Baby Engagement

Last year I made a resolution. It wasn't on New Years Day exactly, that day I was too busy enjoying time with friends and family (and perhaps drinking a little) to worry about making changes to my life. I made the resolution a few weeks later. I decided that if Jason and I were going to try to bring a life into the world, we should prepare ourselves for this monumental change just as much as we had prepared for our marriage. Before our wedding day, Jason and I talked extensively about our expectations of each other in our upcoming marriage. We talked about where we hoped to be as a family in a year, in five years, in ten years. We talked about what it meant to each of us to be married. We talked about kids. We talked about jobs. We talked about retirement. We talked about upholstery and whether or not we should register for silverware. We talked about everything. We talked about our ideal life together, and we talked about how we would deal with conflict when our life together wasn't ideal. Thinking about all of our preparation for the wedding, I resolved to spend 2009 preparing myself physically, emotionally, and spiritually for a baby, to give Jason and I both some time to talk about all the intricacies of starting a family. A baby engagement, if you will.

While wanting a baby is nothing new to me, the prospect of actually being in a position to make it a reality is exhilaratingly new. I remember taking a Women's History course in college with a professor who I can only describe as a modern suffragette. Our first week of class, each student was to introduce themselves by major and tell what they were hoping to accomplish with their degree. My major at the time was political science, to which my professor cooed with delight. Then, I told her my aspirations of becoming a housewife and stay-at-home mom. I remember her asking me, "But why? You're getting a degree." As though getting a college degree would somehow negate any reason to procreate. I tried explaining that I considered getting a degree an integral part of parenthood for myself. If I have the chance to further the odds of my children continuing their education by doing so myself, I feel I have the responsibility to do just that. She stared at me. I stared back, confidently. I believe some people have a calling in life, something they will feel complete doing.

Mine is motherhood.