We're having a baby!

I watched that I Love Lucy episode where Lucy finds out she's pregnant and attempts to tell Ricky. After many failed and quirky attempts, she slips a secret note to Ricky during his performance to sing "We're having a baby, my baby and me" to the new prospective parents. And, upon finding Lucy at the table, the dawning of his own parenthood reveals itself to him, and he bursts out, "It's me!"...

I started to cry.

Yep, I'm pregnant....and those extra fun, over the top hormones have reached full throttle on this lady. Amazing life transforming time of life, and here I am grabbing tissues while watching the ever hilarious black and white sitcom.

I can't say I love this initial part, these steps towards 'motherhood', but it definitely gives me an excuse to be extra sappy and emotional with no consequences. I love it. I'm eating it up, and hope the next six and a half months are even more fun and…well....tissue grabbing good!

I didn’t always think I’d actually get to this point in my life. It dawned on me one day while we were picking out baby bedding and the endless search of finding a small enough crib to fit into our tiny one bedroom apartment. In fact, to be brutally honest, the idea of never having kids wasn’t sounding so bad the older I became. Who needs that responsibility, right? I could have my freedom of sleeping in on weekends, stay up late on weeknights and go out when and where I wanted with no questions asked. Ah, the life.

And, then came the inevitable pressure; that idealistic truth reoccurring over thousands of years and surfacing over every country, that plagues every single woman on this planet: Procreation. As children, this is what was expected when we grew up; it was a fact of life, really. When you grow up, you get married and you make babies. But, maybe that’s the problem. I never really felt like I grew up. Even into my mid-twenties I struggled with the idea of what it was to be an adult. Yeah, I had a full time job that paid the rent and all those lovely responsibilities that came with adolescence. But, I never really felt my age. I felt ‘ageless’ (sounds more whimsical than simply stating that I felt immature or naive).

We have a handful of old friends from high school and college that one by one has taken the plunge to marry, and have recently ventured into swimming to the deep end of the pool where they rapidly reached that baby stage. We were the last couple who were still having fun in the shallow end, sipping on Mojitos by the steps. The whole baby plan was always on the back burner for us. Actually, let me rephrase that: I had it on the back burner. The idea of kids was much more real with rapid momentum to my husband, Jeremy. I swear, his biological clock was ticking away. I think mine needed new batteries.

“Eventually, we will,” was always our response to their and everyone’s inquisitive minds as to why we haven’t started having kids yet. I always felt like I had to hide my reasoning if ever they asked, “Why?”

“Well, we’re not ready yet,” or “We have our cat, she’s a handful for us now,” or some vague response along those lines. I was always relieved when they left it at that and moved on to another topic of conversation. But, of course, with the sudden abundance of children among our friends, as if overnight, that age old truth began to swim around in the back of my mind,

“Maybe we should have a baby..."

Boy that was a strange shift in thinking. Here we were, content with our lives, with new jobs and the cars were finally paid off (don’t get me started on student loans). Everything was going pretty well for us, no complaints at all. I didn’t want peer pressure to be the cause of such change in gears. I hate to admit it, but there was some truth behind that. I just didn’t want to feel left out. It’s a status thing.

I didn’t want to be one of ‘those’ couples that never had kids. ‘Those’ couples are always given sideways glances and endless questions of why they never had kids, or getting comments that dogs don’t replace having real children. It’s easy if all the people around you are in the same boat and you all can go to dog shows together and go on boating trips, eating fancy cheeses and wine. But, when you’re the only one in the boat, you can’t help but feel like the odd man out; while you watch from off shore all the fun the families are having building sand castles.

Although, deep down, I don’t think I minded being one of ‘those’ couples, especially, after visiting said new families and hearing the screeching cries of babies and watching exhausted parents trying to calm them down. I’ll admit, I felt a little of happy that we didn’t have to deal with that craziness.

To top it off, one of our closest couples have a teenage daughter and don’t plan on having any more kids (as of yet). They’re already gleefully talking ahead about having an empty nest, retiring early and enjoying the rest of their years having fun. Man, that doesn’t sound too shabby to me! What’s the big deal with having children anyways? The pros and cons bickered at each other in my mind.

So, what’s a confused girl to do? Here I am, most of our friends are having children, but I didn’t quite feel old enough to have kids. However, the closer I got to that thirty-mark, the more real the idea of it being an all or nothing choice came into play. Ah, yes, now the biological clock starts to tick.

With this new and scary thought bouncing in my mind, I began to read up on everything to do about pregnancy and all that jazz. Turns out, I completely freaked myself out. Statistics of chances to become pregnant and failed pregnancies were flashing red all over my computer screen. I quickly bought books, thinking, “Well, you can never trust everything that the internet says to be true”. As I flipped the pages, passing many very confusing illustrated diagrams and charts as if it were some instruction manual from Ikea, the facts were still the same as my previous findings.

“Oh my God, I may only have a 20% chance of getting pregnant right now!” was just one of many dreary points in these baby making manuals. The painful realization that I wasn’t as young as I used to be become blatantly evident, page after page of facts. Thus, I was starting to feel my age for once. Not so humbling or enlightening as I originally envisioned it to be like.

Well, if I needed a motivation to decide to have a child, this was definitely one. It wasn’t just societal pressure to have children to be in the game; it was coming down to actually being able to participate in the game. If we were to decide to make it or break it, now was definitely the time.

Yes, women have kids well into their thirties with little or no complications, but it was more an idea of being young enough to have the energy to have little ones running around. I’m not in the best shape of my life, regrettably, so I can’t imagine having the strength to start five or ten years from now. I’m just not that kind of woman. Kudos to those women that can. I wish I had your strength and motivation.

After scrutinizing every fact and detail, I brought it up one night to Jeremy. Of course, we had a tentative plan already in place for our goals in the next few years (baby fell somewhere towards the end). It wasn’t a question on if he wanted one. Of course he did! And, the idea that I would be ok without one slowly drew fear and disappointment for our future as parents. I hated to see that realization and true feeling on him. I wanted to make him happy, so why not become parents, what harm would it really do to me? I mean, I do want a child, right? Of course I did. With that, added another layer to my already jumbled selfish thoughts of having children or not.

It wasn’t until he told me something that really put things into perspective:

“You will never really regret having kids, but you might really regret not having kids”.

That one statement really hit me hard. I’ve never been great at decision making, for fear of making the wrong decision and having to live with that regret. This would be a major regret I would have to deal with if we never had kids. I couldn’t live with that. It showed me my true feeling behind becoming a parent: Fear.

It’s no big surprise to most that know me really well. Just ask Jeremy or my mother, or even my hairdresser. I live in fear. Maybe something I should fix one of these days.

But, with that, I finally wanted to make a choice. I can let fear rule little things in my life, like whether I’ll crash in a plane or if they’ll one day stop making cinnamon Life cereal (God forbid). But, I can’t let a little thing like fearing the unknown of parenthood rule my decision. I had to choose one.

So, I took one last sip of my Mojito, and dove doggy paddled my way over to the deep end of the pool.

“Let’s do it,” I confidently said.