Stinkerpants

Why I Will Probably Have Kids: Well, Why.

May 15, 2009 in Parenthood & Life • Pre-Baby • Miscellaneous Ramblings

After a long hiatus, I’m back with my concluding post.  Sorry it took so long!

About three years ago, I was in the midst of a quarter-life crisis.  A year earlier, I’d had to leave graduate school because of migraine headaches, and I had no idea what to do with my life.  For my birthday, Y took me to see Avenue Q.  And, as strange as it sounds, I had an A-ha moment in the middle of a puppet musical.

The story is about a kid who graduates from college and can’t figure out what to do with his life.  He becomes overwhelmed and falls into a depression.  The moral (at least to me) was that you don’t have to have everything all figured out right away.  Do what’s right for right now, and it will probably lead you down the right path.

Incidentally, that’s how I ended up being an illustrator, and overall quite happy.

Anyway, the point of that story is this: one of my not-so-great qualities is that I tend to overwhelm myself by thinking too far ahead.  I end up panicking and then becoming emotionally paralyzed when I realize that I’m not where I want to be.  I don’t own a house, I don’t have a retirement account, my business can’t support me in the lifestyle I’d like, etc.

Considering I am 26, this is ridiculous and I know it.

This is, however, how I ended up having majorly deep thoughts about bearing children when I haven’t even been married a year.  This is also why I’ve titled this series “Why I Will *Probably* Have Kids.”  I say *probably* because I’m 26 and I don’t need to make major decisions right now.  In fact, I shouldn’t make major life decisions right now, because (other than marriage) I’m not ready to make them.  And that’s okay.

For awhile, Y and I weren’t sure if we wanted to have kids at all.  Y is 32 and never had any urges to be a parent.  I never really thought about it–I just knew that I wasn’t ready.

And then.

And then my friend Karen had a child.  Look at this child:

That is Emmett.  No offense to all the babies I’ve seen, but he is by FAR the cutest baby I have ever seen in my entire life.  He also happens to be half Asian, half white.  Hmm.

Before I met little E, I’d never really held a baby before.  I’m an only child, and I was never really exposed to kids.  To be honest, I have no idea what to do with them, and up until E I had no desire to be anywhere near them.

When I saw E, though, I wanted to pick him up.  When I held E, I didn’t want to let anyone else hold him.  I’ve never had those feelings before. It was as if something switched in my brain and I suddenly wanted a baby.  I totally wanted to see what it was like to be pregnant, and I wanted to see what kind of adorable-ness a Chewish (Chinese-Jewish) baby would contain.

This went on for about three months.

And then I calmed down.  I realized that I am not ready to have a baby.  No way.  I’m not ready for my life to change. At this point, I feel like feeding a dog, four cats and seven chickens is responsibility enough!  Add a baby to the mix, and I’d have absolutely no time to work.  Stinkerpants would die.  And with it, I (and by this, I mean the ME I was talking about in my previous post) would die–because I haven’t completely matured yet.  And at 26, how many people have?!  So no, I’m not ready yet.

But.

But I am open to the possibility that at some point, I will be ready for my life to change.  At some point, my business will be stable, and I will have enough money to hire someone to help me with the kids part-time so I can get some work done.  At some point, I really do think I will want to have kids and I will be ready for them.  And I won’t lose myself in them, because *me* will be fully matured and stable.  I think people who have kids too soon or without thinking are the ones who end up living my Dominating Fear.

That being said, I know myself well enough to know the following things:

• I have the potential to will freak out and get postpartum depression, so I need to watch that.
• I will need a lot of support from my partner and my family.
• I will want my Mommy (haha).

I will need a lot of support.  But you know what?  That’s okay.  And I think knowing that will *probably* make me a very good parent one day.

Having Kids: the Dominating Fear

May 4, 2009 in Parenthood & Life • Pre-Baby • Miscellaneous Ramblings

When I left off, I was talking about my Dominating Fear of ending up in the suburbs.  This Dominating Fear is the main reason why I am afraid of having kids.

