To Have a Baby or Not to Have a Baby?
Do I want - but really want want - a little nugget? Or is my biology just having a field day with my brain, trying to trick me into motherhood?
I mean, I catch myself doing double takes of strollers like I used to for men's asses. "Aww" comes out of my mouth, but I'm not sure I actually mean it. I've heard that babies ruin your life, but there's a chance I might actually want that. What if I'm missing out on something?! I also don't know whether to believe all the parenthood hype - 'it's the best thing that I've ever done' - or shrug it off as some slogan for a cult.
My ovaries aren't even oppositional like the archetypal devil and angel. They are extra persuasive, because they are working for the same cause.
When one of my closest friends recently told me she was pregnant, I said, "Well, holy shit! This is so...so...exciting!" But another part of me felt like she was betraying our bond. I wanted to say, "Shouldn't we have talked about this first?"
Even though we're already 31 years old, it just seems like we are too young to have babies. We've only just started to get grey hair! Our ovaries are only beginning to decompose!
creepy, but self-explanatory
Sometimes the pregnancy experience sounds enticing. It’d be even more
trippy than the brownies I’d once had in Amsterdam – a soon-to-be autonomous
being growing inside of your own body! A live case of Russian Doll Syndrome.
It’s the stuff of horror films, sci-fi thrillers, and reality shows on MTV. I’d
get to pretend I’m in Alien! Eat
for two! Get priority for a seat on public transportation!
Simply
put: create a freaking human!
But then I get nervous again. It's so much responsibility. A baby is forever. Or,
as a friend said quite succinctly, “A baby is not a sweater. You can’t return
it.”
Or
as another friend explained, “You can do everything right and the kid could
still be an asshole.”
Plus,
I’m a Jew who married a Jew. The tribe is so small that we’re probably 3rd
cousins or something. I have an extreme fear that we’d be unintentionally
inbreeding. What if the kid has problems, some weird
allergies or actually comes out as a blue goggly-eyed monster?
But
if I don’t have a kid, would I end up like the lady in apartment 24 who wants
to be licked by her dogs all the time?
Thoughts that keep me up at night