How Do You Know When You’re Ready For Kids?

Right after I had a baby, Managing Editor Maddie decided she wanted to interview me about motherhood. She offered up an open thread for everyone to ask their questions and share their fears and concerns about having a kid, and the floodgates opened. Almost five hundred comments later, person after person expressed profound relief. It wasn’t that they had answers to their questions, it’s that they finally realized tons of other people were terrified at the idea of having kids too.

Society perpetuates this myth that you “just know” if you want to be a mother. All of us know someone who, at least on the surface, seems calm and sure in their decision to pursue parenting. They always wanted to have a kid, everything came together, and they’re so glad to get a chance to explore this blissful new stage of life. And let’s be for real. If we’re struggling with the decision about having kids, we secretly hate this person, or at least envy their clear certainty.

While I spent my early years wanting kids, once having kids seemed like a viable reality (instead of something that should be avoided at all costs), all my certainty vanished. Like, totally gone. I’d worked hard to build a life that really made me happy, and I was worried that by having kids I would be giving it all up. Every part of the decision to pursue pregnancy was filled with terror. And when I finally decided to leap, on the blind faith that David was really sure it would be a good thing for us, I ended up with serious peripartum depression, sobbing through my pregnancy, worried that I’d ruined everything. (More on maternal mental illness here.)

Here is what I really wanted to know: that certainty didn’t make you a better mother. That there isn’t always such a thing as “just knowing.” And that once this tiny human arrived, I was going to love the shit out of him.

So today, we wanted to open the floor to your fears and concerns. If you’re debating having kids, or not, today is your day. But first, we wanted to start with a story from a reader. There are a million stories out there about women who have perfect certainty, and less about the messy reality of facing the unknown.

I’m happily married, thirty-years-old, and just finished my intense MFA program. And while I have little issue with commitment (I’ve been with my husband for ten years), I do tend to freak out at major life or relationship changes. Moving in together? Yep, cried uncontrollably on the porch while talking to my then-boyfriend on the phone. Getting married? Some items I freaked out about: the word “marriage,” being part of another person’s family, and whether being with a man for most of my adult romantic life was a mistake (I’m bisexual; and it wasn’t).

So I’m not surprised to find myself, once again, flipping out. Everything in my life is ready to have a baby, except me.

We are financially stable and own our home. We both have healthy careers and vibrant lives we enjoy, and we’ve discussed how bringing a baby into this will affect these things. We’ve talked about how we want to be as parents. I went off birth control, starting charting my cycle, talked to my doctor, started taking prenatal vitamins, discussed having children with friends, etc. I planned my career post-grad school so that I could take off the entire spring semester in case I had a baby in March-May. The plan was (is?) to start trying this summer.

And I’m still not ready.

Here’s the thing: I can talk myself into it, logically. Everything is aligned, and it’s the ideal situation. (My parents are even moving to the same neighborhood as us—so come fall, we have free childcare.) But I’m not feeling it in my gut—in my heart. There is no excitement for me. Sometimes I can muster something up: the idea of cuddling with a baby, or playing with a preschooler, or even just the joy I know my being pregnant would bring to family and friends. But most of the time, I’m moody, cry-face, and scared shitless.

We are on the precipice of actually “trying,” i.e. not preventing during sex, having sex during ovulation, etc. And I have to tell my patient husband—the one who was ready to move in, the one who was ready to get hitched—to, once again, wait. Wait.

Perhaps the worst part of this? I have no women to talk to; all of my friends who have had children, or are currently pregnant, or are trying to get pregnant? They were the ones who were ready before their husbands. They seemingly had no qualms nor fears—or at least, not enough to stop them in their tracks.

I know I would regret not having a child. It’s something that I’ve wanted, to be a mother. Hell, my entire MFA thesis was a letter to my future, currently nonexistent daughter (who may never exist): How one can be haunted by the future.

And I’m also afraid that if I wait too long to be “ready,” then one day I will suddenly wake up and realize the option is no longer there, that I’ve waited too long.

One thing I learned as a writer: wherever you want to pull away, that’s where you need to push in. Push in, and observe; sit with how uncomfortable or awful or painful it is, and write from this. And so I do.

But writing is not being. One day, I will have to put down the pen and decide: yes. It is time. And my window to do that is narrowing.

When do you jump in with both feet, hair flying? When do you stop waiting to be ready and just—leap?

When does the heart breathe in “fear,” and breathe out “mother”?

Sarah Richards Graba

So if you’re debating having kids or not, now is the time to share your questions and your fears, and talk amongst yourselves. And no. Certainty doesn’t make you a better mother. And terror is normal. (How could it not be?)

