I've been thinking of this one as my boys have been outgrowing me, as they both had "girlfriends" this year, and as the thought of being a grandma by 39 is absolutely terrifying, but entirely possible if they do what their parents did. I love my baby giants, I'm so grateful they're here, but if I can share the perspective I have now to give them a little more time to work on themselves than I had, that's a gift I can give to break the cycle and give them better than I had.
--
Exactly one year before I saw the positive pregnancy test, I was sitting in AP Civics with my friend, Katie. We were talking about how I was so psyched to be grown and single like our HBO heroines on Sex and the City. I had big plans to live in a beautiful brownstone in Uptown, until I moved to DC where I could be a high power lawyer/politician/lobbyist with tons of money, guys, career ambitions, and absolutely no room for babies.
"I'm not getting married. Unless it's absolutely for economic or financial gain, obviously" I said super coolly to my friend. I'll never forget my favorite teacher, Mr. Lyons, overhearing that gem and telling me that was the saddest thing he had ever heard.
The no baby plan lasted through graduation, basic training, and medic training. I even got to my Uptown brownstone full of other young professionals and I had been accepted to the University of Minnesota's fall semester 2005 with my life plan exactly on track. It would derail before I even got to freshman orientation.
I could lie and say the condom broke or the pill didn't work, but in complete honesty (and less complete graphic details), we were 19. We were super into sex, super embarrassed about buying condoms, and super naive in how to even get on regular birth control. My Catholic sex ed had failed me, his rap idols who shunned protection failed him. We were madly in love, but we weren't mature enough to actually have a discussion about what our plans were beyond hooking up whenever possible. We never discussed STDs, protection, views on abortion, or if we even thought about kids. Those weren't cute or fun conversations, so at 19, we never had them.
After a fun week out west with him, I came home to MN to continue my awesome solo life, but within weeks, I felt...off. I was tired all the time, crabby most of the time, and it was actually my friend Chris, who first suggested that I might be pregnant. No. But I'll take a test anyways.
In the bathroom of my dream single girl apartment, next to the turn of the century clawfoot tub I loved, I found out I was. In true denial, I didn't trust the pee stick and scheduled a blood test to be done at a clinic near work downtown the next day, where a kind 40-something nurse confirmed it. She looked a little like my mom with hazel eyes and dark hair, and maybe I looked like her daughter because she looked scared for this girl who was just a baby having a baby. She gave me a pamphlet of options and clinics for "whatever next steps you want to take" and I left in a blur.
Chris gave me a pep talk to tell Sterling, who was deep in pre-deployment training in Ft. Stewart, GA, so I did it over the phone. He was stunned, asked if I was sure, asked if I was thinking about all the options (aka abortion) and I instinctively said no. Right away, he said "Alright then, we're doing this." For any of his faults in the years since, and even learning that he was as scared shitless as I was, I have always appreciate Sterling for his support and optimism that day, for stepping up to be a solid partner so I wasn't alone. I ended the call smiling, but still in tears for what neither of us were ready for.
I had been flying to see him regularly for the prior few months, but that next weekend, I was worried he'd change his mind or tell me he couldn't do the dad thing yet and had to bail. Instead, he greeted me with a giant hug and a smile, proposed the night I landed and we were married the next day. I got myself registered as a military dependent so that I could ensure his health insurance even while he was deployed. For all of our lack of planning before, we were on top of it after the fact.
That weekend, we met my mom for a fancy dinner in Savannah. I had every intention of telling her everything there, but she had a tough flight out, wasn't in the best mood, and I got scared. So we, along with our buffer battle buddy, Clay, had dinner with a tension in the air because really, she's a mom, she already knew. I told her though tears on the way to the airport the next day. She would be the first of a tour of friends and family who I would blur the lines of when we got engaged/married/pregnant, how planned it really was, and how ready I felt.
