Expiration dates

Disclaimer: (Becca this is for you, ha ha)

This entry voices my opinion on marriage and having kids and is in no way meant to insult or hurt the feelings of anyone whose circumstances are contrary to what I believe to be acceptable for my own life and situation.

 

Well, nothing much has happened this week.  Today at work, I ran into a girl that I went to high school with.  She has two kids and is pregnant with the third.  Yikes!  She asked me if I had any kids and I said no.  This has become a popular discussion lately for me.  Chris has been making comments like "Just think, this time next year you'll have a baby".  I might just be the only person in this family that isn't trying to have a baby and doesn't exactly want one at the moment.  I go through phases with this.  When Chris and I were dating, I was getting a little baby hungry, only because it's fun to buy clothes for kids and I had kind of inherited his nieces and nephews, and his little brother Taylor.  Then I was okay with waiting.  After we got married, we agreed to wait at least a year to have kids so that we could enjoy time together.  Well, after that year we felt like we weren't quite ready and we agreed to wait longer.  Over the years I have pushed it further back.  It was moved to when I turned 25 years old, a reasonable age for child bearing.  Well, once the year came when I was nearing 25, I started doing some calculating, rationalizing waiting a little longer.  The calculating came to, if we started at 28 and have a few kids we would be in our mid 50's or so when our kids were out of the house.  Not a bad age when I figured that is about where Rachel and Mom are right now.  Well, as some of you are aware, I am turning  28 at the end of this year and it is time for the annual child bearing evasion maneuver.  This time, I'm not exactly sure how it will play out.  When I think about being pregnant, nothing appealing comes to mind.  The weight gain, nausea, fatigue, stretch marks, baby getting ripped out of unmentionable places, or even a baby latched onto you feeding at various times of the day.  Okay, most of these things I already have problems with (fat, fatigue and stretch marks), so I don't need more of it.  The rest are just plain scary.  This one lady at work said she gained 70-80 pounds in one week of water weight, I guess its called Toxemia.  I was in shock and cried out "That happens?!!!!"  they were laughing at me.  Earlier this year Chris mentioned having kids to me before going to bed and it gave me so much anxiety that I couldn't sleep that night.  Right now I'm to the point where it's not giving me anxiety on a regular basis.  Ha ha, funny, because just typing this is giving me a little anxiety.  Anyways, I realize that I will probably just have to go with it and eventually give in because it's all psychological.  Some people are really taking offense to me not having kids.  It's somewhat shocking/amusing.  One of the guys I used to work with at Kmart used to tell me that my ovaries were going to shrivel up if I didn't hurry and have kids, and would make a shriveling sound every once in a while whenever the topic came up.  I like to remind everyone that contrary to popular belief, your ovaries don't shrivel up at 28.  I read on the internet just the other day that there was a woman who gave birth while she was in her 60's!  Her ovaries were one of the  few things left that were obviously not shriveled.  Anyways, I told him that he was nearing his expiration date for being single in Utah county.  He's my age which is 27 and isn't dating anyone.  At  work this week a few of the coworkers were talking about getting married, our new receiving manager just moved here from California and had to have the culture of living in Utah explained to him.  He said he was 28 when he got married and he said relatives are constantly hounding him and his wife to have kids, so much in fact that they send Christmas cards to their unborn children.  Now that's a little creepy if you ask me.  In the rest of the country, I believe the average age for marriage is 28, (unless you count the FLDS church where they marry off 14 year olds to men 3 times their age.) although I think there are actually fewer marriages in general now a days which is not my point.  My point is that our culture is to get married at a young age and reproduce quickly after marriage (Utah/Mormon).  This is not something that I believe in.  I was very adamant about waiting until I was 21 to get married (I was) which is a silly thing because it's still pretty young now that I think about it, but there were quite a few girls in my graduating class that were sporting promise rings their senior year, or who got married right out of high school.  I couldn't imagine that being me.  It is mind boggling to me that we are allowed to get married before we are legally allowed to gamble!  Isn't marriage one big gamble?  Anyways, who knows what will happen in the future.   Right now I enjoy pushing Chris' buttons by telling him that we can have kids if we adopt or if I can have a surrogate.  He said "No, you are having our kids yourself!"  Bummer.  I hope nobody took this entry the wrong way.  Oh, and please, don't send Christmas cards to our unborn children.