Should you or shouldn't you (have kids)? Advice from an on-the-fencer who took the plunge.

Hi there. I know it. You've all heard enough from me. If you are one of my Facebook friends you know that I am a super WHINY complainy sometimes-joyous new parent. In fact, even though I promised myself I would never become one of "them",  even most of my photos now are of my sweet Utah. ( One of the reasons new mamas stop posting photos of themselves is because they never look photo-worthy anymore. At least I don't)... But yes, my sweet son, pictured below, ALWAYS does. Sorry about that. If you are not my FB friend then perhaps you've read my last few posts about my horrendous postpartum anxiety and PTSD and if not, go ahead, read them, and know that you will never have THAT bad. Sadly I am (WAS) a worse case scenario in real life. ANYHOW.

I honestly didn't know if I ever would had kids. One thing is for sure, I definitely KNEW I DID NOT NEED to in order to live a "full life" as so many of our grandparents and parents like to tell us. I knew and I STILL KNOW that that is hogwash. There are a million people and communities in our world who could use the extra love, free time, optimism, happiness and intelligence of child-free people. There are countless ways to volunteer, to create art, to write stories and communicate, and to work your butt off that rival the efforts of having kids and the rewards that doing so brings. I think of my hero, Terry Tempest Williams. I can't get over that people will tell you that you will be "missing out" on the greatest thing in life because IT SIMPLY IS NOT TRUE. This world is great in so many ways, and having children is just one of them.

I ended up taking the plunge because I am an experience-junkie. I didn't want to not know what it was all about. I guess that means that I traded off the experience of not knowing, which, indeed, is an experience of its own. And now I will never be a childfree 55 year old. I suppose I thought I sort of could guess what that would be like since I had been childfree so many years (38), but I could not imagine what being a mom would be like and I was plain curious like a cat. And I also thought I would be pretty good at it (so far ... NOT). I wanted to one day watch my future 30 year old son drive up to his parent's house on the night before Thanksgiving and to walk out into the cold and greet him and give him a giant hug and tell him how much I love him and miss him. I wanted at least some kind of mother-child relationship in my future. I wanted to know what that is.

And now I want to do something good for the world. I want to help those who are on the fence like I once was know a few REAL TRUTHS about having a baby. For some reason I was one of those people who everyone told me how "wonderful" and surprisingly "easy" it was. I'm not making that up. Multiple couples told me that if they'd "KNOWN HOW EASY IT WAS THEY WOULD HAVE STARTED WAY EARLIER"????????? Um excuse me WHAT???? Now that I can see clearly and am a mama myself I cannot believe these people told me these things! My sister actually doesn't even believe that anyone ever told me this but I SWEAR IT HAPPENED. When I finally made my decision to try as hard as I could to get pregnant, their unbelievably cheery words echoed in my mind! "It's easier than before we had kids!" ... "people are huge whimps, it's really so awesome!" I also heard "you've lived for yourself long enough, get on with it." And other odd and rude pressure-y statements considering my OLD AGE and all (mad face). Don't get me wrong, I am so grateful that I now have my amazing son, but truth be told, if I'd known the REAL truth, he probably wouldn't be here. So maybe it was God/ the Universe/ Great mama spirit/ mother nature's way of tricking me, I'm not sure. But yeah, basically, I got punk'd.  In the end I am sure I will be even beyond grateful for the strange and synchronistic coercing of the Universe, but MAN were those people either extremely lucky or LYING OUT THEIR ASSES.

Since having a baby I now realize about ten thousand things that there was no way I could have understood before. Some of them are great and some of them are not great at all. There is just NO possible WAY to know until you have done it. I can't tell you how many times I read awful things and thought "that won't be me" and how wrong I turned out to be. How much it is EXACTLY ME now. It must be biology's way of getting a pregnant person to cope with the circumstances, by offering hope and justice through thoughts of "that won't be me". And in the end (post having a child)... sadly IT IS YOU and more. I mean I am sure there are a few rare gems who become new moms who can look just as glamorous and be just as happy if not happier and continue some amazing career and still play in their band and start working out 4 weeks postpartum, but I could not make it happen. I am not a gloss-over-my-life always-look-pretty kind of gal. I can't help it. I am bluntly and abundantly honest. I am honest to a point of fault. I can not tell a lie. Let me tell you this, you can trust me when I tell you the things you should or shouldn't know about yourself and your possible future(s) whilst deciding on whether to ever have kids.

