One and Done

As soon as a couple gets married (or even engaged) everyone’s favorite question for the blissfully (ignorant) happy couple is always the same: “When are you having babies!?!?!?!” 

When the husband and I were thrown this question early on, our answer was always the same. “We aren’t”. Folks didn’t believe us and continued to press, but after a while the questions died down and Operation: Watch Jen’s Uterus seemed to come to a halt. The truth was we really weren’t sure if we wanted children.  We knew so many people who either had babies by surprise (as in, “Surprise! The Trojan malfunctioned!”) or by default. You are supposed to get married, buy a house, and have babies, right? That seemed to be the way of it for many folks we knew, anyway, and we wanted to think outside the bassinet for a moment and see if that was really what suited us best. What if we wanted to spend our lives traveling the world? What if we would rather take the time/ money/ energy we would be using on offspring and use it to open that animal sanctuary we always talked about? (Wow. How lame are we?!)  What if (and this is where it gets serious) we decide to become parents and find out we’re really bad at it? This is the one job on the planet you can’t resign from because it didn’t turn out to be as fun as you expected.  (Well, as long as you’re a decent, fully functioning human being.) A child would be the most commitment either of us had made to anything in our lives, and that was a lot to think about.

Ultimately, and after much deliberation, we decided that being parents was an experience we wanted to have in our lives, and thusly, The Bean was born. (Well, there are some other details in there too, but for the sake of brevity and resisting my urge to overshare, we’ll just leave it at that.) And we are in love. We are getting everything out of it we expected and then some. I get to see hubs in a whole new light (which is, so far, a good thing) and our lives have undoubtedly taken on a more firm direction and purpose since B’s birth. And of course, now that Spawn Pt. 1 is here, everyone we know has launched into their favorite question/ form of verbal assault again: “When are you going to have MORE babies?!?!?!?” And our answer for this, again, seems to bother folks: We don’t know if there will be more babies. One and done, more often than not, sounds pretty darn good to us. We really might just be a family of 3 (well, 6 if you count the dogs, but again, I’m straying from the main point.)

What I never expected about being a parent was how much other people love to weigh in on the decisions you make for your child/ family. What B eats, how he sleeps, when I’m going to stop dropping the F-bomb around him…all these seem to be topics that family, friends, and total strangers are dying to harass us about. And as much as the general advice/ verbal battery annoys me and catches me off guard, the response to our only child idea is outright shocking. Some of my favorite responses to date:

“You can’t do that to B!” Um, I didn’t say I was going to set him on fire and sever a limb. I said he would not be a big brother to anyone who doesn’t have four legs and a wagging tail.

“He’ll be so spoiled!” Said by someone who openly admits to giving his multiple children more toys than Toys R Us

“But who will help him take care of you in your old age?” We actually thought we’d be full grown adults and make plans to take care of ourselves/ pay for our own care when the time comes. We’re goofy that way.

“He’ll be so lonely!” We aren’t sending him to live on a desert island with nothing but some bottled water and a volleyball for companionship. He is still allowed to make friends and speak to other humans.

“How will he ever learn to share?” I had three siblings, and absolutely no sharing going on in my upbringing. Siblings don’t teach you to share, they teach you to resent sharing. They also teach you to pour water into the bottle of vodka so mom and dad don’t realize the bottle is getting suspiciously low. Moving on…

“Don’t you like being a parent? Why don’t you want to do it again??” We do like being parents. So much so that we’ve decided to soak up every single moment with our one and only son and not get distracted by silly things like extra kids and paying our taxes on time.

“You’ll change your mind” Maybe. But one thing I won’t change my mind about is wanting to punch you in your fancy parts every time you take that condescending tone with me.

“But aren’t newborns just the best?!” Sure, they have their high points, but I read an internet rumor that’s going around that says every time you make a newborn you wind up having to raise a child, so…I’m just not sold on this one yet. 

So here’s the deal. We haven’t made any “official” decisions in this department yet. Since our vet is booked solid through next July, neither hubs nor I have been able to get appointments for spaying or neutering yet, so there’s always a chance of a Bean 2.0 being launched in the future. But if/ when that happens, it will be our choice, not yours. And if we decide to raise our one and only and then permanently shut down all operations involving my uterus, that’s up to us. It doesn’t mean we hate kids. It doesn’t mean Bean will be a serial killer (although we do strongly encourage him to become anything he wants to be when he grows up). Having only one child means that while you’re still screaming at your high school/ jr. high kids about doing homework and not getting pregnant in between classes, hubs and I will be checking in with our college senior. From our beach house in the Caymans.