I hid it from the rest of the world as long as I could. I was working at a YWCA, as an Army Reservist, and as a nanny for two families, where I just wore bigger and bigger clothes until it was obvious. When I would eventually break and tell people, everyone was so nice and helpful, they bought gifts and threw showers, but the embarrassment of knowing I was a pregnant teen who grandstanded against parenthood was still there.
I showed up at the U of M five months pregnant and had a hard time making friends - there and everywhere. I was at a different stage of life than people my age, and I was a decade younger than most people in my stage of life. My husband was in Iraq, my high school friends were at college, and I was trying to keep a secret from everyone else in my life. I hung out with my mom and high school senior sister, stayed in my apartment and napped or watched movies alone.
I wish I could have had the proud, fun experience of being pregnant with a baby I had prayed for like so many of my friends are now in their 30s. I don't even have any cute tummy pictures to show for it (the one up top is from my 2nd pregnancy when I was 20).
But while this personal failure to remain childless changed my trajectory, it didn't ruin my life. All the fear and loneliness drifted away when I met my baby, Colton.
This was how it was always meant to be.
And maybe it will be that way for mine, and I will love them and my grandbabies no matter what, but just in case I can help them hold off, I'll still believe sex talks with your kids are important. I wasn't a stupid person, I knew how babies are made. And I really didn't want to get pregnant, but I didn't do much to stop it. I try to remember what I was thinking and it was really just that I didn't think it would happen to me, I didn't have the confidence to have the scary talks with sex partners, and even health class did a half-ass job of explaining how hard kids make the rest of your life.
The adult I needed when I was a sexually active teenager was one who would ask me if I was having sex for me or for guys to like me, and then call me on my shit when I lied and said it was for me. I needed someone who could take me to the clinic and explain that different birth control works for different people and how to get a feel for what's best, I was so overwhelmed that I kept taking pills that made me crazy until I quit them to feel normal again. I could have used a cost breakdown of someone saying babies aren't expensive because diapers are $16 a box, they're expensive because daycare is the same cost as entry level salaries and dorms and cheap housing frown on you bringing an infant along, so good luck paying for that 2 bedroom apartment with the after-daycare dollars you have left. I needed teachers to stop showing the scary STD slides and say "Here is how you start an uncomfortable conversation with someone you like." I still don't know how, and I make it weird every time. I want to be this person for my kids, for my niece and nephews, and for anyone else who needs it.
Now that we're all a dozen years older, I'm making up for lost energy, and I'm hoping to cherish the last five years with mine and help them thrive as a redo of how lost and underwater I felt in the first five.
--
Exactly one year before I saw the positive pregnancy test, I was sitting in AP Civics with my friend, Katie. We were talking about how I was so psyched to be grown and single like our HBO heroines on Sex and the City. I had big plans to live in a beautiful brownstone in Uptown, until I moved to DC where I could be a high power lawyer/politician/lobbyist with tons of money, guys, career ambitions, and absolutely no room for babies.
"I'm not getting married. Unless it's absolutely for economic or financial gain, obviously" I said super coolly to my friend. I'll never forget my favorite teacher, Mr. Lyons, overhearing that gem and telling me that was the saddest thing he had ever heard.
The no baby plan lasted through graduation, basic training, and medic training. I even got to my Uptown brownstone full of other young professionals and I had been accepted to the University of Minnesota's fall semester 2005 with my life plan exactly on track. It would derail before I even got to freshman orientation.
I could lie and say the condom broke or the pill didn't work, but in complete honesty (and less complete graphic details), we were 19. We were super into sex, super embarrassed about buying condoms, and super naive in how to even get on regular birth control. My Catholic sex ed had failed me, his rap idols who shunned protection failed him. We were madly in love, but we weren't mature enough to actually have a discussion about what our plans were beyond hooking up whenever possible. We never discussed STDs, protection, views on abortion, or if we even thought about kids. Those weren't cute or fun conversations, so at 19, we never had them.
After a fun week out west with him, I came home to MN to continue my awesome solo life, but within weeks, I felt...off. I was tired all the time, crabby most of the time, and it was actually my friend Chris, who first suggested that I might be pregnant. No. But I'll take a test anyways.
