Baby Talk

They say that birth rates are on the decline. I find this hard to believe, seeing that every time I go to the gynecologist, me and the menopausal receptionists working the front desk seem to be the only women in the whole place not knocked up. My social media timelines are literally packed full of newborns. But apparently, the receding birth stats are real, so much so that the government is willing to pay families $5000 to have a kid. I'm not sure if that is going to get America's families to baby makin'. Anyone who has children in their lives knows how expensive they are. I am pretty sure that I spend about five stacks a month on my nephew's Chick-fil-A orders. 

Today, I was informed that a young woman I mentored when she was a tween is pregnant. She is now in her late 20s, is in a relationship, and has a good job. Yet, when I heard the news of her being with child, I was not happy. I actually felt a very sharp wave of depression and doom in the pit of my stomach. You would have to be living under a rock not to know that the world is on fire. And I mean literally. It was not that long ago that Los Angeles went up in flames! There are wars and rumors of wars. People are losing their jobs left and right. The cost of living is through the roof, and there are global protests about one thing or another daily. There seems to be a united sense of dread and hopelessness when it comes to the state of affairs of the planet. I don't quite understand why someone would choose to bring a child into the world when everything is so, for lack of a better term, coocoo bananas!

However, a 20-something slipping up and having an oopsie baby with her boyfriend is almost to be expected. What really has me perplexed is the aware and educated people that see the distress of their surroundings and still decide to have a child. A guy I went to school with and his wife just brought a lovely little baby girl into the world. If I were closer to him, I would ask him how he and his wife decided to start their family when there are so many question marks and red flags all around us. 

My friend Amanda's sister is planning to get pregnant with her fourth child with her husband. I could not believe my ears when she told me this. I asked her why her sister would want to have a child now, with everything going on. She told me that I am not the only one who has asked that question. She said, "Why would she let things that are going on in the world prevent her from having her family?" Extreme social uncertainty seems like a huge reason not to have a kid, but I think I am in the minority on this thinking. 

I guess an argument can be made that there is no great time to have a kid. My great-grandma was born just 40 years after the abolishment of slavery. I just know that my great-great grandma's head had to have been spinning! Then my grandma was born right before The Great Depression. Yikes. My grandma had my mom in 1963, when things truly did not look too optimistic for Black folks, and my mom had me in the mid-'80s just as the country merged into the crack crisis and the AIDS epidemic. Again, yikes. 

I don't know what the story for this period of time is going to be. I guess the show has to go on whether or not the glass is half empty, half full, or completely full of caca. One thing is for sure: babies will come screaming into this world whether the world is deserving of their presence or not, and I'm willing to put $5000 on that. 

Babies

I used to work at a daycare in the 2-year-old room. They were cool kids, but I always made a point to visit the baby room before it was time to go home. Have you ever spent time in a room full of babies? It's like being in candy land. They are all sweet and soft and smell like like freshness. You literally want to take a bite out of all of them. I say that to say this: I don't want kids...I don't think.

"If you wanted kids, you would know by now," Dizzle assured me. You see, she wants kids, and has wanted them her whole life. On the same hand, she is an only child. I have three siblings and when I was a kid, taking them everywhere with me, I already felt like a mother. It didn't feel good. It felt overwhelming and suffocating. 

Sometimes when I am bored, I think about what my kids would look like and what I would name them. Then I think about how horrible it would be to have kids while broke and single and I have a panic attack. 

P judges me for not wanting kids. As you know, he is Muslim, and deep down in his heart, he feels that my sole purpose for being alive is to populate the earth with babies, regardless of whether or not I am capable of taking care of them. This is the same man that told me that he felt that women that didn't want kids had a mental problem because, duh, why would women not want to do something super awesome that men can't do? 😑 

Perhaps I am putting the cart before the horse, thinking of kids before I even have a man. But a friend of mine who is two years older than me went to the gynecologist and they suggested she freeze her eggs because she is old. Talk about a cold slap in the face! I thought there was a silent rule to NEVER call a woman old, especially before she was 40! When you realize how little time you really have to get pregnant, it makes you start thinking of pregnancy, even when you are me and you aren't sure if you want to be a mother. 

"If I had a daughter, I would name her Noel," I told Dizzle proudly. Noel. Thank God for blessing me with the sense to separate my fantasies from what is actually fitting for my life. 

Not So Dirty 30: Babies

I am 30 and I have never been in a serious relationship. Everything I know about love I learned from Sweet Valley High books in middle school. I want to get married so someone else can put in on my student loan debt and help clean up around here. I needed a husband so bad Tuesday when I needed Swiffer wipes but didn't want to leave the house in the rain. Other than that, I don't get the concept of spending forever with someone. So it should be no surprise that the idea of having a baby frightens me to the point that I am hysterical.

"I don't want a baby until I am married and rich enough to take care of it," I told my friend P. This comforts me and gives me time seeing that neither will probably happen.

He is Muslim so he was like, "Just have a baby and Allah will take care of the rest." I screamed in his ear.

When I go on social media and see how many of my friends are having babies, I feel sick. Don't they know that the baby is an expence that will outlive them and most likely grow up to be resentful and ungrateful? Am I the only one that paid attention in health class? As sure as you love that kid today, 20 years from now she will have you on Dr. Phil defending your parenting skills.

I know where babies come from (ouch). I know how much they cost (yikes). And I feel like everyone else does too, so why I am continually asked if I want kids is beyond me. I killed every pet fish I had in college! Babies also take up time. If I had one, when would I be able to sleep and watch Hulu? See, no one is asking these hard-hitting questions!

Truth be told, I like babies, just not enough to have one on purpose. Then again, if I did have one, there could be another alternative as to who can make the rainy trip to the store for Swiffer wipes.

