Everywhere I look, I see babies. Friends are having babies left and right. Baby bumps are showing up in facebook statuses almost daily and “Baby at 3 months”, “Baby at 4 months”, “Baby at 6 months” albums flood my news feed. I receive emails from friends about baby showers, name suggestions and dilation measurements and questions from family and friends about when we think we’ll have children. It takes all I have each day to not think about how much I want a baby.
All my life, I’ve felt the tug of peer pressure. Nothing too major or overly serious like jumping off bridges or skipping school. More like a tug to “keep up with the Joneses”. A few years ago two friends of ours got married. They were the first, but certainly not the last. Their wedding set the ball rolling for couple after couple to get engaged and married and within a matter of a few years it seemed that each of our friends had joined the club. The feeling that” everyone’s doing it” seems to fuel the urge to be the first or the next and seems ever present in the battle of the bump, at least from where I’m standing. After all, first comes love, then comes marriage then comes… that’s right, the baby carriage.
My husband and I have always seemed to take things rather slow… some of it has been purposely whether we had spoken about it or not, and some of it has been pressure from family I’m sure, but, it was years 9 years before we lived with each other and 10 years before he placed a ring on my finger (to be fair, we started dating when we were 16). My husband and I always seemed to have different goals and ideas for our future than our friends, not that they weren’t interested in being successful or traveling the world, but they seemed quick to finish school and “start their lives”, get married, buy a house, get a dog, etc. We, on the other hand, decided to continue on to graduate school, both graduating with Master’s degrees and therefore, “starting our lives” and buying a dog a bit later than the others. You’ve probably guessed by now – we were one of the last couples to get married.
I’ve always felt behind in a way when I’ve looked at the lives of our friends – perfectly decorated houses, nice cars, and baby on the way. Don’t get me wrong, I’m completely thrilled and couldn’t be happier for them, but I often have to remind myself that it’s not a race, that everything happens for a reason and that things will happen when it’s time. What I’ve recently started to realize, is that when it does happen, when we do have our first child, it will be perfect because it will be how and when we want it to happen and not just because everyone else was doing it.
All my life, I’ve felt the tug of peer pressure. Nothing too major or overly serious like jumping off bridges or skipping school. More like a tug to “keep up with the Joneses”. A few years ago two friends of ours got married. They were the first, but certainly not the last. Their wedding set the ball rolling for couple after couple to get engaged and married and within a matter of a few years it seemed that each of our friends had joined the club. The feeling that” everyone’s doing it” seems to fuel the urge to be the first or the next and seems ever present in the battle of the bump, at least from where I’m standing. After all, first comes love, then comes marriage then comes… that’s right, the baby carriage.
My husband and I have always seemed to take things rather slow… some of it has been purposely whether we had spoken about it or not, and some of it has been pressure from family I’m sure, but, it was years 9 years before we lived with each other and 10 years before he placed a ring on my finger (to be fair, we started dating when we were 16). My husband and I always seemed to have different goals and ideas for our future than our friends, not that they weren’t interested in being successful or traveling the world, but they seemed quick to finish school and “start their lives”, get married, buy a house, get a dog, etc. We, on the other hand, decided to continue on to graduate school, both graduating with Master’s degrees and therefore, “starting our lives” and buying a dog a bit later than the others. You’ve probably guessed by now – we were one of the last couples to get married.
I’ve always felt behind in a way when I’ve looked at the lives of our friends – perfectly decorated houses, nice cars, and baby on the way. Don’t get me wrong, I’m completely thrilled and couldn’t be happier for them, but I often have to remind myself that it’s not a race, that everything happens for a reason and that things will happen when it’s time. What I’ve recently started to realize, is that when it does happen, when we do have our first child, it will be perfect because it will be how and when we want it to happen and not just because everyone else was doing it.
