‘When are you having kids?’
‘Don’t leave it too late!’
‘Being a mother is the best thing you’ll ever do.’
‘A puppy is a step to children!’
‘It will make your marriage so much stronger.’
I have been married for two years and these are some of the things I have been hearing for at least twenty months.
To be honest I don’t know how my ovaries and their function became public fodder as soon as I said ‘I do’. Last time I checked it was 2016, and this time next year there might be a Madame President (and not just on a TV show).
I am 29. TWENTY NINE people! MY OVARIES ARE FINE!
I am normally very polite and say things like ‘one day’ or ‘I’m sure we will think about it soon’ to the people I don’t know well. Then I turn around to my friends and have a good old slag off session about how pissed off it makes me.
But I haven’t ever considered why it makes me so pissed off until now.
I am pretty content with my life. My husband and I just got a puppy, I am well educated and have great career prospects and to be honest right now the idea of having children is downright scary.
I read all the articles mothers write, the good and the bad, but one thing I know is that being a parent is probably the most serious decision you can make.
Having a child isn’t a whimsical decision.
It isn’t a go to the hairdresser and ask for something a bit different and you walk out with a pixie cut with a steak of pink (that grows out thank goodness!). It isn’t a career change like going from being a corporate lawyer to building wells in Uganda for the UN (because at most those decisions only last a couple of years). Indeed, it isn’t even as big as the decision to walk down the aisle and say I do (because let’s face it the stats say that 50% of marriages fail).
My family is big, crazy and complicated. My mum was married at 19 and had three children by her late twenties. When that marriage ended she was on her own for a while, with three kids and it was hard. She met my dad through the local school, he had two kids from a previous marriage, they married and then (I have a feeling quite accidentally) they had me.
So a blended family of five became a family of six. As my brothers and sisters grew up and moved out of home I entered primary school and high school. I was an Aunty at 14 and my mum was caring for grandchildren while I was having teenage tantrums and just generally being a pain in the arse.
Today, I am the youngest just edging up to 30 and my oldest siblings are in their mid-forties.
But let me tell you the issues have only got more complicated for my dear mum. Marriage breakdowns, financial worries, illness, custody issues and unemployment to name a few.
Mum genuinely confided in me that when she was having children in her twenties she thought that 18 that would be it. Her parents didn’t provide support to her after she was 18, it was just the way it was. It wasn’t until we all started getting into our teens that she realised that this wasn’t going to be the short-term ride she had imagined.
My mum loves us all so deeply that she would drop anything to help us. But this is a woman is in her mid-sixties AND BEING A MUM IS STILL NOT OVER! She nursed my dad through illness and she is finally living independently but yet we all still need her and I know she wouldn’t have it any other way.
So this takes me back to the ‘when are you having kids’ comments.
My new answer will be – ‘when I am ready because it is a very important decision for me’.
I want to be an amazing mum. I want to be ready for the life-long commitment.
So for now back off and let me enjoy my puppy, my after-work Zumba classes, impromptu after work drinks and sleep-ins.