I don’t even remember when I first developed the Dominating Fear.  Maybe it’s always been a part of me.  I don’t think about it all the time; it’s not like I drive into suburbia and get a panic attack.  I think that’s part of why it’s such a Dominating Fear.  It’s an uneasiness, really: a deep-rooted sensation that one day I will wake up and realize that my greatest fear was substantiated long ago.

I am absolutely terrified of ending up in the suburbs with a minivan, being “just like everyone else.”  Not knowing who I am.  Not REMEMBERING who I am.  For a long time, I’ve thought that these fears were just about Suburbia.  I really thought that I just didn’t want to end up in Suburbia. Well, that’s easy enough to avoid, right?!  Just don’t move to Lincoln*.

So why do I still have that panic every once in awhile?

I still have the panic because I was wrong.  The fear has very little to do with Suburbia, and everything to do with children.

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This is not like a fear of heights, where you know you’re climbing higher and higher with every new rung on a ladder.  This kind of thing happens a little bit at time, over the course of many years, and then ONE DAY you just realize it: Oh crap, I let it happen.

A few years ago, I was watching a sitcom where one guy said to another guy, “Marriage is the death of all things fun.”  He was pushing a grocery cart filled with two difficult children and a lot of groceries. I remember thinking, “I’m pretty sure that the marriage isn’t what made this guy so miserable: it’s the kids.”

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Kids are the death of freedom.

They mean that you can’t live in a tiny apartment in the city.  You can’t decide that you’re bored of your current apartment and move.  You can’t realize that you’ve always wanted to live in New York for a year and do it.  You can’t go out to dinner at a nice restaurant on a whim’s notice.  You have to plan everything in advance, because you’ve got to figure out what to do with the kids.

You also can’t decide to take a sick day from work and hang out with your partner.  You can’t lay in bed all day and order a pizza for dinner because you just didn’t feel like doing anything.  For the next eighteen+ years, you will always have something to do.

Kids mean sacrifice.  You don’t get to do what you want to do.  You have to do what needs to be done.  This is why people give up their sports cars for minivans: because the kids can’t fit in your mini cooper, and you’ve gotta take one for the team.

But I think the scariest thing to me is that kids change the way you think.  Suddenly, all you think about is your kids.  In the beginning, you’re fascinated by little socks and tiny hats.  The decision between cloth diapers versus disposables is very important.  Then, before you know it, you’re enjoying things that you once considered a form of torture, like kid’s soccer games. The kids are the most interesting thing in your life, and they’re all you have to talk about. Before you know it, even your answering machine message has been dominated by little kids.

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And that’s when it happens.  That’s when you wake up and realize that your whole entire life revolves around your kids.  You know what they like.  You know what they need at any given time of day.  You know where they need to be, because that’s where you need to be.  You don’t ever think about what you want and need anymore.  And then you suddenly realize that you don’t even know what you want and need. Because you stopped thinking about you years ago.

This is what I’m afraid of: I’m afraid of looking in the mirror and realizing that I was so busy taking care of my kids that I let my life get away from me.  It’s not even about being one of the moms who “let go” and are in desperate need of an Oprah makeover (although that doesn’t help).  It’s about having no more me.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I do think that children are a great thing to contribute to the world (so long as you don’t raise Ann Coulter or Bill O’Reilly), and I totally agree with Oprah: stay-at-home-moms have the hardest jobs in the world.  I’ve realized that I’m just not cut out for it–I don’t think I can make that kind of sacrifice, and I am terrified that I’d feel a major sense of isolation.  I get depressed somewhat easily, and I really don’t think I could cope.  It’s just not my path.  I need other things.  Maybe not only other things, but at least other things too.

It’s not like I’m contributing anything major to the world right now.  But I have a feeling that I will, one day.  I have a feeling that I’ll start some major company that will recycle hazardous waste, or I’ll institute some sort of plan to make a big difference somewhere.  The Dominating Fear is that I will forget about all of that.

As kids, we have Big Dreams about what we want to do with our lives.  When you start having childen, you put those dreams on the backburner, saying you’ll come back to them when you have time.  And then, 20 years later, you realize that you never had time, because everyday life is a bit of a struggle and the years pass quickly. It’s hard enough to accomplish Big Dreams.  I’m scared that, if I have kids, I’ll look back on my life and think, “Crap.  I really love my kids, but I didn’t accomplish my Big Dreams.”

