I wasn’t the girl that really loved babies and couldn’t wait
until I kids. In fact, through most of my early twenties, I didn’t even know if
I wanted kids. Once I met my husband, I realized I eventually
wanted a family, but it was not urgent. I always hated when people would ask us
when we were going to have children, because for me marriage is about so much
more than just popping out kids.
Then all of a sudden, about a year after I got married, I woke
up one morning wanted to have a baby. (In full disclosure, I wasn’t really
excited about the whole pregnancy and labor thing, but I was ready for the
baby.) It was like a switch just went off in my brain. While mentally I was
ready, the timing of the alarm on my biological clock sucked. I was about a
semester into my doctoral program, which would take me at least 3 years to
complete, and living 1,200 miles away from my husband. Not really the best time
to bring a child into the world.
Fast forward a couple of years; I left my doctoral program
and am living with my husband. These are both steps in the right direction, but
we are still not in the best position to start a family. I just started a new
job and we are working to rebuild some of the savings we spent during the time
we were apart. Plus, we would like to have some quality time together since we
didn’t get much of that the past couple of years. Realistically, it will
probably be almost a year before we can think about trying to have a baby.
The thing that makes this even harder for me is that between
our close friends and family, about 9 or 10 babies have been born in the past couple
of years. I also have two very close friends that recently found out they are
pregnant. I am super happy for them, but can’t help being a little jealous,
which I feel guilty about.
