Saturday, April 18, 2009

everything baby

The conversations in our relationship have shifted to being less about us and more about the incoming baby. Last night it was baby names (though we don't know the gender yet), shopping for the baby, fairness in sleep and feeding the baby, blah, blah, blah. 
I want my relationship back to being about he and I! I think I already resent this baby, not to mention this pregnancy is doing a number on my body. I am in disbelief that it is due so soon already. Tomorrow we are going to go out, probably for the last time before I give birth. I hope I can stay on my feet with the discomfort! When a woman is pregnant and then has a baby, everything becomes about the baby and the mother is almost forgotten. I refuse to be forgotten- I have a career to attend to. This whole thing is not the glowing joyous experience people make it out to be. I think it's a damn expensive inconvenience, not to mention the upcoming labor awfulness. 

Snap of our character for a moment: All of this is true, except the live baby part. We will go out tomorrow with me nine months pregnant and I am not looking forward to the humiliation of going out like that and the potential for people touching my hollow belly or having to answer a zillion times when I am due. In truth, I am just basing all of this on friends and family who have had babies and don't really know what to expect personally. Since in real life I don't want to have children, this may be the only time in my life I go out like something even resembling pregnant unless it's halloween. This IS a shift is the conversations Zach and I have already; which is preparing for baby. He and I know how the script ends, but we're not there yet and not we have this bundle of 'joy' to contend with. I mean, he didn't even realize we needed diapers!
It's always the woman who inevitably sacrifices more when a baby is born, no matter how egalitarian the couple thinks it is. Why? Pregnancy, labor and milk. 
This time is important for me personally because I do feel so strongly about NOT having children and I always have. I have also always felt resentful towards the people who choose to breed who feel it necessary to point out that their decision is the correct one and mine is the incorrect one. Why is that? Because mine does not follow the normative path. Maybe because some people do it because they feel that they are supposed to. I don't know their reasons, but it's awfully assuming of them to impose their values upon mine. I think in fact, that I am making a far more responsible and well thought out decision by NOT having children then by just doing it because I feel like I should. For me it's a political and personal act of a radical nature and I feel good about it.  (...and no, I don't just have to meet the right man first; the right man for me doesn't want children). 
The end, for now.

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