When I was younger, I remember wanting lots of kids. There was an age gap between my older siblings and me, by about 7 years. I wasn’t an accident. I was the baby my parents had when they realized their kids were getting older and they missed having a baby around. Let my mom tell it, it was all my dad’s idea. But the age gap between my siblings made me feel a lot like an only child, and I vowed to have at least 5 or 6, so my children never feel like I did. It didn’t help that there were no cousins or kids around for me to play with so my only interaction with others my age was at school which is where I wanted to stay for as long as I could.
Fast forward to adulthood and you start to realize that having children isn’t as simple as say… just having children. I mean you are an adult now. Kids cost money. They need love and attention. They will change the way you go about every aspect of your day. Are you ready for that? Possibly times 5 or 6?
Let me take you back to when children started to become a topic of conversation. I met my husband when I was 23 and he was 25. When we met, we seemed to know right away that we were right for each other and within a year we were engaged and 6 months later we were married. From the beginning, we talked about what our future would look like, and by this age, I had been adulting for a while. By this time I had a concept of how hard it was to make money and was settled on at least 2 kids for our future life. It is a manageable number, I thought. They will have each other for playing and support as they get older. Seemed like a dream. Oh! I forgot to tell you, at the time we met I was living in Guyana. For those who don’t know where that is, it is at the top of the South American continent. Definitely not in Africa. You are thinking about Ghana. Ok, let’s move on. My husband was just out of the military where he was stationed in Florida and transitioning to civilian life in Texas. So when we got married, I said goodbye to everything I knew and moved to Texas to be with him. Now everyone will be thinking. you must have been happy to move to America, the land of opportunities, the American Dream. NO! We will save that for another time.
Once we assessed our situation when we got married, we decided that waiting about 4 years would be ideal. It would give me a chance to establish a career, my husband can finish school and jump into his medical career and we would be ready, right? WRONG! I was unhappy in my career and not finding growth. Once my husband was done with school, I wanted to go to school and get myself in a good place. If we have a kid, we knew we wouldn’t have help when it comes to everyday care or emergencies. There is no grandma nearby that we can drop our little munchkin off, while we did a little self-care, catch up on rest or reconnect over a romantic dinner… and childcare costs a fortune.
As the years went by we really were enjoying our lives as a couple. Doing a lot of nothing, traveling here and there, comedy shows, museums, concerts, skydiving, and what’s not. We were also hitting some great milestones, like buying a home just 2 years into being married. We were really building a great life together. Kids were the last thing on our minds. Now fast forward to me turning 33 and I started to feel like I could hear my biological clock ticking. (Tick! Tick! TICK!! Anyone else? No? Just me?) So we sat down one day and had a serious conversation about if kids were going to be a part of our lives. At the moment we wanted nothing to change but I couldn’t shake that nagging image in my head that we would grow old and it would be thanksgiving and no one was coming over. I would cook all this food and there was no one to eat it but us. No grown, adult kid. No pitter-patter of grandkids’ feet. I started to think, what is it all for? The savings, the house, why were we working so hard? To give it all to who?
That being said, my husband let me know that if we were going to do this that we needed to do it soon because he was not trying to be an old dad (eye-roll). At that point, we made it a plan to check in every few months to see if we were ready. And I get it, you are never really ready but there was one important thing I wanted to have in place first. I wanted to be in a position to care for my little one myself, without daycare. I found a work-from-home career, started getting my body into baby-making shape and made sure I had great health insurance coverage. By the time we were ready, we were pregnant in no time and getting ready to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. We would start the next decade together as parents and that was alright with us.
I grew up in a culture where you get married and have children pretty quickly. It is assumed that if you don’t have children right away that something is wrong with the woman. I know this because I have been around these conversations my whole life and I can be sure that was said about me. Pregnancy and choosing to have children is not always an easy road. Whether you struggle with deciding on having children or actually conceiving, just remember that it is nobody’s business but your own. Take care of yourself first. You got this mama…or not mama (what ever you choose).
I would love to hear about your journey to parenthood.