The Great Egg Scramble

Everywhere I turn, I'm hearing about women freezing their eggs! It's a topic of three reality shows I'm watching! I have some friends that are going back and forth on the idea, under the gun may I add. By 40, if you have a good egg left it needs to be on ice yesterday! I wish it was legal to run a nitrogen lab out of your house. If it was, I'd be making mad bank son! 

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm happy that God didn't put motherhood on my heart. If he would have, I'd probably be running around frantic like some of the other women in my life. Watching it gives me anxiety, but the fact of the matter is clear: you are born with tons of eggs but not with the love of your life. Sometimes meeting a man is not on the same timeline as your body. I get it, I just feel for the women under this stress. 

My girl Gail from church is 38 with no prospects in sight. She wants kids and is thinking about getting icy with it. It's expensive, plus she's not sure where God stands on the whole process. That adds a whole 'nother layer of stress to the situation. I find myself praying for her while Googling fertility clinics at the same time! 

I'm sad because I know that freeze or no freeze, motherhood is not going to happen for some of the women in my life. It's unfair, and I'm bracing for some of these women to go into a serious mourning over this fact. It's already sort of happening for people I know who can't afford egg freezing or didn't have any viable eggs left. If my eggs weren't scrambled I'd give one to whoever needed one. Whether I want kiddos or not, I really wish that all my friends that want to be mommies could be. 

Showers and the Blue Juice

My friend's sister had a baby shower and put the photos on Instagram. Balloons, a cute color scheme, games, and food were all present. However, some things were there that clearly did not belong: men.

First, they started using red fluid instead of blue fluid in the maxi pad commercials, now this! Call me old- fashioned, but I love a themed, all- girl affair. Men at a baby shower just doesn't make sense to me, or at least makes as much sense as me sitting in on a stripper-filled bachelor party. I guess the difference is that I would be crashing the bachelor party. The men at the baby shower were actually invited. 

Our grandmothers would have never allowed this. But I feel like today's mamas invite the baby's father and his guy friends to show that the father is on board with the pregnancy. Whether he is on board or not is no one's business! But, because of this need, all the women have to sit in their color coordinated Sunday best while the guys over eat the refreshments and make dumb jokes! 

Good people of the internet: when is enough going to be enough? How much more of the blue maxi pad juice are men going to snatch out of our lives and private spaces? It's enough already, and I demand reform! Who's with me??

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. 

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 Bound

It is no secret that I HATE children.
People, particularly my young girlfriends that are strapped down from each limb with babies give me the stink eye when I say this, seeing that they did not like kids either before they were cornered into having them. They are loud and irritating and stinky. Children are not my favorite people.
But lately, I find the urge to have one nearly unbearable.
When I was younger, I remember watching a talk show where a teenage girl testified that she wanted a baby because she wanted something to take care of. I remember laughing at her. How stupid, wanting something to take care when you haven't even graduated high school. But now, two weeks shy of 25, I totally see what she was saying.
From ages 5 to 11 I read stories about love and from 12 to now I have been looking for it. I have seen it in my friends' lives, I have seen it on TV, I have even thought I was in it. But either it wasn't real or wasn't right. The love between a mother and child is unconditional. If I had a baby, I would be the proud owner of unconditional love...even though I would still be living with my aunt and off of pennies.
Whenever I get in this mood where I really want a bambino, I have to step back and evaluate my emotions. Am I on my period? Have I been watching Lifetime? Is it tax time and I am looking for a deduction? Yet lately, it has been neither of these things. Although I do not have a man, my own job or a good paying job, I have to say, I am flirting with the idea...even though it may be a bad one.