A Small Victory

back off my ovaries, bitch!

What is it about reproduction that makes people think it is a subject that is open for discussion? Nobody has the right to question your plans for having or not having children. Nobody has the right to question your decision to have a baby, how you are raising that baby or what you are naming that baby. Yet there are people who believe it is their god-given right to know everything about your reproductive system and what you are doing with it.

Today, it's someone wanting to know if Justin and I plan on having kids of our own. We don't. I have two children and frankly, it's all I want. Justin does not want any more than what is already in our household. He does not want a baby, he is not concerned about carrying on the family name and I really do not have to explain the myriad reasons to anyone.

Both times I was pregnant, I had to put up with nine months of advice from strangers. And it wasn't just advice, it was judgments. I was stupid for having a baby so soon after I got married. I was hurting my baby by working through my pregnancy. I wasn't eating enough. I was eating too much. I was eating the wrong things. I worked too hard, I didn't get enough exercise, and what did I mean that I wouldn?t name a boy after his father? How ridiculous of me to even think otherwise!

I was actually pregnant a third time, in between Natalie and DJ. I had a miscarriage at 6 weeks. I heard all kinds of things then. It was the moisturizer I was using, it had bad chemicals in it. I stretched too much at work. I shouldn't have been working at all. I ate the wrong foods. I took toxic vitamins. I shouldn't have taken that long car ride out east. Everyone knows better than you. And they are not afraid to tell you what they think they know.

So now that my kids are older and the people who feel proprietary over babies have lost their desire to give me sage advice, they have had to come up with new and improved ways of sticking their noses into my ovaries. It always comes back to Justin and the emptiness he surely must feel because his sperm will never amount to more than jizz. I've been told I'm selfish. But these people never think to ask Justin how he feels. Is there some unwritten law that everyone must want a baby at some point? I know plenty of couples who are childless by choice, and will remain that way. Justin was very happy to come into a ready made family where the kids were already past diapers and baby food and potty training.

It's all come to a boiling point because we have been talking about getting married this year, maybe in August for my birthday. The assumption is that once we get married, we will think more "seriously" about having more children. You know, I'm going to be 40 in August. My kids are finally at an age where I can take them to a restaurant without dragging along 25 accessories for them. They can get their own food and make their own beds. I'm not about to start over again with an infant. I don't have the time, the money nor the patience it would take. I'm going to be totally honest here. I barely have the patience for the two kids I have now. A third would just about kill me.

So if you are one of those people that dispense advice to every mother or pregnant woman you see, please stop. You are invasive, annoying and mostly full of shit. Your advice is almost always wrong, and 90% of the time it is based on some old wive's tale. Eating strawberries while pregnant will not cause your child to be born with a strawberry shaped birthmark on its forehead. Putting Jack Daniels in your kid's bottle is not really a good idea. You child cannot catch AIDS from playing in the ballpit at Burger King. You cannot tell what sex your child will be by dangling a thread over your belly. If you are not going to offer encouragement or a kind word, please don't say anything at all. Our ovaries, our children and the way we raise them are none of your damn business.