P.S. Read Capitulation, Babies, about not being sure you want kids and finding out you don’t need to be sure to love them. Also, it’s a good conversation about fostering. Not all parenthood looks the same. Plus tons more about the Kids/No Kids debate.

How To: Seating Chart Photo Display

Elizabeth and Cutter0153

The Set Up

I’m not crafty in a sew-your-own wedding dress or design-your-own centerpieces kind of way—more in a spreadsheets on Word, tables on flowcharts kind of way. Organized, I guess you’d call that. So, this was the perfect project for me. It was time intensive, but our Seating Chart Photo Display ended up being one of my favorite elements of our wedding.

The Project

This idea is pretty straightforward: find a meaningful picture for each of your wedding guests and write their table number on the back. Ideally, the picture is of one of you together with this guest. Display all the pictures at the wedding. Guests will find their picture, take it down, and know where they’re sitting, while having a ready-made conversation starter in the form of a picture of you and them. It’s a way to have a photo display of every person at the wedding, but also serves as an opportunity to put up some sweet (in every sense of the word) pictures of friends and family.

What You’ll Need to Make It Happen

  • Two poles
  • Twine
  • Clothespins
  • Labels (or a pen)
  • A picture of each of your guests (preferably posing with one of you)
  • An instructional sign

The first step is to source pictures of you with your guests. Choosing the pictures is the time-intensive part, so make sure to set aside enough time for that. Once you’ve chosen your pictures, you’ll need them to all be printed at the same size. We ordered all our photos online at ten cents a print.

Next, you’ll need to create labels for the backs of the photos. You can also write directly on the backs, but if you have a fairly large guest list, computer-printed labels are the way to go. We used a label template in Microsoft Word to print our guests’ names, our wedding date, and the words “Table Number” on the back, leaving the actual number blank. I can’t recommend that one tip enough—things change the week of the wedding, and though my original plan was to slap another label over top if necessary (I printed a stack of extras) just waiting to write in the uncertain ones at the last minute was critical. We also chose to print out instructional signs to include in the display, letting people know that these were their table numbers.

Finally, setting up the actual photo display depends on your venue. We liked the idea of being able to walk around it—some of the pictures might not have been very recognizable to our guests—so we wanted to set up a freestanding display. But if you don’t have the option or space to create that, you could suspend this on a wall instead, and your guests could always just flip the pictures over.

To create our freestanding display, the wonderful owners of our venue found two pieces of rebar that were about two feet tall and stuck them in the ground. They covered these shorter pieces of rebar with seven-foot tall pieces of bamboo. The rebar provided a strong, sturdy base to the nicer looking bamboo.

The size of your guest list will determine the number of rows of twine and the distance of the poles. To hang 133 pictures plus three 8″ x 11″ instructional signs, we placed our poles ten feet apart and tied eight rows of twine. When you’re determining the width of the display, it’s important to leave enough space so the pictures aren’t crowded—wider is better. Also, we wanted people to be able to reach the pictures without having to crouch down or stretch up too high, so we took that into consideration when figuring out how large to make it.

The Issues

The hardest part was figuring out which pictures to choose. Trust me, I sunk some hours into finding that one picture that best encapsulates our whole relationship for several of my close friends. With other guests (especially our parents’ friends) it was a bit of a scavenger hunt, and we made peace with being creative for some of their pictures. For our lovely neighbors, we had a picture of their house because we somehow never had a picture with them in it. I agonized over hurt feelings or having someone not feel special, but seriously nobody seemed too torn up about it.

Elizabeth and Cutter0713

Why It Was Worth It

The vast majority of the pictures were meaningful and sweet for us and each guest. The picture of my brother telling me a secret while I giggle my fool six-year-old head off. That picture of my fiancé’s grandmother giving him a kiss while he focuses on his bacon biscuit—she didn’t put it down all night.

Even if we didn’t get to discuss each picture with each guest the day of the wedding, we certainly thought about it in the weeks leading up to the wedding and people have brought it up now, post-wedding. This was also a great way for our moms to get involved and in the wedding mood. Looking back at old pictures of their friends, some of whom they had not seen in years, who would be attending the upcoming wedding was a good change of pace from predictably tense conversations about specific wedding logistics.

On the wedding day, I loved looking around at all our people and seeing the pictures as a conversation starter. Guests seated at tables with people they didn’t know could ask about the other person’s picture and immediately have a story to tell or a connection to explain. Seeing the full display finally come together (despite the torrential downpour a couple hours before our outdoor wedding) was pretty cool (and a relief) but seeing people holding their pictures and showing them to each other was downright magical.

Elizabeth and Cutter0148