What I Am Afraid Of

I think about making a baby a lot nowadays. About 8 years ago, I went through the OMG-I-need-to have-a-baby-right-now-or-I-am-gonna-die thing. I did not die. I started working at a daycare. And then the relationship I was in exploded. And then I went back to school. The urgency subsided as my life tumbled over and I held on for dear life. After things leveled off for a while I met my husband. Falling in love with him brought that OMG feeling back in a slightly saner form. This time the feeling did not try to pick me up by the throat and swing me around. I could feel it, acknowledge it, smile and wave "hi" to it, but let it fade into the background while we busied ourselves getting to know each other and getting organized...and then we moved country. Twice.

So now I live in Switzerland. In a lot of ways it is pretty great. There ways of this country that are easy to embrace (rabid recycling and love of all things natural, tidiness, killer public transport, lovely people), and then others I can't so much (icecream breaks in the middle of movies at the cinema, assigned seating in cinemas, smoking in restaurants, really tall people having surprisingly small hands and feet, the late movie being at 8:30pm, the stranger sitting next to you in the cinema coming back from the icecream break smelling like cheap tobacco). Butanyway...this is a bit off topic, but it speaks to these things I fear being raised in an place that is unfamiliar, but far from hostile. I can't speak the native language here, but our location could be worse.

One other thing has happened over time. I got old. Or maybe oldish. Somedays I feel 24, but others I feel let's just say, quite a bit older. Enough of that...

Anywhoo, let's list some of the fears. I fear that...

1. I will resent my child and my husband because my alone time will be so greatly lessened. Soooo selfish, I know.

2. I will be smothering or overbearing with my child.

3. I will be one of those parents who is so insanely in love with my child, I will say unflattering things about them to others so as to prove that I do not believe my child to be without flaws, and the result will be that my child does not realize I have his or her back, even when they are wrong, and that I am on their side. I find I do this with my dog sometimes although she is wonderful. It does not get to her and she knows I love her, but then she is more well adjusted than many humans, because she is a dog.

4. My pregnancy-at-an-advanced-age will cause a medical problem for my child, or me for that matter. That I will be immature in my ability to handle such a situation, and the strain it might cause on my marriage. I have like 10,000 reminders around to take my vitamins. Folic.

5. That I will compete with my husband regarding our child.

6. That my husband and I will have conflicting ideas about what is best.

7. That all the reasons that I don't always feel good enough will be transferred to my child or somehow amplified, and in those low moments I will feel not good enough for two.

8. That our child will inherit all of my husband's geek genes and none of my cool slacker genes and they will geek out forever together on a level that I can admire but never fully relate to.

That's enough for now. Coming up next, some remedies and reasons I will be happy to do it anyway, if we can....