Here are some KEY things to consider.

1. How do you function on little sleep? DAYS IN A ROW.

Some people are decent with this. I am not one of them. My brother, who has three kids, is one of them. My husband even, is good at functioning on little sleep (albeit he is 7 years my younger which makes a big difference on the amount of sleep you can work with). Are you 25 or 35? Cause age matters about this. And let me tell you, there is a GIANT CHANCE that you will be more exhausted and living on less sleep than you ever thought possible.

I knew this, going in. And I have been obsessed with getting 7-8 hours of sleep for years now, as when I get less my days are awful, my mood is awful, and I can not enjoy anything about life. Somehow I thought the stars and the universe would smile upon me and grant me a wonderful sleep-thru-the-night from day one baby. Yeah freaking right. Oh, but I do have friends who it has happened to, HOWEVER, DO NOT COUNT ON IT. I barely made it through newbornhood and all. I just barely, by the fur of my fingernails, made it through. Like... picture me 15 feet from the entrance of a state mental health facility in real life. Of course my own hormonal and PTSD induced insomnia made matters 30 times worse but...

Prepare for 4-9 hours of sleep over 72 hour periods. For WEEKS. Possibly YEARS. I have lucked out (since he was 6 months old) and now six nights out of seven my guy sleeps eleven hours in a row from 11pm to 10am. We are lucky lucky ducks. Yes, we wanted a late riser so we made that happen.

If, due to lack of sleep, you cannot function to the point of insanity, extreme irrationality, scary and sometimes suicidal mood swings, rage, hallucinations... YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE KIDS.

If not sleeping just puts you in a bad mood.... GO AHEAD AND HAVE KIDS.

2. Are you ever bored?

Are you one of those people with a million things to do every day besides work? The kind of person who even when you are jobless you can't seem to find enough time? Someone who likes to read as many books as you can, make art or music and create things, learn about all sorts of subject matter, go out with friends, travel... etc?

Um...... Having a child is unadvisable for these types. Extremely un. TAKE CAUTION. I am one of these peoples. I have, in the past, wished I could live FIVE lives sometimes there are so many things I want to do in my ONE life. I wish there were 37 hours in each day! I used to resent school, work, anything that took my free time away from me. Before having a baby I couldn't IMAGINE why a baby would really take all that much time. I just kept thinking, even while pregnant, "it's just a BABY. It can't use up ALL OF YOUR TIME. What are people complaining about so much?!!! Can't they just set it in a swing or a playpen and get on with their day!?"
All I can think of to say to my old, COMPLETELY IGNORANT SELF, sorry hun-bun, you just could not have known the amount of dependency and pure neediness of a baby. You were such an idealist/ idiot. And yet now I can barely remember how I could have been so ignorant. Didn't I think clearly? It's a helpless baby! Of course it needs your every second! Of course you will not have time to yourself for a few years! (I've been broken). And honestly you do get a couple hours here and there once he or she is like four months old.

If, by chance, you DO get bored often or even on occasion... Go ahead, have a kid. You will never be bored again.

3. How do you function under crazy amounts of stress? Do you buck up or do you back out?

Me, myself, I'm a back-outer. Yep. Like I would QUIT a job or just walk away from things that required too much of me. Sometimes a job would start out perfect but after a year the place would increase my responsibilities times twenty but not offer any more pay. Yeah right. So I would quit. Because responsibility was never my middle name anyways. And I would get right back to my happy old self by saying "Dismiss whatever insults your soul", my favorite quote by Walt Whitman. This quote got me out of bad jobs, yucky relationships, a few bills, and even friendships-gone-bad. I could always get my old happy back quite easily by just backing out and pretending it had never existed. I know... "GROW UP" some people must be thinking of me. But that was my WHOLE PLAN. TO NEVER HAVE TO GROW UP.

And besides...News flash Walt Whitman. A BABY SCREAM-CRYING for anywhere from 10 minutes to 4 hours ABSOLUTELY INSULTS A MOTHER'S SOUL. And yet, dismissing your baby is NOT an option. So there went my life motto.

So. In other words, if you aren't a back-outer and can rise to the stressful occasions, handling them with a smile and a sense of humor then YES YOU SHOULD HAVE KIDS.

If you run from anxiety and stress towards the beautiful sunset with your arms raised up in freedom from the relief of escaping the horror and responsibility that wanted to consume you... YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE KIDS.

