dianaschnuth

Chat with a former intern from my department at work. He knew about my co-worker being pregnant (only a week further along than me) before he knew that I was also pregnant.

Stephen says:
so congrats on the upcoming spawn!
Diana says:
heh. thanks!
must be something in the water.
Stephen says:
apparently. or maybe some weird cosmic connection with you two being so close in proximity to each other
you know, star alignment and gravity and all that nonsense
Diana says:
if jupiter aligning with mars defeats The Pill, someone should tell the scientific community. this is big news.
Stephen says:
lol, it would be important news out there for everyone
i can see a little disclaimer on the prescription: “the effects are nullified when jupiter and mars are in alignment, be careful”
Diana says:
LOL!

Honestly, when I got the invitation to E’s baby shower, I wasn’t excited at the prospect of attending another awkward shower where I know no one besides the mother-to-be. Unlike many other baby shower invites I’d received in the past, though, this one was local — only 15 minutes from my house, not in Columbus or West Salem or some other hours-away destination.

I can’t complain about never being invited to anything if I don’t go when I am invited, I decided. The RSVP was Regrets Only, so all I had to do was buy a present (via their Amazon registry) and just show up. So, I looked through E’s registry and picked out a baby journal and a Star Trek onesie, both gifts that I felt would be appropriately “me.”

I waited until the night before the shower to wrap the presents. It was a Friday night, and I decided to make it a movie night — so, I put in the HD-DVD of Blazing Saddles (which looks amazing, by the way) and sat in front of the TV to wrap.

Most people would just buy a gift bag with obscenely cute bows or flowers or duckies or something and be done with it; not me. I opted for a more personalized route.

I remembered E showing me a super-cute stuffed tiger toy in the baby’s crib, and telling me that her daughter would be born in the year of the tiger. So, with some plain brown paper as my canvas, I drew my own super-cute tiger with acrylic paint, Sharpie, and an orange highlighter. I even Googled reference photos for tigers, so I’d get the stripes and coloring right.

While I waited for the tiger to dry, I used my Japanese Totoro stamps to decorate the rest of the wrapper (which required a couple of do-overs, actually — the white tag wasn’t originally in the design) and added a To and From section with some alphabet stamps I picked up a few years back. Once everything was dry, I wrapped the presents in the newly-adorned brown paper, tied it up with an appropriately-girly pink ribbon, and was quite pleased with myself.

Until I got to the shower the next morning.

My decorated brown paper package looked as hopelessly out of place as I felt, as it sat amongst the elaborate packaging and ribbons and tissue paper, in view of the heirloom antique crib.

As for me, after I tried my hand at some of the shower games and talked to Great-Grandma, I sat down with some of E’s friends. I didn’t even have time to introduce myself, though, before I spotted a familiar face from the Aikido dojo, and relocated myself to her table. Turns out she also didn’t know anyone at the shower besides E, so we spent the luncheon catching up and gratefully trading gossip.

When the time came for the opening of presents, I was a little anxious. Would my handcrafted packaging be recognized for the thoughtful act it was meant to be? Would E like my presents? …Would she keep the wrapping?

Turns out I had nothing to worry about. My present didn’t get opened until well past the halfway point, in the midst of everything, but everyone took notice of my artwork. E’s family made sure she planned to save the wrapping — and they liked my presents, too.

(For the most part, anyway. One relative commented about how she’d liked my beautiful wrapping, but she didn’t know what she thought of me after the Star Trek onesie. E had to assert that it was mainly for her geeky husband.)

As she opened my present and acknowledged each item, I was expecting a big epiphany on my part. I didn’t get one.

See, the Totoro bib wasn’t on their registry.

The Totoro bib was a purchase from our first trip to Japan. As many of my readers know, that trip was a happy result of a very unhappy circumstance: my miscarriage at 10 weeks. In the aftermath, we had decided to seriously do all the things we’d wanted to do before we had kids, starting with taking a trip to Japan. So, while we were there, we still intended to have children… eventually. Hence, I couldn’t possibly pass up the Totoro bib — not when I might never have the opportunity to buy one anyplace else when our time finally came.

