Baby Boom

Practically everyone around me of child-bearing age is having babies.

My friend from college, my sister-in-law, two of my cousins ... I know that measly little list may not sound like "everyone" to you, but for me, that is a lot of people in my small circle of friends and family.

I, personally, (for now we'll leave the husband out of this) have felt ready to have a baby for a little a while now. That biological clock that everyone talks about has certainly been ticking a little bit louder. However, being the ultra-logical person that I am, life has, up until this point, always gotten in the way.

• First, it was the education program that I was a part of ... I wanted to finish so that I could make the career change from scientific research to science teaching.
• Then, it was finding that first teaching job.
• Then, it was completing (scratch that, surviving) my first year and all the various tests that go along with it.
• Then, it was making sure I'd be able to go on my family's first ever out-of-the-country Christmas vacation to Mexico ... Without a newborn baby in tow.

Now, I don't really have any excuses.

I am looking for that new job (and a spring baby would certainly cut my school year a little bit short) but I'm starting to see that, if I wait for life to settle down to a point where it seems ready to accept a child into the mix, I'm fooling myself.

Or am I just speeding up the natural process of things because "everyone else is doing it?"

I've never been one to follow the leader, I always was the leader, but it seems that, with babies, there's that little voice (or is it the ticking?) that gets louder and louder when other people are where you'd like to be. As a first time mother, I'd imagine that you need all the help you can get, so what is better than an already established support group of family and friends toting around kids of their own?

But, there I go being logical again.

It is all very strange to me that I'm even spending parts of my days thinking about this (and, believe me, I have way too much time to think on my summer vacation). At 25, I don't necessarily feel like I'm old and mature enough to even have a baby, but, somehow, I just feel ready. I felt ready to get married at 22 and I feel ready now ... And the marriage is working out pretty well so far, maybe the baby stuff will too.

All that said, the whole thing is null and void if the aforementioned husband isn't on board ... He's much more afraid of giving up his little freedoms than I am, and he's concerned about how being back at school and looking for a new career will fit in to the picture. I hear him loud and clear, but we would be waiting forever if every little detail had to be ironed out first ... And then we'd be too old to have kids! Of course, all this is assuming that conception happens without a hitch ... And who knows how that will go? All the statistics that I see, say that 9 out of 10 couples of child-bearing age that are trying to conceive will be able to do so in the first year ... But what if we are that 1 out of 10?

You truly never know.

Life just contains so many "ifs" that it's impossible to really plan anything. It's funny that I even give this any thought because, deep down, I know that what is meant to happen, will happen. Current baby boom or not, my (our) time will eventually come.

Maybe we should just keep doing what we're doing until that margin of error eventually catches up to us and ... POOF ... Hello unplanned pregnancy!

On second thought, that might create more problems than it solves. I don't think my husband would ever recover from the shock. :)