I Never Thought I Wanted a Baby, Until It Was All I Could Think About

The two most powerful moments of my life were the ones when each of my daughters drifted into this world and got placed into my arms. Since my own childhood was a complete and total train wreck, I never really put all that much thought into having babies.

“Diapers” and “pacifiers” were just meaningless words back in the days when I was nomadically slipping on and off of tour buses, interviewing country music artists. I didn’t live an estrogen-filled existence where I felt guilty for not fulfilling my biological duty here on earth to reproduce. Each day that I woke up, all I worried about was myself, and that was just the way I wanted it, thank you very much.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved OTHER people’s kids, and judging by the way they came running my way when I walked into a room, it seemed like the feeling was mutual. The bottom line was that I just didn’t want to do the whole “mommy” thing. I know that women are not supposed to say that they don’t want children out loud at the risk of sounding like a biological malfunction, but I really held no real desire to become a mother.

In my late twenties, when I was forced to stand around at social gatherings listening to other women my age yammer on about their biological clock running out, I didn’t feel my uterus wincing. I didn’t have any deep need to commiserate with their primal yearning to bring little humans into the world. All I felt was annoyed at how sad and pathetic they seemed, and I frantically searched for the closest escape route.

At those moments, my desire to NOT have a baby was every bit as powerful as theirs was to have one, yet no one was talking about THAT. And like clockwork (yes, pun intended), rolling my eyes, I would defiantly announce to my eggs and uterus for the millionth time that I was a modern woman who had the right NOT to choose motherhood. I would then slip away from the estrogen fest.

Something Just Clicked

I know that to say one day out of the blue I suddenly had the desire to have a baby sounds a bit crazy, but it’s true. Motherhood came my way without a lot of fanfare. That’s not to say that I didn’t plan on having both of my daughters. I had traveled, learned, succeeded, and loved, so it just seemed like the most natural step to take next.

In my case, I didn’t spend endless years worrying that my time was running out or that I was some kind of anomaly because I didn’t want to procreate. I just lived my life and did all of the things that I wanted and needed to do in order to evolve in my journey here on Earth. In those rare moments when I was willing to be completely honest with myself, I think somewhere in my brain, I knew that my trepidation about children was motivated by fear. I wasn’t lucky enough to win the lottery when it came to childhoods; my own was mired in addiction, pain, neglect, and loneliness. It’s not easy to imagine being a parent when you are a child left to parent yourself.

Being Ready for Mommydom

What I have discovered in my own parenting journey is that while our bodies may have a hardwired clock that counts down the number of eggs we have until we can no longer bear children, our minds and hearts are a totally different matter. Just like I never obsessed about having babies, neither have I worried that I waited too long to have them. “Everything happens for a reason” has always been my mantra in life, and I believe that when my soul knew that it was ready to have a baby, it told me that it was time.

And trust me when I say that I know better than anyone how physically challenging it is having a baby after thirty-five (being that I almost died having my second child). Yet having a baby when one isn’t emotionally ready or mature enough for the selflessness that it requires presents a whole other set of challenges. Parenting is always difficult, no matter when it comes our way, and we have to be 100% certain that we are ready to make the commitment it requires of us. Because once a baby comes into our world, it’s the most important job that we will have.

Life is funny. One moment we can be sitting backstage interviewing a country phenomenon without even a stray thought about motherhood, and the next we can be staring lovingly at our new baby wondering how we ever existed before them. As it turns out, I was a shoe-in for motherhood, and I believe my success had everything to do with waiting until the time was right.

What was your journey to motherhood like? Share your story with us in the comments below!

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Tags : confessions   motherhood   



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