never going to forget your first real love. You think you’re doing fine and you haven’t seen him in years and then he’s on TV pouring syrup on his cohost’s head and you think… maybe if I’d stayed with him, my life could look the way I want it to look.” But I said none of that. Because the next thing out of Skyler’s mouth was, “I think you are a nicer person than him and I like you. So don’t be sad.”
How did this kid who had no parental guidance find it in his heart to want to help take care of me—a stupid administrative assistant who picked him up once after he shit his pants?
Does that one selfless act on my part (which was also technically my job) prove that I would be such a good mom? I don’t think so. I think I’d be so overwhelmed and unhappy about raising a child that I would turn into the asshole in yoga class trying to put my leg over my head and hoping to run into David Duchovny’s psychic.
TWO YEARS AGO when our best friends, Grace and Christopher, called us to change the location of our standing Saturday-night double date, I was instantly suspicious. Instead of making a reservation at a restaurant, they wanted us to come to their house to avoid “noise” and “crowds.” We’re not that cool. We never went anywhere hip, noisy, or crowded.
When Grace and Christopher bought their house a few years ago, the first thing they pointed out to us was their guest bedroom. “If you guys get wasted, you don’t have to drive home!” On this night, Matt and I walked into their house and they sat us right down at the dining room table. We skipped our usual predinner cocktails, and I noticed only
I wanted to say, “Grace, you’re obviously pregnant and you have to wait the doctor-advised twelve weeks to tell people, but you can tell me. I promise I won’t blog about it,” but even I understand there are boundaries here. When my dear childhood friend Shannon was first pregnant, I happened to be visiting her in our hometown in Massachusetts. She pulled the classic lie that every pregnant woman tells: “I’m not going to have a cocktail with dinner because I’m on antibiotics. I have a cold.” You have a cold? Really? Why aren’t you sneezing? Why didn’t you cancel our date to go out for drinks if you had a cold? Why did you go to work today? No woman I know would ever listen to her doctor’s warnings about alcohol—unless she was pregnant. If a doctor said to any of my girlfriends, “Even one glass of wine tonight could bring about Armageddon,” they’d be like, “Well, we’ve had fun here while it lasted. Can I get a pinot grigio?”
Grace and Christopher made their big announcement. After years of being on the fence, they were going to have a baby. My heart sang for them and then sank for me. I was scared. I’m the baby of the family so I never experienced the terror of my parents saying, “You’re going to have a little sister,” and me whining, “But I like how things are! I don’t want to make room for any new people!”
Everything was going to change. Even though we’d never actually been wasted enough to have to spend the night in their guest room, I liked that it was there. It represented a spontaneity that I could… count on. Now the only drooling and helpless creature in the Drunken Guest Room would be a baby. And what about my hikes with Grace? Would I still be able to run off into the woods with my pregnant friend and talk about my secret younger- man-in-a-band sex fantasies or would I be too self-conscious around the baby’s undeveloped earbuds to say anything dirty? Would we have to cancel our weekend lunch because Lamaze class ran long? Are Lamaze classes even still a thing?
As Grace and Christopher told us the story of what the last eight weeks of pregnancy had been like, I remembered a conversation I’d had with Grace recently. I realized now that she’d been trying to tell me that she’d changed her mind about having kids a few weeks earlier when she asked, “Did you see the YouTube video of that chimpanzee that just gave birth?”
“No. Gross. I’m sorry you had to see that,” I answered.
“No, Jen. The mother and baby were bonding. She just instinctively licked her wounds and tended to her baby. It was so natural.”
“Well, of course it’s natural. All monkeys do is fuck and have babies, right?”
“It got me thinking, even though I’m worried about bringing a child into the world, I’m still an animal with normal urges and I can’t intellectualize that sense of hope I feel.”
I completely missed out on what she was probably trying to tell me and dismissed her with, “Well, thank God we’re not monkeys! We can take birth control! Speaking of primal urges, have you ever fantasized about having sex with a twentysomething painter?”
On the drive home (we didn’t get drunk enough to warrant that spare room sleepover) I said to Matt, “Once that baby is born we are never going to see them again.” I knew what was coming—this wasn’t my first baby rodeo. (Sidebar: Even I can admit that a baby rodeo would be very cute—although stressful. You don’t want to fall off a horse when you still have that soft spot on your skull.) As usual, Matt thought I was being dramatic (I was). He explained to me that when two people love each other very much and want to make a baby—they can still hang out with their friends just like always, except there will be a baby in the room. I explained to
Nobody gets babysitters anymore, do they? That’s so eighties. If we want to see our friends, we’ll have to go to their house all the time and have whisper-around-the-table-because-the-baby-is-sleeping early dinners. I feared that Grace and Christopher would turn into the type of parents I’d lost touch with because their kids became their entire life:
“So… seen any good movies lately?”
“We don’t have time to go to movies anymore.”
“Oh, that’s right. We forgot. So… seen any good TV shows lately?”
“No. We don’t want to zone out on our kid—so as a family the only entertainment we partake in is playing with organic wooden blocks.”
“So… read any interesting newspaper articles lately?”
“No. With the baby, I don’t even have time to shower, so I just rub a newspaper all over my body to soak up the oil and sweat. After that it’s unreadable and I’m covered in ink.”
Then there’s always that awkward silence and your girlfriend will ask, “So… how’s your mom? Didn’t you say she was going to get a suspicious mole checked out?”
“Oh, yes. Actually we had a little bit of a scare. My mom got her test results back and they were—” The baby cries.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she’ll say, “I can’t go and pick up the baby because he has to learn how to just cry, but I want to stand within twelve feet of him so that he can smell my pheromones and moisturizer. Hold that thought. I’ll be right back.”
The baby is eventually lulled back to sleep and Mom comes back only to
“Jen,” Matt said. “Your mom doesn’t have cancer and Grace and Christopher’s baby hasn’t even been born.”
“I know that! But I’m saying if she did—our friends with kids would not have time to console me. This is a real concern, Matt. We have to brace ourselves in the event that we lose Grace and Christopher to the other side.”
I envisioned the next phase of losing my friends to their children, which is when the people with kids realize that their childfree friends don’t have any handy tips for them based on their own experience. I have no idea whether they should switch from breast milk to formula after a month or whether organic cotton is better on their baby’s bottom than recycled hemp cotton. So parents naturally gravitate toward other parents and they start to speak their own language. Nobody needs a childfree person there—it wastes too much time to try to translate.
I’m just going to come out and say it: this is the real reason lots of people end up changing their minds and