I’ve come to realize that the Dominating Fear has a lot of truth to it, but that it’s not a given.  Just because you have kids does not mean that you’re definitely going to end up a “shell of a person.”   It’s not guaranteed that your whole entire life will revolve around diapers and soccer games.  Not every mom goes to soccer games, after all.

But more on that tomorrow.

*I grew up near Lincoln.  It used to be a tiny, tiny town, but it’s grown exponentially in recent years due to HUGE subdivisions full of houses that all look the same.  This is where people from the Bay Area seem to go when they want a big house with a big garage and don’t care about being close to the city anymore.

Why I Will Probably Have Kids: An Introduction

May 1, 2009 in Parenthood & Life • Pre-Baby • Miscellaneous Ramblings

 
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I don’t think this baby is that cute.  I mean, I know that it’s a
Cute Baby, but I’m just not that into babies.  And you know what? I think that’s okay.

Over the past few days, my good e-friend Ellie has been talking about her decision to be child-free.  I was leaving a comment on her blog when I realized that I had a *lot* to say about this subject, and I should probably write my own post about it.  Then I realized that I have even more to say about this than I originally thought, and decided to split it up into multiple posts like she did.  Thanks for the inspiration, Ellie.

Some men and women grow up and know that they want to be parents.  It’s just a feeling they have.  Some people don’t think about it at all: having kids is just the next logical step after marriage.  Other people just kind of “fall into it,” and end up loving parenthood (or at least saying they do).  And then there are people like Ellie and I, who give a lot of thought to the idea of motherhood because we never really had that feeling, and now we’re married and not sure we want to “fall into it.”

The other day, Ellie and I talked a little bit in passing about her decision to be child-free.  I mentioned that I thought she’d raise some great kids.  You know why I said that?  It’s because she is so REAL.

My mom is real like Ellie is.  She is honest and open, and she doesn’t put on a happy face just for the heck of it.  If it weren’t for my mom, I’m pretty sure I would never have kids.  I’m still not 100% percent sure, but I’m young and have plenty of time to get there.

It’s actually kind of funny how my mom helped sway me toward having kids; I don’t think that most people would hear what she had to say and think, “well, maybe I should have kids!”  On the surface, what she said might be construed as Scary.  My mom told me that right after I was born, she freaked out a little bit.  She didn’t feel connected to me right away, and I was a little parasite and she couldn’t get a moment to herself.

In short, she didn’t always feel that I was a “miracle” or “the best thing that ever happened to her,” despite the fact that she feels this way now. This coming from a woman who really, really wanted to have a baby and had a hard time getting pregnant.  I am so grateful to my mom for telling me this (I also feel like I should qualify her disclosure by saying that my mom and I are very close and I don’t tend to take things like this personally).

Growing up, I liked to play with toy cars in the dirt.  I climbed trees, ran around outside, and wrote stories.  I played with My Little Ponies and trolls.  I hated dolls.  Everyone was always giving me Barbie dolls and her accessories.  Barbie herself rarely got playtime, but I used her car to drive my pet rats around.  Baby dolls were abandoned in boxes.  I don’t have a single memory of pretending to be a mom. I had no desire to play house.

At a young age, I remember thinking, “I don’t think I could deal with a baby.  What if it wouldn’t stop crying?  I’d want to put it in a closet and close the door.” Now that I’m older, I realize that those kind of thoughts are what PPD is made of.

My worries about having kids aren’t limited to fears of frustration, though.

For as long as I can remember, I have had a Dominating Fear of how my life might turn out.   I am absolutely terrified of ending up in the suburbs with a minivan, being “just like everyone else.” I even mentioned this fear in a Random Facts meme awhile back.

The Dominating Fear is pretty much the crux of this issue for me, though, so I think I’m going to dedicate the next post to it, rather than go into it here.

I’m not sure if anyone’s going to have anything to say about this conversation just yet (since I have yet to really get into the meat of it), but I hope you do!  If not now, then maybe in a couple of days.