The Baby Decision

by Merle Bombardieri

  If you are attracted to this fantasy, consider some of these possible reasons:

  Are you still using a child’s view of motherhood as your frame of reference? Are you still, in some sense, a little girl who wants to cuddle with a baby doll that doesn’t make any demands on you?

  Do you crave the attention lavished on pregnant women and young mothers? If you could receive that same attention in a less taxing way, would you be less inclined to have a baby? If so, consider other ways you could enjoy receiving attention more easily.

  Of course, most pregnant women take pleasure and pride in carrying the baby and giving birth as well as taking care of it. But if pregnancy is all that appeals to you about motherhood, then motherhood is not for you. Pregnancy is temporary, but motherhood is permanent. Eighteen years of heavy-duty parenting is a high price to pay for nine months of pregnancy!

  Visions of Baby

  The exercises below will help you tune into your feelings about children. I created them to bring your concept of parenting from abstraction to sensual reality. Imagery may sidestep the tangles or pros and cons to connect you to feelings and intuitions that are crucial to decision-making. Examples of possible discoveries include excitement, attraction, fear, and anxiety, often a mixture of these! One woman commented, “How can I be thinking about raising a child when I don’t even know how to pick up a baby? What do you do with the head?”

  You may want to jot down or record some of your responses and any questions your answers raise. You can use these notes as prompts to talk to a partner, friend, or therapist as you make your decision.

  A. Rock-a-Bye

  Imagine lifting a baby out of a crib. Sit down and rock it. Hold it in your arms, in your lap, and over your shoulder. Feel its warmth, weight, and softness. Sing to it; talk to it. Watch it smile and coo. Suddenly, it starts to cry. How do you comfort it?

  Now try this with a real baby. How does the reality differ from the fantasy? Which did you enjoy more? A caution: If your friend’s baby is in a stranger shyness stage, do not interpret their fussiness as a personal rejection or litmus test of your ability to nurture.

  B. Dream Child

  Describe your ideal child:

  Boy or girl? You might imagine one child of each sex, combining you and your partner’s genes. Imagine a family picnic where you’re all together, perhaps when the kids are three and five.

  Quiet or rambunctious?

  Introvert or extrovert?

  Intellectual or athletic?

  What interests and talents would you want to see?

  Have you fantasized about a college or career for the child?

  How would you feel if you didn’t get your ideal child?

  The purpose of this exercise is to see if you have particular expectations of what your child would be like. On the one hand, such expectations can be a positive motivation for having a family. On the other, you may realize that you are less attracted to a child in general than you thought. Despite your preferences, do you also feel curious about and interested in a child who might turn out to be quite different?

  C. Photo Album

  When you ponder parenthood, do you consider every stage from infancy to young adulthood? Do you exaggerate the joys while ignoring the problems and sorrows of parenthood, or vice versa?

  To help you explore the various stages of parenthood, consider these images:

  A wailing, red-faced newborn.

  A peacefully nursing three-month-old baby.

  A cranky, teething seven-month-old.

  An eight-month-old eating his first ice cream cone.

  A one-year-old squealing proudly after pouring a bowl of spaghetti over her head.

  A toddler taking wobbly first steps, then falling with an expression of wide-eyed surprise.

  A toddler in a supermarket rolling on the floor, kicking, and screaming.

  A three-year-old in her nightgown dancing in the moonlight.

  A six-year-old excitedly sounding out words in her easy reader.

  A seven-year-old whining to her mother, “Why do you have to go to work?”

  A nine-year-old boy serving you breakfast in bed, even though the toast is scorched.

  An eleven-year-old girl winning a blue ribbon for her exhibit at the science fair.

  A fourteen-year-old saying, “You can’t make me!”

  A sixteen-year-old smoking marijuana in his bedroom.

  A teenage couple with their arms around each other.

  Finding birth control pills in your seventeen-year-old’s purse.

  An eighteen-year-old saying, “At last I’m old enough to get out of here and be on my own. I don’t have to put up with you anymore.”

  An eighteen-year-old writing to say that the first semester of freshman year is great, bursting with excitement about new friends and fascinating classes.

  How well did you stay with these pictures? Did you find yourself wanting to skip over some? If you’re leaning toward parenthood, you may have passed over the bad and focused on the good. If you’re leaning toward the childfree choice, you may have done just the opposite.

  If you become a parent, do you think you could accept the bad moments? If you choose not to have children, have you considered the pleasures you’re giving up as well as the unpleasantness you’re avoiding?

  D. Monster

  Picture a perfectly healthy newborn with a touch of jaundice. His eyes and skin are slightly yellow, and like most newborns, he’s covered all over with fuzzy hair. His head has been misshapen by the trip through the birth canal.

  Now consider the following description:

  I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. . . . His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing.