4. Do you enjoy driving and riding around in a car?

Do you like to just chill in your car with the stereo on? Driving around FOR HOURS AT A TIME  or parking in shady places and just surfing the net on your smartphone while nothing productive happens (besides a baby's nap)? Then yes YOU SHOULD HAVE KIDS.

Would sitting in a car OUTSIDE of Target/ Trader Joe's/ Lowe's when you'd rather be shopping INSIDE drive you bananas to where you would consider offering a stranger money to carsit? I RECOMMEND deeply considering your choice to have kids.

5.  Do you love babies?

Have you always loved babies? Did you love playing with baby dolls? Do you love kids? YES YOU SHOULD HAVE KIDS.

Did baby dolls bug you? Do you always wonder what people mean when they say newborns are cute? I am (was) one of these types. I put my baby doll in the oven and turned it on when I was 4 or 5. Baby Laura, I remember her name. I just thought it would be fun. I didn't mean to be cruel and wasn't trying to be evil, I just knew it was a doll and wanted to see what would happen (I don't think I fully understood ovens yet)....
If you have never been a fan of babies or playing house then you should still weigh ALL OF THE previous qualities in yourself heavily before deciding to have children.  Although I am now bafflingly obsessed with babies I did not used to give a hoot. I feel like part of the reason I turned into a baby stalker is that I am in utter AWE of their power. Like tiny kings with no rhyme or reason riding around in gilded carseat chariots. Perhaps it's more of a fascination with these tiny kings/queens. They can take down Beyonce and Jay-Z for goodness sake. They can obliterate a lifetime of hard work with a few months of crying. There is a reason some people are maternal and others aren't.

6. Do people with kids bug you?

That's right. They used to bug me. A lot. Their OBSESSION with their kids. I wondered how a kid could grow up healthily with a parent so LOST in their obsession with their own kid? I felt like people were losing themselves as well as all boundaries for their kids.

And now I'm one of them.

If (most) people with kids drive you nuts, Facebook statuses included, consider not having any in order to save face and dignity (a highly likely chance that you will TURN INTO THE PERSON you don't like).
If you are cheerfully adoring of all your friend's with kids' photos and comments and conversation then childbear away!

7. Lastly. How much do you enjoy food? Good, leisurely, beautiful food?

If you are one of the types who doesn't mind throwing a Hot-Pocket in the microwave, then kids might be easier for you. And even if you are more on the organic side but a cold meal of yesterday's lentils with a stale edge of homemade bread and a handful of cherry tomatoes could be a daily staple then you might handle this kid thing in stride too.

Sadly I (and my husband especially) loved to make long, extravagant yummy dinners with like ten kinds of veggies chopped up and sides of cooked grains and some kind of sauteed tofu or baked fish. He would make homemade salsas, sauces, and line up the condiments (sriracha, cajun spice, butter, etc) and we would plate up and sit down for an awesome new flick. Those days are gone. For now at least.

If you highly value your relaxing evening meal with a glass of wine (ahhhh my Downton Abbey days ahhhh), you may want to carefully consider your strengths and weaknesses when deciding to have kids.



Now. For the classic and Abbey-esque paradox/ hypocrisy. All things considered. I am in love with my child. What began as beyond-difficult-turned-identity-crisis and suddenly became beautiful. I am in love with life again. And even if you are like me, a person who, if I had met my old self I would have highly discouraged EVER having a baby, chances are it could become a joy and a renewal and a true love of yours, this parenting thing. I mean c'mon, I failed EVERY SINGLE ONE of my own 7 questions! But remember this for those of you who do fail those questions. It's not just hard work that ends up being worth it. It is sometimes horribly, disfiguringly difficult and hard work. Hard like sad hard. Hard like the kind of hard if someone you loved died. Hard like the worst day at work ever times ten. Hard like not fun in the slightest. Hard like you might go crazy. Hard like a boulder you will never be able to move.

But... that being said... I do have a feeling that anything that pushes you to go through something so difficult will be worth it in ways that I am not yet able to understand or express. And that hard work NEVER leads to nothing, provided you are an intelligent enough parent to truly work in a conscious way to be the best you can be as a parent and to simultaneously be the best you can be to yourself. To actually NOT leave yourself out of the equation.

