Baby Train

I suppose it's inevitable. When you are a newly married couple and you're 32, you ask yourself the question that everyone else keeps asking you? Are you going to have kids? Thinking yet about babies? Do you think having a family is part of your plan?

Leon asks himself the question as much as I do and on any given day you will get both of us at varying ends of a wide range of feelings. When I met Leon, I was at the height of my "I think I've changed my mind and I want to have a baby" phase and he was perplexed and intrigued by my passion. These days, I have returned to the Krista I know and love and can't imagine having a baby...or better yet, can't imagine giving up the lifestyle that I lead. Leon, on the other hand, is more deeply conflicted than ever before. Some days he'll eagerly tell me about his uber-cool boss who has this adventure life and great marriage and - you guessed it - no kids. Other days, he grows softer, confused. He isn't sure if he is missing out, but not factoring in a baby.

Thus, my newest Konkin Question. It is Leon's question this time, asked by us both, to all of you.

It poses the question - should we all want a child? Should we all have a child? Is having a child something that you can never be ready for until it is thrust upon you? What is our obsession will following such a rigid template of how our lives should unfold? Or is it a rigid template for a reason?

I don't want to be tied down. Marriage hasn't felt that way - not much anyway. Married, I still do as I please, I just make sure to communicate it before hand to my partner. There are compromises, sure, but none that are monumental. None that challenge what is most profoundly important about how I live my life. Not yet, at least. If I need to stay in Vancouver for September because on some level It just feels like the right thing to do for myself, I do it. That can't be true with a child. I couldn't leave that child to go off and live on my own somewhere for a month! I couldn't pull my child away from it's routine to drag it along on my self-discovery adventures - that wouldn't be fair to the child. Which leaves me with the option of not doing what I am called to do so that the needs of my child are the priority.

Sounds noble, for sure. And like a big, fat nightmare. No wonder so many mothers I know have a deep, bubbling of resentment flowing through the centre of their lives. I don't want that.

Still, it is a mysterious concept, romanticized and idolized by my culture AND my gender. It keeps me wondering - what if I get to be too old to change my mind and realize that my life has been meaningless without that experience of motherhood? What if?

That wise voice inside says - life is simply what you make it. Meaning is what you decide. No outside circumstance - even a child - defines Who You Truly Are. Have a baby if it calls to you the same way the staying self-discovery adventures might. If it doesn't, don't. No apologies.

Wise voice. But what about Leon? Where do his wants fit into this equation?

Is procreating a type of destiny that one should not try to control?

What do you think??