Did You Always Know You Wanted to Have Kids?

I didn’t grow up with that deeper calling to be a mom; I never had that feeling like I had to have a baby, and I never craved the weight of a baby in my arms. In my late 20s, when it seemed like all my friends had already had a baby or were pregnant, I expected some version of baby fever to hit. So I waited and waited…the months and years went by, but still no fever. 

“You may never be one hundred percent ready — job, house, finances, whatever. But you’ll just know when it’s time,” one friend said when I asked how she knew she wanted to have kids. I’d heard some version of this statement from nearly every friend with a child. Because they were so sure about their decision to have kids in the first place, it came down to a question of timing. “The conversation was always about when — not if. It just never crossed my mind that I wouldn’t have a family. I always knew I wanted to have a baby,” another friend said.

It was hard not to wonder if I simply didn’t want to have a baby since I lacked this conviction. It was also hard to ignore that I was content with the idea of not having kids. If I ultimately chose not to have a baby or couldn’t get pregnant, I still envisioned a happy and fulfilled future without children. When we can imagine two very different lives for ourselves — and we’re happy and without regret either way — how do we decide what to do?

Once I realized that when it comes to having a baby, I’m the type of person who was never going to just know, I started thinking about it in a different way. A question I asked myself was: Will this decision need to come from my head rather than from my heart? I’d imagine my life in 20, 30, 40 years and try to think about who was there, who we went on vacation with, whose birthdays we celebrated, and who came over on Christmas. And then something surprising happened. 

Without a doubt, I saw our children all grown up, and their children — our grandchildren — running barefoot in the backyard, taking swimming lessons at the lake, and learning how to bat in tee-ball. 

It was never just me and Dan.

If you’re thinking — that was your version of baby fever! That was your IT’S TIME moment! — maybe that’s the closest I was going to get. But even after seeing my future with children, there wasn’t a huge bombshell that went off in my mind. Instead, I felt more like I was given a clue. That I could accept the way I feel now and know that, at some point, I may feel differently.

Another couple of years passed, and it was more of the same. No baby fever. No urge to start a family. No change when I envisioned our future — I still saw us surrounded by our children and grandchildren in a few decades.

A friend recently asked me if my lack of certainty about wanting a baby made me worry that I would have a hard time adapting to being a mom. And the truth is, I never thought about that. It was as if my life would split into two parts. A before and an after. The before was laced with uncertainty and indifference. But the after would be ​​recalibrated; the uncertainty and indifference would reset. The end of one era and the beginning of another.

It’s been two years since I became a mom. I now crave the weight of my baby in my arms.

Did you always know if you wanted to have kids or not? How did you make your final decision? I’d love to hear your thoughts…

PS. On making hard decisions.

(Photo by Yasmine.)