april 10

tick-tock

I'm on "site launch watch." It's 1:20 AM. I really want to go to bed. I'm a day behind in all of my work because our DSL went out Tuesday, causing much chaos and havoc. I had to make a presentation to a professional group and I guess I didn't bomb, although I felt like I was bombing, but people said I did great. I think it was just in comparison to the other people I was presenting with. One was painfully boring, the other was...a lunatic.

I've told A* that we need to put off the babymaking. I can't do what I do and have a baby. So, of course, he wants to know what I'm going to do differently so I can have time to have a baby. I have no idea. I just know that if I had one now, and gave up all chances of career advancement for at least 5 years, I will be so resentful. And that's not the environment I want my children to grow up in, and that's not the kind of parent I want to be.

My parents were largely absent throughout my entire childhood. My little brother and I were raised by our nanny (a full-time caregiver, not a governess) and our grandparents. My dad didn't even live with us during the week so he could be closer to his job in a town one hour away. Really, I think it was an unofficial separation from my mother, but I don't think she saw it that way. My mom worked 60 hours a week or more. And then she was exhausted because she didn't have any help and had no time for us.

This doesn't mean I had a horrible childhood. I didn't at all. I had a ton of fun, a lot of autonomy (which I probably would have demanded had it not been given freely), and it gave me room to be incredibly creative and introspective. In fact, there are times I think back to who I was at age 8 and 9 and I think that little girl was a hundred times smarter and wiser than I am now at age 28.

Have you seen the latest Time? It's all about women who waited until their late 30s, or later, to try to conceive and found that it was really difficult. And the people who chastise the doctors' groups who are promoting the message to women that they can't wait forever, saying they're pressuring women to have babies before they're ready. They say they are just trying to help women make informed choices, so they don't have any more 42-year-olds in their offices, shocked that the chances of them conceiving their own child, without donor eggs and all sorts of other assistence, is practically nil.

The article told stories of women who gave up the time and energy they would have devoted to their careers and gave it to their children, sacrificing promotions, or even the career of their first choice. One woman repeated that old adage, although she didn't get it quite right: "When you're old and dying you won't be thinking about work." But you know what, I probably will. And I hope that I'm thinking about how great I was at what I did, and not wishing that I hadn't married so young and that I somehow figured out how to raise a coupla kids and still do what I wanted to do.

A woman who wrote a book on the subject, and had her own natural child at age 51, with treatment, says to plan backward from where you want to be in life. Perhaps this is something I should think about. But you know what, I've already been through all that. And I know that to be where I want to be when I'm 45, I have to be having them in the next two years.

My mother and her friends decided they would have their first children by 30. It seemed to work out well for all of them. Still had energy for flailing kids, still had reasonably satisfying work lives, still had lots of life left when the kids were out of the house. And you know how old I'll be in 7 months? Twenty-nine. Times a ticking.

I read this article about "backpack journalists" today. All about how networks are training reporters in digital media processes so they can take a little DV cam and a laptop to remote areas and produce multimedia reports from the field. Ok. So NOT a kid-friendly career. But how much fun would that be? And how perfect for me. I wonder if I could find a way to do that locally. What stories would I tell? And can I take a baby in a Snugli with me?

Finally. Site is launched. Thank god. Now I'm off to bed before I start the next one.

- april 10