Question:
Okay, so, as you may have gathered, I want a baby. I don’t really need advice about getting pregnant, but more about whether or not I should. My friends think I’m nuts and my family thinks I’m nuts and I just need to talk to people who can objectively look at the facts and give me some support, or advice.
My boyfriend (yes, boyfriend…not fiance, not husband…but please don’t be too quick to judge) and I have been close friends since we were fourteen years old. Three years ago we realized how incredibly perfect we are for each other and have been together ever since. We’ve lived together for the past two years and fully intend to get married. It just hasn’t happened yet. And for the past year or so, I’ve really begun wanting a baby. It started out simple. My period was weeks late, a few other common pregnancy symptoms were occurring, and I truly believed I was pregnant. I took a test, it was negative, I got my period the next day, and instead of feeling the relief that those events had brought on in the past, I was overwhelmingly disappointed. Since then, I’ve become increasingly more aware of how much I want a child. And now I’m at the point where I’ve started taking it seriously and I am starting to plan one.
How does my boyfriend feel about this, you ask? Well, it’s complicated. He wants kids, and he wants kids in the foreseeable future. However, he’s also nervous. He hasn’t spent much time around children, and has virtually no experience with babies. Also, we are not in the best financial situation, but we’re not in the worst, either. But, despite his jitters, he has willingly agreed to stop using contraceptives and let nature take its course.
Now, you may be curious as to why my friends and family would be against this. Allow me to give a little background there. I live in an area where people don’t usually get married or plan pregnancies until their late twenties and early thirties. Don’t mistake me, there is plenty of pregnancy amongst the younger crowd, but it is rarely planned and typically frowned upon. I mean, we have an alternative high school for pregnant teens. So I know plenty of girls my age (which is twenty-three, by the way) who have babies and young children, but no one that my friends and I would ever associate with. So they subconsciously relate having babies at a fairly young age to the white trash baby mama drama chicks that we went to high school with. They tell me that I’m crazy and that twenty-three is too young to want a baby. As far as my family is concerned, I’m still a child. I, myself, was an “oopsie” baby who was conceived when my parents, at the age of 26, were barely dating and it resulted in them getting married, which neither of them really wanted to do. They also have the problem with the fact that both of us have taken a hiatus (a rather long one, I’ll admit) from school.
I should also mention, in my defense, that I’m studying early childhood education, and have worked in the daycare industry for over six years, so it’s not as if I don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to children. And, though I’m well aware that having a child of your own is entirely different from taking care of nine for eight hours a day, I do think that having the knowledge and experience that I have gives me a tiny advantage over other young moms.
Sorry for the novella, guys. I just need some sound advice. Am I overlooking too much? Should I wait until I’m in the perfect situation, with a degree, and an established career, and a home, and a wedding ring? Is it completely unrealistic and selfish to bring a baby into this world if I don’t have all that yet? What do you guys think?