  Does the quote above refer to a baby? Well, yes and no. It comes from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. While it supposedly describes a monster, literary critic Ellen Moers, in Literary Women, insists that Shelley was really talking about the horrors of motherhood. She wrote Frankenstein during her third pregnancy, at the age of eighteen, after her firstborn child had died.

  Pregnant women often dream about monsters. In some dreams, the monster is clearly the dreamer’s baby. Other dreams are more ambiguous, but traceable to a woman’s negative feelings about her pregnancy. Such dreams are completely normal. Don’t interpret these as neurotic. Nor are they a tell-tale sign that you should not have a child. They simply show a healthy unconscious mind hard at work, adjusting to an uncomfortable body and making way for the baby.

  Waking fantasies of baby-as-monster can also be healthy and helpful when applied to the baby decision.

  Let your monster appear. What does it look like? What does it do to you? What do you do in return? How do you feel about it? Do you want to abandon it as Dr. Frankenstein abandoned his creation? Do you want to run screaming like a heroine in an old horror movie?

  Is there anything cute or charming about the monster? Can you imagine how you might tame it?

  The monster you imagine may symbolize your particular fears of parenthood. If you fear the baby would drain your energy, you might envision a vampire. If you’re a passionate traveler, you might imagine a large-bellied creature chomping on your airplane tickets. A monster fantasy may also raise the age-old fear that we are somehow being punished for past “sins.” The monster we give birth to in our dreams may have something to do with how we feel about the monstrous parts of ourselves.

  Women seem to have more monster fantasies and take them more personally than men. A woman seems to think, “If a monster came out of my body that would make me a monster, too.” Even a normal pregnancy is an invasion of the body that seems monstrous at times. A woman’s organs are literally pushed out of place to make way for baby.

  At the most basic level, monster fantasies are linked to the normal fear that the impending child will be less than perfect—disabled or deformed in so
me way. While such babies are entitled to the same dignity and esteem accorded to all human beings, society tends to stigmatize them. While compassion and inclusion of special-needs children is improving, we have a long way to go to provide the respect, caring, and services needed.

  Of course you want a healthy child and are terrified of having one that is not. First of all, the statistical odds are in your favor. But you can ease the fear by doing everything possible to assure the birth of a healthy baby. Don’t hesitate to take advantage of the various sophisticated medical procedures available. If you’re thirty-five or older, have testing done to check for problems. If there are inherited diseases in your family history, seek genetic counseling. See Appendix 3, “Preparing for a Healthy Pregnancy,” written by Kayla Sheets of Vibrant Gene, a genetic counselor in Boston.

  E. The Wrong Sex

  Phil wants a son with whom he can play football on Saturdays. Kathleen, a feminist, wants a daughter to raise as she wishes her mother had raised her.

  Do you want a boy or a girl more than a child? What are your fantasies about that boy or girl? What would you do if your child turned out to be the “wrong” sex? Or suppose your longed-for son hates sports and wants to spend his Saturdays reading? Suppose the hoped-for feisty feminist in overalls begs for frilly dresses and dolls. Do you think you would be able to love and accept this child? Can you think about what you might enjoy about a child of the opposite sex?

  Values

  The following set of exercises is designed to help you identify some of the things you value most in life and to consider how those priorities relate to parenthood.

  A. Epitaph

  Whenever we think about birth, on some level we are also thinking about death. We may look to children as a way of assuring our immortality. Close your eyes and imagine the events immediately following your death:

  What would you like your tombstone to say? Your obituary?

  Who will mourn your death?

  What will you be remembered for?

  What product or contribution do you want to leave behind?

  Do the exercise twice, once imagining that you had children, the second time imagining that you remained childfree.

  How did the two fantasies differ? Did you prefer one scenario to the other? Why?

  Even if you have a child, you still have a chance to contribute more than your genes to future generations. And if you never have a child, should you wish, you’ll have many chances to enjoy and influence other people’s children.

  B. Surprise!

  You have just discovered that you are pregnant (or that your partner is). It is unplanned.

  How do you react to the news? Do you feel both excitement and dread? Do you feel trapped?

  Will you have the baby or terminate the pregnancy? Why?

  Are you at all relieved that the “accident” made the decision for you?

  Are you ever tempted to have an “accident”? Why? Could this save you from having to make a conscious decision?

  C. Knapsack

  “What will I have to give up?” is one of the scariest questions that decision-makers ask.

  Imagine that you are beginning the long journey that is parenthood. Take your baby and put her in your knapsack. Now imagine that she kicks a hole in the knapsack and other objects in the sack begin to fall out.

  What falls out?

  How do you react?

  Must you leave the objects behind or can you carry them with you, however awkwardly?

  If you leave them behind, will you be able to come back and get them later? Why or why not?