And if, indeed, you never want kids and know this to be a truth inside of you, then more power to you. Luckily more and more people are coming to terms with this!  (Not that you need MY dumb reassurance...) I say embrace your forties, fifties, sixties and beyond being a childfree AMAZING woman/ or man and know that the world NEEDS people like you desperately. And so do other people's children. You are the fun ones, the carefree wise ones, the artists, the dreamers who never quit, the ambitious, the adventurers. You will be taken care of. You will be just as loved, those who say you won't don't have the creativity or imagination to know how good friends and nieces and nephew can actually be. In fact, you are a treasure to the world, we need you.

Happy Bird-day to me! (giving thanks to the natural world)

At the last minute we decided that it would be worth a try to go on a birthday trip for my, gulp... 38th. I'll just pretend I just wrote 28th. But... I could refer to my old blog post called "Age is just another word for how long rad things have been happening to you" which incidently references trying to get pregnant (and failing at the time), my first time to the Elkhorn Slough (the subject matter of this post now) and sisterhood with my sister (and the fear of not having daughters). I believe I was 35 when I wrote the dang thing.

Anyhow, on to current affairs. I am in the midst of reading Refuge, by Terry Tempest Williams, who I like to think of as a kindred spirit to me. And to my family. Well, I feel a kinship to her that is like family. I have only read some of "Red" before Refuge but I went to see her speak in December and it was she that sparked the realization that my son would be named Utah, or Vyvian Utah, since Art won on the first name.

Utah originates from an Apache Indian word (yuttahih), which means "one that is higher up." Europeans thought the word refered to Indians living higher in the mountains than the Navajo - the territory became known as the land of the Utes, and eventually Utah." from statesymbolsusa.org

Anyhoo, whilst struggling through my personal postpartum hell in those first six months, I found that watching birds became a source of solace and happiness for me. For a few months I forgot how and why to love most of the things that I used to love, but nature and birdwatching still made my spirit smile. The desert still lured me. The outdoors felt invigorating still, especially when the sun shone. Wildlife became more of a cornerstone for me than ever. I have loved watching the birds for a few years now, but I really got into it while feeling sort of trapped in my living room, less able to get around with my birth injury and my baby. And so from the deck of our Nevada City house and down in the garden I would try to see what I could see with my binoculars. I was especially thrilled at the frequent visits of a Great Blue Heron and a Red-shouldered Hawk that would perch right outside on the bare tree branches. Right before we moved out I often saw Mourning Doves and more finches and sparrows. And of course the hummingbirds were in action daily.

He blends into the white of the water, but there she (or he) is.

I also would drive to other neighborhoods that got sun for longer than ours did to see and hear the birds at sunset, walking around with my boy in the Beco carrier, pulling out the binoculars and both the boy and I just listening to the sweet chirpage. He has always loved nature walks, and I am so very grateful for that! He loved his first real hike in Joshua Tree, and then our bird walks, hikes in Yellowstone, walks around our neighborhood now (I finally got a backpack with a real frame!) I hope he is a bird lover like me!

Walking downhill in the Morgan Ranch neighborhood, which has fantastic open sky and sunset views.

View from Morgan Ranch neighborhood walk

So for my birthday on the 10th I wanted to head to the Elkhorn Slough Estuarine Reserve which is about thirty minutes south of Santa Cruz, near the town of Moss Landing. There are hundreds of species of birds that hang out here, it is one of the top ten spots in the United States for birding and the amount of bird species. Sadly, when we arrived on Tuesday (my birthday) the actual reserve was closed! It is closed Mondays and Tuesdays... But nature herself was not closed. :) So we took a detour and went to Moss Landing State Beach and walked along the inlet there by a little bay. We saw all the same birds that would have been accessible through the reserve and I had so much fun! Utah did too, and Art. We met up with my long time dear friend Ruebi and her son Nico, since they live not far and I do not get to see them enough as it is

I forgot my Birds of Northwest America book so I was trying to get my Audubon app to work on my iPhone to identify the birds when we happened upon some informational signs as we walked. I was so happy to find out the names of exactly which birds were all around us, as the app can be very hard to narrow down the species you are looking at! And I was even happier because I had taken notice of one specific bird with an almost needle thin long curved beak (it curves slightly downward). I found out that it is called the "long billed curlew" and it just so happened to be the name of the exact chapter I was reading in "Refuge"! I was thrilled with the synchronicity of it all. Not only did the informational signs show pictures and descriptions of the birds in the vicinity, but also the food sources for the birds, most of which live beneath the wet sand.

