it being a boy and argue with my husband over the name (he wanted Tyler Joseph, I wanted Tyson Joseph, we would call him Ty for short, in the real-awake world, I don't even like either.) Yeah, I had my first real, live I'm pregnant dream this week. I woke up sweating and relieved. And freaked out, because of how happy I was in the dream.

I've been sitting on the procreation-is-not-for-me wagon since my girlfriends started talking about having babies when I was a teenager (not having them 16-and-pregnant style, but you know, after they married some dreamy guy, while wearing big poofy dress). I still feel this way. All the pressure to shape someone's personality and oh the worry....I can only imagine the anxiety. I worry enough about my step-daughters, and they are even babies anymore. I have a laundry list of reasons of why I don't want to be pregnant/do the mom thing and won't go out of my way to put myself in that situation, but if it were to happen unplanned is completely uncharted territory.

I used to shrug it off and simply say, I don't want kids, until people sort of got what I meant (or I just completely avoided answering if it were someone I didn't know well) but now....I have no friggen idea what I would do.

***

It has started simply enough. I admitted to myself I am jealous there are two women in the world who have something with my husband that I don't: offspring. It is in the back of my mind 95% of the time.

Then I remember my own childhood. The teasing and name calling and bullying and the self-hate that started at an age in the lower single digits. I don't want my (proverbial) kid to go through anything like that.

Then I remember how amazing it was to see my niece all tiny and pink minutes after she was born.

Then I think about this: what's the point of having kids and then paying someone else to watch them 40 hours a week? While at the same time thinking: I would lose my damn mind being a stay at home Mom....then I think, well, maybe I would work part time.....

Then I think of how amazing my husband is with his girls and my heart nearly explodes because it is something I really love about him.

Then I think about how fantastic our marriage is right now. And how a new study just came out that 90% of parents reported decreased marital satisfaction after having a baby. That doesn't really bode well with me.

I will admit to being a bit of a control freak. I like to plan things. Babies (once they are conceived) can only be planned in naming and preparing for them but there are so many variables: you could have a fantastic pregnancy where you feel amazing all the time or you could be puking for the first two trimesters (like my sister). Your baby could be pretty much perfect (like my niece) or a mean baby (like one of my sister's friends little one, I swear, she was scowling at my sister in a photo, no joke) you could be supremely happy in the months/year following delivering a child or plagued with postpartum depression.

So I guess I can say, in all honesty, I have absolutely no clue what I would do if I got knocked up tomorrow. And since I've been on the pill for years now....the real question is: what would I do if I WANTED to get pregnant tomorrow? And the real answer is freak the eff out, cry, and tell my husband. That is all that is for sure.


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