Not June Cleaver, not Mommie Dearest

Welcome to my blog about motherhood. I have no great tips or sage advice about being a mom. I suppose it's because I really don't know what the fuck I am doing. I don't mean that in a bad way, like I keep my kid in a cage , feed him stale bread (purposely)or let him watch porn, but as the cliche says, there are no instructions for children. I can't be too bad at it, as I have decided to increase my amount of children and I am to give birth in 4 weeks, woohoo!



I was talking to my mother a couple of weeks ago, and I told her I don't know why I have kids. I didn't say it in a bad way, like I regretted or resented having them, but that I really don't know. I didn't particularly want kids, but I didn't not want them either. My husband and I never really discussed it, but then I got preggers 8 weeks after I moved in with him. Such is life.



I think the decision to have children falls into two camps-- "Planners" and"Fuck It, Why Not?" I happen to span both.



I was 25 when I got pregnant with my son, and I'd pretty much had a pretty good time before that. I'd been to college, made some awesome friends, seen a bit of the world, made and learned from some mistakes and met my husband. A biological clock was not even in my vocabulary. As long as I had booze and cigarettes, it was happy days. I found out I was pregnant during my honeymoon trip to Amsterdam. My husband was adamant I was pregnant. I told him it was complete nonsense and that my period was late because of the excitement of my birthday, honeymoon and Amsterdam. With the curiosity nearly killing both of us, I went a Dutch pharmacy, bought a Dutch pregnancy test and watched in disbelief as the line turned the most gorgeous color of Delft blue. It was the first time I think I lost my appetite in my life. I told my husband as he bit into a sparerib, and he smiled as wide as the rib. His reaction was good enough for me. Fuck it, why not, I thought.



FIWN types aren't necessarily irresponsible, just a little laid back. It's not the worst thing that could ever happen to them. They weren't trying to have kids, but the fact that the contraception failed/we got too drunk, doesn't bother them either. You've been with person for a while, or you at least feel you can go the distance and not screw up your progeny no worse than you were screwed up. You may have thought what your future kids may look like and you can walk past a baby store with your partner and say, "if we ever had kids, would we buy a Bumbo?" You're happy enough that you've drank/smoked/screwed/studied/travelled/snorted/spent enough that you wouldn't really miss it if you didn't do it again. You're at an okay point in your career, or you don't think a kid will be a bar to expanding your career.

You're able to put up with your partner's crap to a good degree. For the most part, all of the bullshit is out of both of your systems, and you begin to resemble real adults. Hell, you may even have mortgage and/or joint bank accounts. You are confident you will not kill your child, should you have one.

Planners, well, plan. You've marked out a specific time frame. You bought a dog, managed to keep it alive, and have decided you can upgrade to kids. Your career is going so well, that you can squeeze in time to squeeze out a baby. You have been on fertility.com and the precision with how you've charted your ovulation charts and times could impress the Pentagon. You have been on every website dealing with conception, pregnancy, child raising and have read all of the books. You watch those birth programs on the Discovery channel and you know more about childbirth than most OBs and midwives. You learn to avoid the look in your partner's eyes when it's sex-time. ( I figured that when we planned this one, my husband would be delighted by the frequency, but the novelty soon wore off. There is a reason it is called trying for a baby. It can be so goddamn clinical that I'm surprised it doesn't take place in a seminar room at some god-awful Learning Annex at an Adult Education Center.) You take your temperature, you take folic acid, you wean yourself off unpasteurised cheese and you start to look after yourself more. You bawl when you get your period and then panic your kid will be born with the wrong zodiac sign.

My new kid has been planned damned near perfectly. He should be born shortly before or shortly after my oldest goes on summer vacation. We knew we wanted a kid in late June or anytime in July. I guess the strangest thing for me was realizing I had a biological clock. I went from pretty much being content with my one son, to dribbling when I saw babies on the street, on TV, or anywhere. Maybe it had something to do with being 31 or maybe it was that my son has rapidly grown up, I don't know.

So here we are then. Hopefully you will find my musings funny, insightful, infuriating, what have you. Please do not report me to Social Services; I assure you my child is healthy and (somewhat) well-balanced. If it seems like I post a lot, well, I am on maternity leave and I get like a year of it, should I take all of it.