In the year 2000 I had come to the slough once before on a biology class trip (with my sister- it was awesome) and I remembered learning about the "innkeeper worm" as we kayaked through the slough. The class was led by Mike Denega, a terrific professor and biologist, who now heads up "Classrooms without Walls" for Folsom Lake College. Anhow, this cool innkeeper worm,  it lives exactly beak's length below the sand! A perfect dinner for the marbled godwits and the long billed curlews... We even got to watch them slurping up the worms.

If you are interested in nature and science I highly recommend a visit to Moss Landing and the slough!

My boy kept getting sidetracked!

Mostly you can see Marbled Godwits and Least Sandpipers here, but the long billed curlews are in there too!

Here we are perched along an algae filled inlet that a footpath led over. There were small birds I didn't identify here.

Nico was a huge fan of my binoculars. It was so cute. He was really good at focusing right in on the birds! Suddenly I got very excited to be a mama to a little boy! Perhaps if Ruebi and her sweet little family move to Nevada City little Nico can be of a good scientific influence on my Ute. Not pictured here is my sweet Arth, who took most of the photos!

Here at the docks you can see two pelicans and a sea otter! I got to watch these pelicans fishing and gulping down their dinner. I love having binoculars!  

On the docks. This boy was fascinated by the seal faces that would pop up out of the water. They looked like little subhumans swimming toward us. 

Here is one of the friendly seals. It was so cool that the seals and sea otters hung out so close to each other.

A snowy egret

 I am so grateful that the book Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams led me to this magical place for my birthday! It was renewing to my 38 year old soul to walk the slough with Art and Ruebi and our boys. All in all I identified about 7 kinds of birds. Avocets, Snowy Egrets, Brown Pelicans, American White Pelicans, Marbled Godwits, Long Billed Curlews, and Least Sandpipers. There were tiny birds I have yet to identify.
There is a part in Refuge that stands out to me, it is a letter from Terry's mother (who is dying of cancer) to her, sent from the wild lands of Switzerland. She has been hiking with her husband, Terry's father, and remembers a time they visited Hawaii.
It reads:

When we went to Hawaii for the first time, nineteen years ago, we ran and embraced it all. We didn't just look at the ocean, we dove into the waves and tasted salt water on our lips. We greeted the sunrise on the crater in Maui and looked out over thousands of miles. I'll swear we saw the curvature of the earth. We celebrated each day by walking along the beach, picking up shells. We ran into the wind and fell on to the sand, watching the tiny sandpipers dart back and forth. 

And we are doing that now. We are hiking up and down the Alps together, walking farther than I ever thought possible. We have slept on the grass next to cows with bells around their necks. We have walked thigh-high in wildflowers. The natural world is a third party in our marriage. It holds us close and lets us revel in the intimacy of all that is real. 

Although Art is not into the wilderness the way that I am, I swear the years will convert him. The magic and beauty and miracle of the natural world is contagious and captivating. But besides that, here is a letter from a woman that knows her death is pursuing her. And even during such a struggle inside her soul, wilderness brings her solace and wonder. No wonder it has been my crutch through my darker days. It has a power that is unrivaled. Now that I have come out on the other side and feel filled with my old vigor and enthusiasm for life I can feel the power of that nature far more than ever.

And from the Good Book.

My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

I interpret this as the power of duality and paradox in life. The more I accept my darker and weaker times, the more I am able to revel in the beauty that is around me now that I have moved on. One could never know the true feeling of hot if they never felt what icy cold is like. One could never know the real brilliance of light if they had never experienced a dark dark moonless night. These ups and downs make my heart deeper, stronger, and more aware. For this I am so grateful for my struggles, painful as they have been.  I am humbled by beauty and happiness after such a dark internal struggle has happened. I never thought I could be more grateful than the gratitude I experienced for life before having a baby. but I was wrong. I think I might be the most thankful person in all the world now. Thankful for the miracles in nature everywhere around me. Thankful to be alive. Thankful for my baby boy. Thankful for my absolutely wonderful friends and family. Thankful to Art, who has put up with the hardest parts of me. Thankful to the Great Spirit that moves in all things.

I will continue my geekiness by returning to this and other bird reserves as often as possible. There are so many to discover in California, so I hear! The fire has been stoked and is now burning at full speed in my heart.

Mamas and their boys. I had such an amazing time and I wish I could have spent so much more time with Ruebi and Nico.