Children

My fiance was saying how he would really liked to be married in a catholic church because that is the faith that he grew up in, which is completely fine with me even though I'm not a catholic. He was saying how we need to decide how many kids we want to have because we're going to have separate interviews with a priest. We need to have the same answer or he might not marry us. And I FREAKED out thinking about it because I'm just not ready to have kids yet.

Here is the thing. I like kids, I really do. But I think that they are a great responsibility that I refuse to take lightly. Growing up, I never was around babies a lot, or even small children (after I stopped being one ha ha). I wasn't huge into babysitting, and when I did it was always a bunch of kids that were really disrespectful. So I didn't really have a positive image of kids/babies growing up. That was until our new neighbors moved in with their 6 month old baby that I'll call John. John's dad worked and his mom went to school to be a nurse. While she was going to school, me or my sister would babysit John at his house in the mornings. He was great. A really happy baby, very easily entertained and very loving.

One of the funniest memories I have of him was when my family went over to their house one night for dinner. As soon as he saw us his little face lighted up and a huge smile took over his face... until he started crying, while still smiling ha ha. He was usually asleep when we got to their house in the morning to babysit, but when he was awake he would cry when his mommy left for school. So while he was happy to see us, he got sad because he thought his mom was leaving. It was kind of funny because he was crying and smiling at the same time.

A few months before he turned 3, he died in an accident, a few days before my birthday. It was really hard to deal with. I can't even imagine what his parents went through. The last memory I have was of him running down their drive way in the summer to come hug me. He had just learned to say my name, and he was giggling and saying my name as he ran towards me. After that I didn't really want to have anything to do with kids. Why even risk that kind of pain when something like that can happen?

My saving grace was a job I (somewhat reluctantly) took a couple years later, helping to homeschool 4 kids. Their ages ranged from 2-8, and while at first I didn't bond with the youngest boy, eventually I came to love all of them as if they were my own siblings. They were wonderful kids and really opened up my heart in the way only children can. I worked with them for 4 years, and towards the end I felt so blessed to be getting paid to do a "job" that felt like I was hanging out with family. I really owe a lot to that family for what they helped me through. And they showed me that large families aren't that bad (they had 8 kids total), and when they have an amazing mother like they did, that it actually worked really well.

So while someday I do want children, I want to take my time getting there. I want to make sure I've lived and have no regrets. I want to make sure that I will be able to do everything I can, to be the best parent I can. And I'm just not at that point yet.

I told my fiance a few days after he mentioned it, that I'd been feeling really pressured to come up with an answer, and that we should just both agree on a random number for the interview, and we could decide later what we really wanted. Which he said he had said the first time, just that I didn't understand it ha ha. Ahhh the joys of miscommunication when you're in a relationship. He didn't mean to put pressure on me, just that we needed to agree on a number for now, but really we'll decide later when we're ready to have kids. Maybe we'll have 1 and decide that's it, or maybe we'll like the first one so much we'll have 5. We both know we would like to have kids someday, just not right now.