Snap, Cradle, Pop

Well, I made it. Our parties have evolved from keg standing, solo cup chugging, blackout blurs, to sit down dinners with appropriate beverages both alcoholic and otherwise, where we all fawn over the newest little addition to our group. And it is so fun! I can’t imagine the parents always think so, during the sleepless nights and the crying, but I personally much prefer this phase of life over our bar days. I love buying tiny sweatpants and onesies for newborns. I love watching my friends learn how to be parents and in turn learn from them things that will help me someday. I love the baby giggles and the witty bitty toes and fingers and noses.

What I don’t enjoy about it is the enormous amount of pressure that looms over our age group. And the questions, oh, the questions! It’s worse than when you graduate from University, because there is so much judgement behind some of the questions that people fire at you, especially as a woman.

Are you going to have kids? If no, why not? If yes, then when? Are you trying now? How many? Are you going to work?  Where are you going to give brith? Once you are pregnant, you get things like: Are you breastfeeding? Why not? Will you do it in public? How do you feel about formula? Do you do co-sleeping? Do you use soothers?  How do your nipples feel? When are you having another one? I feel like if new mothers had more energy, more people might get slapped.

Not to mention the totally inappropriate lack of boundaries that some people seem to develop. If you would ask permission to touch someone’s stomach when they aren’t pregnant, you should still ask permission to do so when they are. I recently heard a story where one pregnant woman was tired of having her regular customers touch her stomach while she was serving, so she started to greet them by touching their stomachs when they came to dine. Touché.

When it came down to seriously having the Kids conversation with someone I actually wanted to have children with, I surprised myself with how traditional I felt about it. I did feel that first comes marriage then comes the rest. But I don’t know why? I wasn’t raised in a traditional household, we were what society calls “mixed”. My biological parents did get married, but I can’t ever remember any adult specifically impressing upon me that I needed to get married before I had children. In fact, I think I nearly gave my Grandmother a heart episode when I mentioned having a family in my High School Graduation introduction. She pulled me aside to make sure that “career” was part of my equation first. I was raised by feminists, my Dad being one of the best ones. So, why is this important to me?

It’s not like the idea of having children without being married seems sinful or wrong or hard.  Really, in the eyes of the law, I am married and wearing an expensive ring isn’t going to make a big difference to them. So why does it make a difference to me? I have grappled with this question for years. All the years of people asking me when we’re getting married, all the years of wondering it myself. Aside from “Why can’t I learn to French braid or grow a decent tomato?” I don’t think I have pondered a question more.

I am not educated in sociology or anthropology or any other of the –ologies that I clearly need to know more about that probably hold at least an inkling of the answers I am looking for. I just have me and my inner monologue and my experience (and therapy…ok, wine). This leaves me with a lot of questions of my own. Like “Who needs the expense of having a wedding?” which is always countered by “But I want to wear a pretty dress and have a party with all the people I love!”, which is in turn rebuffed by “Then just get some liquor and some extra tables and have a really big BBQ” followed by “But, but, wedding photos…and…Pinterest!” It’s an endless back and forth; I don’t want to follow this rabbit hole too far. I know deep down, that the status of being married shouldn’t matter, and creating a life with the person I love IS the be all end all, the big win, the pot of gold. I also know that having a wedding is A LOT of work, but also A LOT of fun. At least the ones I have attended have been.

Maybe it is the ritual of it. Maybe it is an ego thing, which I think most likely. The funny thing is, there is no right answer to the how or the when of any of it. We’re all going to do it differently, and we (and by we I mean me) should just stop worrying about it so much. There is a scene in a Sex & the City episode where Charlotte is being pestered with questions about fertility and pregnancy, and slowly, a calming music filters out the voice of the woman prattling on to her, and she finds her happy place, free of questions. I need to find my happy place, my calming music, even if the questions I am drowning out are only in my own head.

I have recently had several friends either give birth or announce pregnancies, some married and some not, and I am over the moon for all of them! I am a little sad that my kids won’t necessarily have as many friends in their year at school that they hung out with as tiny tots (or perhaps, that I won’t have as many parent friends!), but as my ever poignantly  observant future baby-Daddy points out, a year or two is not going to be a deal breaker. Plus, I might even make some new friends during pickup and drop-off time too. Do parents do that? Is it sort of like being in University again where you’re all there for the same reason and sometimes it’s a lot of work? I don’t know yet.

I am so inspired by the attitudes of my friends taking on these big challenges in little packages and every time someone else I know gives birth, I become fractionally more confident that I will be able to handle it, small pelvis and all.