But years passed, conversations were had, and decisions were made: we wouldn’t be using that Totoro bib. Might as well give it in friendship to someone who will.

I wasn’t sure what kind of reaction I would have when E opened her present and found the Totoro bib — for which, of course, she had no idea of the backstory. Heartwrenching sadness, perhaps; or at least I’d get a little misty at what might have been. I wasn’t prepared for my lack of any sort of reaction, outside of happiness at E’s happiness. It was as if the bib had never had any emotional significance to me, and was really just a baby shower gift.

I guess that’s what acceptance feels like.

As the present-opening festivities continued, I realized what a great network of support, tradition, and love E has behind her at this important and joyous time in her life. That overflowing support really underscored the decision Aaron and I have made not to have children — not that I wouldn’t like to bear his child(ren), but that it just wouldn’t be a good idea for us. We don’t have that sturdy network of support, among a myriad of other reasons (which I won’t go into here).

Parents of children young and old would undoubtedly tell me it’s all worth it in the long run. But I think I’ll be content to spoil E’s daughter with love and gifts, and go home to a quiet, non-babyproofed house when it’s all said and done.

I’m not being flippant or rhetorical. This is a serious question. Why do people choose to have children?

I’ve been sitting on this entry for weeks. Never before have I logged into Movable Type for day after day and had it tell me, “You have 1 draft.” I just haven’t been quite sure how to tackle the topic. Do I attack this like a dissertation, listing all the philosophical and sociological theories for procreation that I can think of? Do I keep it informal and funny? Do I engage my readers and hope someone will join in the conversation?

Guess I’ll just jump in.

This really feels like my deconversion from Christianity: a slow but revealing process that makes my brain look at the world differently. Once I seriously asked the question, once I stepped back from my worldview and considered it, I got my mind blown.

If you have kids, or are expecting, I seriously want to know: why? I’m not being a dick; I’m being serious. When you sat down with your mate and had The Discussion, what was the driving force behind it? Was there a religious imperative to actively bring children into the world — or at least, not to prevent it? Do you just like kids, and wanted some of your own? Were you looking to pass on your own life lessons and beliefs for future generations? Or was it just time?

(Of course, if you’re like my Mom, there wasn’t so much of a mutual discussion as there was an after-the-fact decision, so that’s a little different… but not so much. There was still the decision of birth versus abortion, and raising versus adoption.)

If you’re consciously choosing not to have children, I ask you: why not? Is it a personal decision (you don’t like kids, or you prefer your current lifestyle), or is it a sociopolitical decision (humans are in no danger of going extinct, and food is becoming more scarce)? Or is it something else entirely?

I don’t want to start a debate as much as a discussion. Inquiring minds want to know!

I’m fairly open about myself. I developed this trait when I flunked out of college for a semester, back in 1995. People would ask about school (mainly why I wasn’t there), and I’d just tell them the truth. It was a little embarrassing, but it got easier with the telling. Granted, I didn’t always tell the entire story about why and how I got put on Academic Suspension; it wasn’t always relevant to the conversation, and was usually more than the person needed to know.

These days, I’m still fairly open about myself. I gladly announce my strengths and shortcomings, for the most part. I’m all over the internet, too, so there’s no hiding from people who want to know all about me. (I know there are one or two people from work who check my blog and Twitter and Flickr on occasion, and I’ve come to be OK with that.)

There’s a line, though, when it comes to casual social interaction. For instance: when I use the phrase, “once we have a kid,” or, “someday, when we procreate,” or whatever witty way I put it, one of the standard responses is, “Oh, are you thinking about trying for a kid?”

Normally, a standard answer from your average married thirty-something would be a casual nod and a smile, and perhaps a vague timeline — once so-and-so finishes school, or maybe this Fall, or even a secret admission that the person is indeed actively trying to conceive.

