divine angst

I’m continuing with the all-request end-of-the-week. Transmogriflaw asked about children.

Specifically, if I could choose, when would I have children, how many I would have, and how would I fit that into my life plan?

And this is a tough question.

When Mr. Angst and I were first planning our wedding, we had a conversation that essentially boiled down to the following timeline: we’d wait until our first anniversary and then plan to start our family.

Our first anniversary was last month. We are doing a lot of things right now—looking into selling our house, researching apartments in the two cities we might move to, filling out financial aid forms, visiting campuses and talking to people at the schools we’re looking at. We are not really planning to start a family.

And part of me is sad about that.

For a long time, I wasn’t sure I was cut out to have kids. I think babies are adorable and I like holding them when they are clean and smell nice and smile and giggle. But I don’t really know what to do with a crying baby. Likewise, toddlers are precious and make me smile when they’re behaved and cute; bratty toddlers, though, terrify me. I often don’t know what to say to older kids, how to talk to them, and what they’re interested in. Basically, sometimes I’m petrified of children.

So the “when” always seemed like it would be really far away—until I met Mr. Angst and the reality of family and children came a little closer to home. Of course, once I started really thinking about it, I was hooked—babies! I wanted babies! (Or maybe just a couple. You know.) I was bitten by the bug, big time. I wanted to hold babies and play with our friends’ kids and I knew, just knew, I wanted to start a family as soon as possible.

In my family (extended family), babies are why you get married. Oh, sure, marry someone you love, but then start having babies. All of my married cousins had their first baby within a year of the wedding. No lie. This often makes me feel like I should have started last year with the baby-making. But Mr. Angst and I were pretty adamant about one thing—we wanted some time with just the two of us. It was a good decision.

No one in my family is pressuring me/us to have kids, but there’s a part of me that wants to get started soon—we’re both ready for kids. But there’s also the part of me that wants to do law school the way most of my classmates will, and not have to worry about being pregnant while looking for a job or having a small child while starting my career.

So I’m not really sure right now about the ideal “when” to start having kids. I think a lot about having a baby in law school, and it honestly doesn’t seems like such a bad idea. Flexible schedule and all that. But then I think that maybe I’ll wait till I’m out and have a job for a year or so. And then I flip back to not wanting to wait that long, and then the little voice says I’ll only be barely into my thirties if I wait, so surely I can just hold off, and it goes on like this forever.

I want a family—family is important to me. I have great parents and wonderful siblings and I want them to be terrific grandparents and amazing aunts and uncles. I know Mr. Angst will be the best dad ever. And I want to be as wonderful a mother to my children as my mom was to me and my brother and sister. The “when” and “how” and “how many,” though—I just can’t seem to figure out answers to those kinds of concrete questions.

One thing I do know: There will never be a “perfect” time to have kids. So we’ll probably just start our family when it seems like it’s time. If that’s while we’re in school or right after we graduate or after we’ve both been out for a while, so be it.

So I guess I don’t really have an answer to Transmogriflaw’s question. Four months ago, I probably would have said, unequivocally, that I was going to have a baby in my second year of law school, and then maybe another within a few years of starting my first job. But now, I just don’t know. I can see us choosing that path, and I can see us choosing to wait. I can see a lot of different options, and they all seem pretty equally likely and almost equally attractive. It’s tough if you’re me, and you like to plan.