I guess having a baby is an option worth thinking about.

Babies Go Bye-Bye

I went to Staples the other day and ran into a girl that I used to work at Popeye's with in high school.
I hated that job so much that when I usually see someone from that chapter in my life, I go in the opposite direction. But this girl, we will call her "Candi," was nice. She never gave me any problems. I just remember her being very loud and ghetto.
She looked about the same. However, she had kicked the elaborate weave ponytails and huge earrings to the curb, so she looked a bit older. And she was sitting down as she rang people up, which indicated to me that she was pregnant.
I asked her where she was living, and she told me the projects. That made me sad. I don't know how the projects are in other cities, but the ones that have managed to remain open in Atlanta SUCK!
Then I went on to ask her how many kids she had and she had to count on her fingers. I was thinking, "Tell me she hasn't had so many babies that she has lost count!"
Not the case at all. She was trying to refresh her memory to add how many abortions she has had and how many babies she actually kept to tell me how many times she'd been pregnant and no, that is not what I asked her.
"I have one and then I'm pregnant now, but I have been pregnant (counting on fingers) maybe five or six times."
I stared at her blankly as to not say anything offensive such as, "What?!"
But I guess my face said something because she went on to say, "Girl, I couldn't have five kids runnin' around!"
Living in the projects and working at Staples I had to agree. Yet the whole situation made me sad. Why was she offering this information up so easily? I know girls who have found themselves at the abortion clinic that have not even told their parents, nevertheless a person they have not seen in six years!
She seemed happy to be pregnant this time though, rubbing her long acrylic nails over her little baby bump as she helped me find the packing envelops. I can only pray that next time around, she can find some cost-effective birth control.

Baby Mama Drama

Okay, so I had been talking to this guy for like six months on and off. I met him at Mardi Gras. Nice guy. Dark. Happy face, like a teddy bear.

Although I like to think of myself as cold and scorned, I found myself really responding to him. What can I say? I liked being liked back. I liked receiving cute texts and talking on the phone until early in the morning. Oh, and I liked being liked back. Did I mention that? What a dramatic difference from being some guys issue solver, I will tell you that.

Well, when we first started talking, I asked him the two essentials: do you have a girlfriend and do you have children? The answers to both questions were no. He had an ex, but she had like ruined him and he was ready to move on. I have to say, that was music to my ears.

To make a long story short, we had not talked for a while when he dropped back into my life, a long enough while that I decided to ask him that two essentials again. This time, his answer was not as cut and dry as it had been.

Apparently, he went out with a buddy to a club where his ex was. They drank together, then he woke up the next morning at his home, not remembering the part where he had sex with the ex, consequently getting her pregnant.

Could someone tell me how to feel here? I feel like I was cheated on, but I was in one of those titless situations that I actually warn people against, and now look what happened.

I will tell you the emotion that overpowers me: confusion. I am not really mad, because I learned early on that sometimes men do shitty things. I am confused as to how you fuck someone and not remember. I am confused as to how you can claim to really like a person, whether you are technically together or not, and just fuck someone else.

So where does this leave me? Sadly, I still like him. I like the attention. But now he is like at a distance in my mind. It's like I like him, but now instead of being the nice guy in my mind that he was, he is just another nigga who did something stupid to me, and that makes me sad. But what are you gonna do?

Facebook and the Young Mother

It seems that I can not log on to Facebook these days without seeing some Sears portrait of another one of my friends pregnant or holding her newborn with her bejeweled, cornrowed baby-daddy.

When I was in middle school, I remember fearing getting my period because once you got a period, you could get pregnant, and once you got pregnant, your life would be over and you would receive a first-class ticket from the state to the community college, a bus pass, and some WIC vouchers which, since you could get real cheese and Juicy Juice, would make the whole thing feel worthwhile. And then of course, you would have the baby, your Aunty would throw you a shower in the back of her hair salon with you and twenty of your other pregnant, teen buddies, and then your boyfriend would disappear...either by choice or incarceration.

I say all this to say that I have been groomed from a young age to fear pregnancy; to loathe the idea of having a baby. So when I log on to Facebook for my daily chats and photo surfing, my stomach tightens to see that a large portion of my female friends, some of them up to five years younger than me, are having or have had a baby. The other day I had to stop myself from accidentally posting "I'm sorry girl:(" under one of the pics of her newborn.

Okay, I know what you are thinking and yes, I am aware that I am 24 and that is old enough to start a family. But if you mention the word baby to me, I might as well be twelve, waiting for my first period. I am also aware that if I want to start a family, the best of my baby-bearing years will be over is 6 years. Who wants to be the oldest mom at the PTA meeting, the one that they stick with making the bake sale cookies because all the young mothers have jobs and active social lives?

And guys with kids? Please, every guy I have liked that I met outside of the college dating pool has had kids. My mom had a boyfriend when I was growing up. A child doesn't have to tell me how much they hate the fill-in step parent.

Do I want kids? I don't know. I do know that once I felt that I was sooo in love that I wanted to have a boy's babies. Can you imagine? If that disaster would have come to pass, I would have a two-year-old right now! I would be the one with pics of myself at the birthday party with the Batman cake and the Bob the Builder birthday dunce caps; I would be a mother.

Mother. Christ, it feels like I just learned how to spell that word while I have friends that are living it. It's weird! One day, probably about six years from now, I will be complaining about wanting kids and not having any, hoping that I keep getting periods as long as possible until I can make it to the sperm bank. Six years from now my baby fear will be replaced by...by no-baby fear.

For now, I guess all I can do is be there for my new mommy homies, and wait with my chastity belt slightly ajar, in hopes of finding the bejeweled, cornrowed baby-daddy of my dreams.