I thought about babies a lot last week, which I blame not specifically on stopping by hell, but on making the mistake of viewing the nursery. I had a moment of teary-eyed weakness followed immediately by a conversation with my embryologist friend regarding fertility while she drove me home. These conditions are apparently the perfect breeding ground for feelings of 'what-if' to run rampant through your otherwise logical and decisive brain.
I was on a tea break from studying and I figured that watching birth story videos would be the most immediate way to shut down such internal monologues. Even the pregnant women I know don't want to think about how their little alien womb squatter is going to exit into the world. We all know it can't possibly be pretty. Or without pain.
But with good intentions come unexpected tangents.
I must erase my YouTube history. It is currently filled with pages and pages of watched videos of a subject matter questionable to my stance on having children. It started off innocently enough. Search #1: birth story.
By video number 6 I realised that I had finished my toast and my coffee, and I was simply watching the videos for the sake of being entertained. As someone who is phobic of injections and blood draws, hearing intimate and detailed recounts of episiotomies, stitches and epidurals should not be entertaining. It just shouldn't. My love of knowing about things is a hindrance at times.
Since I had finished my food I should have gotten up and left. Instead, I clicked onto the sidebar to a suggested video. It was a very well put together young woman talking about her experience as a first time mum. She was the kind of mum that I would want to be, given that set of circumstances. Her hair had recently seen a curling iron, she looked illuminated and rested, and her false eyelashes had been applied with exact precision.
Look how much energy she has. And how beautiful she is.
Don't watch this if listening to birth makes you queasy. Or if you are completely indifferent to babies. It will bore you to death. The point isn't the content, it is her presentation. That said, the content is in and of itself enough to deter me. "What's going to happen when this epidural fades? I'm going to be in a lot of pain... she had her arms like all the way inside of me - both arms! - and she was like helping to get the baby out and I just kept thinking 'oh my gosh, I am so glad I can't feel this 'cause I would be a hot mess". Enough said.
Despite the imagine conjured up of a doctor elbow deep in my lady parts thanks to Rachel's emotive descriptions and hand gestures, I watched the entire video and then wondered to myself, 'If she can have a newborn and look like this, why is my facebook feed filled with negativity born of having children to care for while simultaneously lacking of topics other than of said offspring?'
Being a new mummy/mommy ran into what's in my nappy bag and eventually to mummy style. One thing kind of leads to another once you start. This girl looks more stylish and put together than I do now, without having carried a few extra pounds around for 9 months and with the option of a full 8 hours sleep every night. There is no doubt in my mind that I would struggle to look like this with a tiny human to care for.
I naturally gravitate towards accomplished women who are organised and driven.
They motivate me to achieve bigger and greater things. I am the kind of person that when told 'you can't [insert behaviour here], I immediately strive to prove them wrong, often unconsciously. Watching women like this inspire me to believe that I too can be a mother, without compromising on brushing my hair or wearing nice clothes. And I don't mean designer clothes. I just mean clothes that aren't stained with baby sick.
I have recently begun to wonder if my stubborn streak might play a role in my continued antipathy of children. Correction - child. One is enough. And if you want to tell me that it is selfish to have one, or that it will be regretted once I have a self-centred and spoiled monster on my hands, don't bother. If you have been following my blog for any length of time you will know I like research and facts, not propaganda and wishy-washy feelings. I like this opinion piece. But that is not what I am talking about today.
I walked away from my iPad and went back to my office to work on my thesis. But over the next few days my thoughts festered, and multiplied, and festered some more. If I truly did not want to have a child, should questions such as that of my stubbornness even be on my mind?
It is true I am a thinker. Songwriter. Writer. Actress. Creative people tend to spend a great deal of time in their own head. Mixing this with a penchant for analysis and dissection of thought often leads to lengthy internal conversations with myself. Was this any different? Was I just being overly critical of a concrete resolution?
Even as an 11 year old, I never saw marriage or motherhood as milestones in my life trajectory.
I had friends and cousins who could not wait to get married and/or raise a family of their own. As a teenager I failed to understand why. As a young adult I learned that my choices are my own, and other people want different things from life: neither is more right than the other.
But I wanted to do things like live abroad (my top three locations were New York, London and Paris in no particular preference), travel, become a doctor, and make a difference to the world. While my career aspirations were the single most important part of my future, wealth never really played a role. Having grown up in a family that was often living below the poverty line and usually in the very lower middle class, I did develop a determination to not have to struggle pay to pay. And apparently so did my brothers.
Perhaps surprisingly however, I did not become obsessive about a career where I made huge amounts of money. I have always been about satisfaction and happiness, and sometimes the things in life that make us happiest are not those things that come with the greatest financial outcomes.
And yet one of the most important factors that I consider when thinking about a child are the prohibitive costs involved. I really have no desire to sacrifice my international travel each year for pediatrician bills and daycare. Selfish you say? I'm not convinced that opting for something for yourself over a child that doesn't exist is selfish. My family and I have never taken a holiday together. It has only been in very recent years that I have had the luxury of being able to afford to travel and it turns out that I knew what makes me happy all along. Travel is definitely up there at the top of my list of loves.
How can buying nappies and an endless supply of tiny shoes that are immediately outgrown be more rewarding than a stroll down The Avenue des Champs Elysees or champagne on the river Seine? I have done both of these things and I can garantee that they were more fun than lack of sleep and baby vomit. Admittedly, I did step on a particularly stick dog turd the moment I arrived at the Champs Elysees. I've spoken of my inability to deal with smelly things before. I am very bad at it.
Trying to clean the most persistent dog shit I have ever had the misfortune to step in off my brand new $250 hiking shoes with a stick was useless.
I visited the McDonalds bathroom which turned out to be worse than the state of my shoe - faeces and blood on the wall, horrific stench. I managed to throw up. I did not manage to clean my shoe. The shoe was eventually cleaned off, although I did keep the shoes in a separate doubled plastic bag for the remaining 28 days of my trip.
I found this picture on the internet. This is how I looked. For hours after the incident.
Poo in Paris is still more glamorous than poo in my laundry. Because Paris.
Thinking about how sick and sad I was having to deal with that dog shit makes me feel adamant that I am just not cut out for dealing with baby poo.
Without any hint of hyperbole, this video would be me:
In fact, this was me in that McDonalds bathroom.
So despite watching all those beautiful and totally in control women talk about how easy being a mother is, with their impeccable hair, massive smiles and not a dark under eye circle between them, I remain unconvinced.
And all it took was remembering how much I hated that anonymous dog for shitting on the path in Paris, as I sat defeated and deflated in a beautiful French park on my honeymoon, realising a childhood dream all the while crying pathetically as my new husband cleaned my shoe for me.
I am not sure I will ever be resilient enough to deal with poop maturely.
I know I could never be a mother because I once stepped in dog shit on the Avenue des Champs Elysees.
No comments:
Post a Comment