Skip to main content

Are you ever fully ready?

When I felt that the relationship with Rachel was starting to get serious I set my stall out early. It seemed only right; kids were an important part of my life journey, and despite not knowing 100% that I wanted them (maybe 80% - I mean, can anyone be 100% certain of anything so life-changing??), I felt it was my moral duty to put forward my position. Rachel might have had no aspirations for children, what would I have done then? 


You read all sorts of stories of children brought into the world with parents who have an unstable relationship. Maybe the children were an accident, maybe they were the cause of the relationship issues, or maybe the parents are just arseholes anyway - whatever the reason, I wanted to be certain that I had given the relationship (and eventual marriage) as long a time to grow and strengthen as possible - logic would suggest that's the best thing for the child, and for any challenges that might come up along the way in bringing them up - I'm yet to speak to a parent who said bringing up a child was easy!


Rachel was thankfully on the same page as me, although her convictions on the subject weren't quite as strong. She thought she wanted children, but hadn't given it a huge amount of thought until I brought it up. No doubt there was a panic at first with her probably thinking I was growing impatient (understandable, we had probably only been dating about six months when I brought up the subject - (too soon?!)


After what was an extremely short conversation, we both decided that yes to kids, maybe, someday, perhaps. 


Lets have a relationship first, then maybe get married and go from there and see what happens shall we?


Seemed like a good a suggestion as any.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Okay - I'm ready, I think! Yes.

 The first couple of years of marriage were an absolute blast.  Loads of fun, loads of adventures, meeting new people and discovering new about ourselves.  Now, I want to be clear - marriage is still awesome -  (I'm actually writing this blog post 7 years on from this time) - but I'm setting the scene - please bear with.) After 2 years, I felt pretty much ready to have children. I had progressed in my job and had a salary that I felt was enough to cover the expense of a child. Although, when discussing this particular concept with friends (some of whom had kids, some without), I would always get wry smile and a chuckled "You'll never have enough", "just wait until you start paying for nursery fees - you won't know what spare money looks like". Friends, eh? One minute they'll tell you how kids are the best things in the world and we should definitely do it, but don't have them until you win the lottery! Luckily, I felt strong enough in my con...
Post a Comment
Read more

Not this time!

 I'm not going to lie - the first few weeks after our first 'attempt' were stressful. You know that the chances of first time conception are rare, but just over a third of couples conceive within the first month. 1 in 3, that is more than good enough odds for me to have hope. We've had friends, and have known about people conceiving on their first try, why can't that be us too? I don't like to think of myself as impatient, but those first few weeks dragged. You try and keep busy, but every third thought drifts off into parenthood of some kind; What if it worked? I wonder what the gender will be? You spend more time than you should calculating the birth date, which leads onto further thoughts of schooling - will they be young in their school year? Or old? What is better? Does it really matter? Should we have waited for the correct school-year birthday? No, that's just silly !  ...It's hard to rein your thoughts in.  During that first month, it was cle...
Post a Comment
Read more

Starting to feel isolated

 Rachel and I married when we were fairly young by modern standards; but that was by design. You see, I wanted to marry young, so that there would be plenty of time to have no-dependants fun, and we did as I explained in a previous post.  It was a couple of years or more after our marriage when our friends started to get married, and as the months and years went by after this, there seem to be one baby announcement after another. Don't get me wrong, I was always absolutely delighted to hear their news, and even more excited to meet the new member of their family, but each time the news broke, a bigger and bigger piece of me felt more isolated, and dare I say it, frustrated at my plight.  I could see the unease in Rachel's eyes each time a new baby announcement from friends was made, she knew that it would start "the conversation" again between us again. It usually did, and each time we would go around in circles, until we mutually agreed that it was best to "lea...
Post a Comment
Read more