Overrun with babies

I went to the annual gift exchange event that my former college roommates hold. I think the tradition has been going on four years now and each and every year it gets more and more curious. I don't mean to sound purposely ambiguous by saying "curious." It wasn't weird or anything. I mean D and I, along with one with couple were the only people there without spawn. I think D mentioned to me when we got there that he counted and there were more babies than "adults" in the house. Crazy! The place seemed to be overrun with babies. Everywhere I looked there were kids playing, kids drooling, crawling, and everyone was speaking baby talk to their spawn.

Usually in situations like this, I brace myself for the $24 million dollar question: "so when are you going to have kids?" Another variation I LOVE is the indirect: "oh you'll want some of your own too." Or the other indirect compliment I often get because I'm so good with kids: "oh look, you're SO great with kids, hey everyone, it looks like Dawn is ready!!!" Why do people with kids want me to have kids so badly????

So one of the ladies there this afternoon said the BEST thing in response to a question I asked her.

ME: so how are you liking motherhood? Is it as awesome as you thought it was going to be?
HER: Oh yeah, but you should TOTALLY travel before you have kids. Travel like crazy. Make time to travel because once you have a kid, you don't have time for anything else.

Yea, I want to run out and make babies now...

So I asked D later in the afternoon: " so you think we should try to travel more this year?"
He replied: "sure, where do you want to go?"
I say: "anywhere-"
He interrupts laughing: "anywhere but here with all these babies!"
We both laugh.

That's what I love about D sometimes. We are so on the same page without really even saying much to each other. We both want babies but are so ambivalent about it at the same time. And when we go to social gatherings like this, I think the last thing we want to do is to add to the baby madness.

Speaking of friends having babies, the biggest surprise came a couple of weeks ago when I got one of those mass emails from my friend J announcing her pregnancy with her THIRD child. Good lord. I give her MAD props but my vagina hurts just thinking about it. For as long as I've known J, she has wanted to have gobs of babies. I give her props because there are some people I know who have babies, who really should have taken a longer time out before spawning. I feel for those kids because their parents are kind of messed up.

The other thing I really worry about is being able to handle kids with an academic career. Folks in the ivory tower are not nice to young women with babies. There is a tendency to think that women with kids or who are pregnant with kids are not taking their career seriously enough. The idea is that if they were serious about their career, they would wait until they have tenure or something career-stabilizing like that before having kids. I've heard stories about how some women get passed up for promotion or tenure because they are pregnant and are therefore perceived as not being serious or able to focus on their academic career. What bullshit but women deal with this all the time, even outside of academe.

I guess in the meantime, D and I are content with Obi. I refuse to call him my baby because dogs should be pets not referred to or treated as spawn, people!!! I won't transfer any maternal anxieties onto Obi or Mookie. They deserve to be loved and treated with respect as an animal.

The closest thing I've come to being overrun with babies in my own home is this past new year's eve when D invited his poker friends to come over. That group is really fun and cute. Instead of babies, they all have dogs. Many of the dogs are the small yappy kind, but are all really cute. That night there were 6 total dogs. There were a lot of dogs but it didn't feel like I was being overrun. Who could feel overwhelmed by 6 furry doggies with wagging tails who want your affection or just a treat? Babies on the other hand.....