Where Fools Rush In...

How is it that people put in time and effort to think about buying a car, purchasing a house but just just blindly go into procreating? They even have mixed feelings or are generally uninterested in having children, but find themselves in the unique - ha, ha - experience of being pregnant. Ignoring for the moment the value of being a little more careful when it comes to having sex, how about still being rather callous about what is - or should be - a major life-changing decision?

I'm very close friends with Tom and Alayna, who have Matthew, their almost two-year old son who started out on the wrong end of the 8-ball but who is really turning out to be quite a kid! Alayna had a difficult pregnancy after a snafu happened (which can't be discussed). They were married on 11 September 2004; they were pregnant by March 2005, and parents by 7 September 2005 - they were 39-years-old, knew from the get-go that they wanted children, so the condoms or whartever birth control they were using was out the window the same day as their nuptials.

There was no surprise, the conversations had all taken place, budgets created and tweaked to perfection, all the pieces in place. They thought and worked it all out and gave it not just fleeting thought, but the full workup from financial, emotional and physical standpoints. A lot of effort went into Matthew - every consideration.

Matthew came into the world weighing in at one pound, thirteen ounces. That is an extraordinarily low birthweight. But he was a fighter from the beginning and he has parents who, as hard as this is, are making every effort to deal with everything that comes up with him, not hiding from issues or ignoring them, but making full use of every program that they can to assure his positive development. This is an ongoing thing and likely will be.

They'd really like to have a second child. They are holding off until things with Matthew become more clear, more known. A wise choice... and not fair that a couple who is so interested and so eager and so thorough in deciding to have kids can't just move forward and have more kids.

By way of contrast, my other friends, Vicki and Mike have a four-year-old boy, Stephen, whom Vicki was not planning to have, and not super-eager to have. She was pregnant during the planning of their wedding, and she was rather ambivalent about having him. But she did it, and Stephen, who is a normal kid and born in August 2003, has really given her a run for her money. She has worked part-time, had a hell of a time getting him to take a nap, and potty training was ugly. She has finally gotten him into preschool, opening the way to work fulltime at some point down the road and now she is pregnant with their second child.

I was shocked. And when I asked how this happened when she was really eager to get Stephen into school, she said that Stephen was asking for a baby sister and then Mike become interested in the idea. So why not... she got pregnant. Talk about ambivalence...

I went across the street for my CPR recert and the instructor, who has a four-year-old girl and a (I'm guessing) nine-month-old baby, is pregnant and due in December with her third child. She is not super-happily married and not working. Somehow this doesn't sound like an ideal situation in which to bring another child into the world.

Maybe it is just me. I wonder what parents of small children are thinking when I drive a sports car, fill up my time with a paid job that I love and an unpaid job that I love. I burn candles and incense, I can go out or stay in or do whatever I wish with my free time. I no longer struggle with money because I've only to worry about mine and some household bills.

Who is the more thoughless person here?