Those familiar with Mormon culture will often joke about how young (and sometimes quickly) many couples both get married and have children. I myself know of some people that got engaged, married, and pregnant all within our first year of marriage. All jokes aside however, these are big life decisions that warrant lots of thought before they happen.
Story time. I've always liked kids and knew I wanted to have my own someday. When we got married we didn't have an exact plan for when that would happen - not right away, but not in 10 years either. We first wanted to finish school (props to those who do both pregnancy/kids and school at the same time, but that wasn't for me), maybe work some, etc. During my summer of boredom/self reflection (see here), I started to wonder when that day would come - just idle curiosity. I couldn't tell you my thoughts exactly, but over the span of a few months that idle curiosity about our life plan turned into wondering if we should have kids soon. When I started feeling like that "soon" was more like "now", I brought it up to Cameron and eventually through much thought and prayer we decided to start trying. We were lucky in that a month later I had a positive pregnancy test!
Let's stop there and back track. The above process makes it seem like all went smoothly and we easily came up with the idea to have kids and decided on it pretty quickly. In fact, the opposite was true, and for me especially. Remember in my post about that summer when I said I felt a bit like I had failed (see here)? Others had plans for grad school, a job, or they were pregnant at graduation (and usually had their babies shortly thereafter), and I had none of the above. Because getting pregnant wasn't in the plans at first (I wanted to go to grad school, or at least find a job), it somehow felt that if we got pregnant right after all my original plans fell through, it would be a cop-out move.
Now I KNEW in my head that becoming a mom was what I had always planned on and that plenty of people simply finished school and became a stay at home mom, but that's not what I had planned on! Not only that, but I didn't want anyone assuming that we decided to move forward with a family because I couldn't seem to do anything else. Plus, in some ways I'm more counterculture than mainstream and I didn't WANT to be lumped into the category of "those Mormon girls who finish school then stay home and have babies". I was going to start a career, THEN have kids and maybe work part time. Basically, what this entire paragraph is telling you is that I didn't want to have kids then, not yet.
Thus ensued an internal struggle, where clearly the decision to have kids won and I felt like it was what God wanted us to do. While I'm super excited to hold my little one in my arms for the first time, I still don't quite understand the timing of it all. I'm not sure what will follow after this. More kids? Back to school? Will I work at all? Who knows. I'm just trying to prepare for one baby at this point. And that's ok.
Why do I tell you this? When I was in the middle of it all, I wondered how others reached their decision about having children, or if they felt as conflicted as I did. If I had always desired kids, why was I so against it, and was it ok to feel guilty over that? I also wanted to share my story to show that everyone has their backstory and we can never assume to know what is going on in people's private lives. I'm not one to get offended, but when some people found out I was pregnant and expressed how they "knew that was coming soon" or they "wondered when we were going to get going on that", it stung a little. While they probably figured I'd follow the typical pattern of having children soon after getting married, I was holding back bitter tears and not knowing how to explain to everyone how I was both super excited but also didn't want this at the same time.
Currently in the middle of dr.'s appointments, baby registries, and reading about childbirth I am once again super excited at the prospect of becoming a mom! I will now welcome any advice on baby items to acquire as I feel slightly clueless. But just do me a favor - next time someone announces they are pregnant, by all means celebrate and be happy for them, but remember that such a decision takes a lot of personal thought and don't assume anything. We all have our own stories.
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