For me, the decision to have a baby wasn't made out of some burning desire to procreate. To be completely honest, I didn't like kids. I hated holding babies. Messy faces grossed me out. I still don't know how to interact with children.
When I was younger I always assumed my maternal feelings would develop. I waited for my uterus to sigh at the sight of babies. I waited for that desire to start a family. Only it never happened.
In the early years of dating my husband, we talked about kids and we both said we wanted two. I said I wanted two kids because I assumed that as I got older I would want two kids. Don't most women want need babies? Time went on, and dating turned into living together. We bought a house. We became common law. We got a dog. We got married. And then I finally had to admit to myself that I was never going to feel that overwhelming desire to start a family. I was never going to feel 100% ready to make someone else besides myself the center of my universe. Talk of having just one child, or no childrem at all, turned into a huge fight with my husband. He was dead set on having two kids. But for me it wasn't that I couldn't imagine ever having kids, it was that I could just as easily imagine not having them.
But somewhere inside of me there must have been something telling me that having a baby was the right choice, even if I didn't really know it yet. And the clock was ticking. I didn't want to wait until I was in my 30s to start having kids, so as our 29th birthdays approached my husband and I decided we would start trying that year.
Basically I ran out of reasons to delay having kids and I knew it was time to shit or get off the pot. I was reluctant, I admit. But kind of excited too. Living a life that revolves around yourself can get a little boring.
And the moment I peed on that stick and got that Big Fat Positive, I was changed forever. I do admit that I went through a feeling of what I can only describe as "Buyer's Remorse" after the initial high of finding out I was pregnant wore off. And looking back, I think it was just the fear of everything changing and the questions that flooded my mind about whether we were really ready, did we have enough money, would I ever get to sleep in again, how could I give up alcohol for a whole 9 months, etc...But in that instant I also knew I would never change it for the world and suddenly there was NOTHING I wanted more than that baby. It may have started out a little reluctantly, but at that moment I became a Mom.
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