Baby Me
I know I say it all the time, that it doesn’t really matter anymore, that it’s in the hands of fate, and what will be will be, but…
I held a baby the other day – A three-week-old, perfectly tiny, perfectly-perfect baby boy.
I thought I was fine. I thought, “Hey, I’m almost forty. I have a great life. I have lots of kids in my life, and I have the best of both worlds because I get to love them and give them back to their parents at the end of the day.”
But then I held this perfect, three-week-old baby boy and watched him wrap his hand around my finger, snuggle into my chest and fall asleep – for an hour. I stared at this amazing child with his little nose and upturned lip, looked at his mom (who is 45 by the way) and thought, “Shit. Maybe I do want one.”
I’m 39 years old. I have no boyfriend (yes, the Handyman is history – you called it – PSYCHO), I have no money, and I have no room for a crib unless I put the baby in the dining room. I really have no place in my life for a baby, and I’m still not positive I want one. But now I kind of want one more than I don’t want one. Does that make any sense?
It’s been a year since I even thought about a baby (remember my pregnancy scare from Extra Large Jerk?)… And it was two years before that. It’s not something I think about every day. Until now. Now I think about it every day. Now I dream about being pregnant. Wait, maybe that’s just my feeling fat from my month of take-out during my moving chaos. No, it’s true… I really do dream about being pregnant and giving birth to a little boy with my chubby cheeks and bad hand-eye coordination. (Of course it’s a boy – you can’t see me with a prissy, frilly girl can you?)
A friend of mine, younger by a few years, is freezing her eggs. She’s freezing her eggs and she’s actively looking for Mr. Right. And she’s younger than I am. Why have I not been proactive about this? While I’ve been looking for Mr. Right Now, my eggs have been growing weary of waiting for a seed. I’ve been kissing Tom, Dick and Harry (or is that Tom, Dick and Hairy) and haven’t given a second thought to the fact that my unborn babies are slipping out of my grasp. I can almost hear their echo as their egg sacs shrivel up and die. “We could have lived, but you wasted your time on superficial assholes and sober alcoholics. Nice going, Mom.”
So what do I do now that I’ve had this baby epiphany? Do I look into freezing my eggs? I think I missed the cut-off, plus it’s like $15,000 and I need a dining room table.
I guess for the time being, I’ll just have to babysit more. Thank God I have 10 nieces and nephews.
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Hey, Baby
I went school supply shopping with my son tonight. We picked out pens and pencils, notebooks and rulers – just me and my boy. That’s one of the things that a lot of people don’t realize about having children. They take what would otherwise be the mundane moments of our daily lives, and turn those moments into a lifetime of something we wouldn’t give up for all the money in the world.
Personally, I can’t imagine my life without children, but maybe that’s the point. We can’t imagine our lives with children until we have them, and then we can’t imagine our lives without them once we do. You’ve been imagining your life with children since you were about six years old, but to your credit, you’ve never been consumed by the notion. There’s nothing more annoying than a woman whose sole purpose for being on this planet is to have a baby. Short of a muffin top and too much makeup, nothing could be less sexy. Maybe that’s because I’m a guy, and when we meet a woman like that we can feel our sperm start to swim upstream. When we meet a woman who’s never had a child, we start to feel like the toll booth on the Whitestone Bridge. Our financial statements become our personality and a nagging feeling that we are destined for a second place finish in our own home begins to form in our soul. I’m so glad you are not, nor have ever been that woman… It would have annoyed the hell out of me to be your friend.
On the other hand, you don’t pretend it doesn’t matter, either. It matters. Damn right it matters. You didn’t need to hold that perfect baby for it to matter… All he did was to bring that feeling to the surface. So be it. If you didn’t want a kid anymore, then I’d be worried. You know, without having lived it a single moment (yet), what I know from living it three times over – it’s the greatest feeling in the world. It’s the greatest joy known to mankind. It’s one of the few legitimate purposes we can have to live this life. As UN-sexy as it is for a woman to only want a baby or to never want a baby, that’s how warm and sexy it is for a woman to let her feelings be known in between. I’m not sure most men would agree with me on this, but I don’t need most men to agree with me on this – just the good ones.
As for freezing your eggs, or some other equally as technologically advanced form of improving your odds, who am I to say? If I were a woman, I wouldn’t do it… Plus, you need to get a dining room table because I have nowhere to set down my beer.
We don’t get everything we want in life, but I hope you get to have a child. All it takes is one.
10 beautiful nieces and nephews who adore their Aunt!
freezing eggs $15,000
dining room table $10,000
having a child – PRICELESS
Sorry, no advice here, this decision is totally yours!