  Scott saw the following slip away: freedom, peace and quiet, time for his band rehearsals and, worst of all, his wife Emily’s happiness. He wanted to take the baby out of the pack and tuck everything else firmly back in.

  Karen saw her independence, her solitude, and a piece of her career slip away. She tried to pick these things up by thinking about child-care arrangements, about her husband’s cooperation, about what kind of work she could do during the quiet time when the child was in bed. A key question was whether her husband Rich would put in enough child-care time to allow her work time and quiet time.

  Jack and Leila watched their expensive Bahamas vacations and their spotlessly clean home disappear. But they thought it was time for a change. Been there, done that. But they had never been parents. The fat pink leg sticking out was so cute that they realized they probably could adjust to camping vacations and toys in the living room.

  If you, like Scott and Emily, feel that you’re losing all the things you value, more or less permanently, and you don’t find the replacement—a child—very appealing, you’re getting some strong indications that parenthood is not for you. If, on the other hand, you’re upset about these losses but are attracted to the creature who has dropped in, you can explore ways of rearranging or lightening the load. Remember, you don’t have to pick up all the pieces immediately. You can retrieve some later, and you might discover that some aren’t as important as you thought they were.

  Katie Wilson, a Washington, D.C.-based health professional who decided to be childfree after attending my workshop, shared a brilliant insight about one of the benefits of being childfree: “You get to do some of the fun stuff earlier, almost like you’re skipping a few grades. We have the freedom to do things that parents have to postpone till they’re empty nesters.” Not only isn’t Katie losing the good things in the knapsack; she and her husband are also adding to it.

  D. Passed Up

  This exercise helps you consider career sacrifices that parenthood may demand.

  Imagine that a colleague moves ahead of you in some way simply because you can’t work as hard now that you’re involved with your child. Perhaps he or she is promoted first even though you are more qualified. How would you feel about this? How would you react?

  Josh decided that having a child and assuming half the responsibility for its care was more important than being an all-star at work. His work and salary were already satisfactory, and he was ready for a family.

  Kristin couldn’t stand the thought of falling behind on the career ladder. And fall she would if she became a mother because her husband wanted a child only if she agreed to take full responsibility for it.

  Although parents of young children aren’t necessarily confined to baby steps on the career ladder, they typically won’t be able to take as many giant steps as their childfree colleagues. If you, like Kristin, can’t tolerate the thought of pint-sized obstacles to your advancement, you’re not likely to enjoy parenthood.

  E. Moment of Truth

  Imagine that you are at a critical point in your career. Your gynecologist tells you that it’s now or never for motherhood. You have a condition that will make pregnancy impossible by the end of this year. What would you do?

  For partners: What would you want her to do? Would you encourage her to get pregnant now even though her career may suffer? (If you actually find yourself in such a situation, learn how to handle emergency decisions in Chapter 1, “A Bird’s-Eye View.”)

  F. Bad News

  How would you and your partner feel if you found out that there was an infertility problem? How would this change your thoughts about the future? Might you feel a little wistful or even angry?

  If you’re leaning toward parenthood, would you consider infertility treatment or adoption?

  If you’re leaning toward remaining childfree, do you think you’d regret the loss of this option, even though it’s an option you’d probably never exercise?

  G. Making Connections

  Imagine that five years from now you lose your partner through death or divorce. If you were single again, would you rather be a parent or childfree?

  Some single or widowed parents find their children a source of comfort, a means through which they can relate to the outside world. In the case of widowhood, the child can be a way of staying close to the lost partner. Others find single parenthood a burden that drains their financial resou
rces and cuts into their social life, privacy, and quiet time.

  Unless you’re on the verge of being divorced or widowed, you should not base the baby decision on this possibility. You should assume that you and your partner will be together until proven otherwise. However, this exercise helps you with values clarification.

  Timetables

  A sensible baby decision requires a good sense of time. Wanting a baby now may be incompatible with starting a graduate program in September. Or combining career and motherhood may seem doable until you open your datebook and ask what would have to come out or be postponed if you had a child.

  Here are some tools to give you a time frame for decision-making.

  A. Countdown

  How many hours a week do you spend on:

  Work

  Recreation and socializing with family and friends

  Hobbies

  Down-time: staring into space, petting the cat, or hanging out with your partner in front of the TV

  Relaxation, yoga, meditation

  Sports, exercise

  Political activity

  Religious or spiritual activities

  Time alone with your partner

  Sleep

  How many hours a week do you think parenthood would require? How would your schedule change if you had a baby?

  Your best source of information is probably some friends who have a one-or-two-year-old. Ask them for a breakdown of their week. If you are not sure whether or how much you will work if you have a child, you might want to check-in with friends who work full or parttime as well as one who is home full-time.

  Which activities might you cut out altogether?

  Would some activities be possible at home when your child is asleep or playing? Might it be possible to bring the baby along to some activities?