In the bathroom of my dream single girl apartment, next to the turn of the century clawfoot tub I loved, I found out I was. In true denial, I didn't trust the pee stick and scheduled a blood test to be done at a clinic near work downtown the next day, where a kind 40-something nurse confirmed it. She looked a little like my mom with hazel eyes and dark hair, and maybe I looked like her daughter because she looked scared for this girl who was just a baby having a baby. She gave me a pamphlet of options and clinics for "whatever next steps you want to take" and I left in a blur.
Chris gave me a pep talk to tell Sterling, who was deep in pre-deployment training in Ft. Stewart, GA, so I did it over the phone. He was stunned, asked if I was sure, asked if I was thinking about all the options (aka abortion) and I instinctively said no. Right away, he said "Alright then, we're doing this." For any of his faults in the years since, and even learning that he was as scared shitless as I was, I have always appreciate Sterling for his support and optimism that day, for stepping up to be a solid partner so I wasn't alone. I ended the call smiling, but still in tears for what neither of us were ready for.I had been flying to see him regularly for the prior few months, but that next weekend, I was worried he'd change his mind or tell me he couldn't do the dad thing yet and had to bail. Instead, he greeted me with a giant hug and a smile, proposed the night I landed and we were married the next day. I got myself registered as a military dependent so that I could ensure his health insurance even while he was deployed. For all of our lack of planning before, we were on top of it after the fact.
That weekend, we met my mom for a fancy dinner in Savannah. I had every intention of telling her everything there, but she had a tough flight out, wasn't in the best mood, and I got scared. So we, along with our buffer battle buddy, Clay, had dinner with a tension in the air because really, she's a mom, she already knew. I told her though tears on the way to the airport the next day. She would be the first of a tour of friends and family who I would blur the lines of when we got engaged/married/pregnant, how planned it really was, and how ready I felt.
I hid it from the rest of the world as long as I could. I was working at a YWCA, as an Army Reservist, and as a nanny for two families, where I just wore bigger and bigger clothes until it was obvious. When I would eventually break and tell people, everyone was so nice and helpful, they bought gifts and threw showers, but the embarrassment of knowing I was a pregnant teen who grandstanded against parenthood was still there.I showed up at the U of M five months pregnant and had a hard time making friends - there and everywhere. I was at a different stage of life than people my age, and I was a decade younger than most people in my stage of life. My husband was in Iraq, my high school friends were at college, and I was trying to keep a secret from everyone else in my life. I hung out with my mom and high school senior sister, stayed in my apartment and napped or watched movies alone.
I wish I could have had the proud, fun experience of being pregnant with a baby I had prayed for like so many of my friends are now in their 30s. I don't even have any cute tummy pictures to show for it (the one up top is from my 2nd pregnancy when I was 20).
But while this personal failure to remain childless changed my trajectory, it didn't ruin my life. All the fear and loneliness drifted away when I met my baby, Colton.
This was how it was always meant to be.
The adult I needed when I was a sexually active teenager was one who would ask me if I was having sex for me or for guys to like me, and then call me on my shit when I lied and said it was for me. I needed someone who could take me to the clinic and explain that different birth control works for different people and how to get a feel for what's best, I was so overwhelmed that I kept taking pills that made me crazy until I quit them to feel normal again. I could have used a cost breakdown of someone saying babies aren't expensive because diapers are $16 a box, they're expensive because daycare is the same cost as entry level salaries and dorms and cheap housing frown on you bringing an infant along, so good luck paying for that 2 bedroom apartment with the after-daycare dollars you have left. I needed teachers to stop showing the scary STD slides and say "Here is how you start an uncomfortable conversation with someone you like." I still don't know how, and I make it weird every time. I want to be this person for my kids, for my niece and nephews, and for anyone else who needs it.
Now that we're all a dozen years older, I'm making up for lost energy, and I'm hoping to cherish the last five years with mine and help them thrive as a redo of how lost and underwater I felt in the first five.
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