From me, though, you’ll likely get a stiff attempt at a casual nod and a “We’re thinking about it.” That’s because, every time someone asks, I think about the fact that I miscarried my first pregnancy at 10 weeks, and that Aaron and I could have been parents of a toddler right now. Then I realize that no one wants me to mention the worst day of my life in casual conversation — especially me — and I omit that detail and move on.

Never mind the fact that, no, we’re not necessarily thinking about trying for a kid again. The jury’s still out on that.

When my close friends ask me about my miscarriage, I answer. We discuss. It’s cathartic, I think. But when people who didn’t know me three years ago ask me about my family plans, I almost feel like I’m committing a social lie by not telling the whole truth, even though I know that’s the last thing they want me to tell them at that moment.

The omission is just as much for my comfort as theirs, though. I’m not exaggerating when I say it was the worst day of my life. Reliving it isn’t at the top of my to-do list.

So I’ll stop now.

It’s been coming up more than usual lately, and in multiple places. I’ve been catching (and voluntarily watching) more of the maternity and childbirth-related shows on the Discovery Health Channel. On the one-year anniversary of my “new” job, my Mom reminded me that now I’m eligible for family leave. Aaron and I talked about it over sushi a couple weekends ago. And now Dooce is pregnant with her second child. Not only that, but after doing a little math, I figured out that, when she announced her latest pregnancy on her blog, she was right about at the place in hers that I was when in mine I had the worst damn experience of my life.

Whenever I write about that experience, it seems like I really dance around the subject. I don’t often use the word “miscarriage,” or say that “I lost the baby,” but will instead refer to the emotions that surrounded that terrible weekend. You’d think that, almost two years after the fact, it wouldn’t be such a tender subject. But it is.

Anyway.

Despite the fact that I can’t get excited about subjecting myself to the possibility of that kind of tragic letdown again, it’s something that we’ll need to be thinking about relatively soon. We still have a few years yet before we need to really get on the ball, though. I’m 32½ right now — I’ll be 33 in April. We won’t be dipping into the *really* not-so-fresh ova until, say, the beginning of the next presidential campaign.

There are some things around the house that, if we’re going to get them done, will need to be done before we procreate. Like painting, and getting new carpet and flooring, and replacing the window in the green bedroom (a.k.a. the cat’s room, and someday to be Junior’s room). Other things, like getting the leak in the tub fixed and installing a new bathroom faucet and replacing the garage door, those things could potentially be done with a small human being in residence, but the cash flow we have now may no longer be in effect. There are also some personal habits of mine that will need to change, like my housekeeping, and my health and hygiene (e.g. I’m way overdue for a trip to the dentist). I also want to reach my goal weight (about 20 more pounds to lose) before going and getting pregnant.

When I contemplate this laundry list of pre-partum to-dos, it occurs to me that we might just be stalling. Finding reasons not to try again just yet. That’s a completely reasonable reaction, I think, for several reasons. Neither of us want to be in a place in our lives where we resent having had a child too soon, before we could discover who we were and experience the world and do the things we wanted to do. I don’t want to be driving the family minivan to soccer practice in another ten or fifteen years asking, “What if…?”

That goes both ways, though. I also don’t want to someday find myself pre-menopausal, without a child of my own, wondering what it would have been like to be a Mom.

Sometimes I feel like I’m too passive to be a Mom. Not responsible enough. Not selfless enough. But, every now and then, something comes up — say, Aaron turns pasty-white and clammy in the middle of a gaggle of people at the Ren Fair and needs to sit down before he falls down — and Responsibility Mode kicks in. And I’m reminded that I do have some innate something-or-other that can take hold when I need it to.

I’ve been easing myself back into the idea. The concept that the experience might actually be as joyous and fulfilling as people claim is starting to seem realistic to me.

But please pardon me if I remain stand-offish and skeptical for a while longer.