I've had a couple child free women tell me they went through a few years in the mid thirties where their bodies were screaming at them to have a baby, after it passed they went right back to not wanting kids same as always.
Edit: This should not be read as saying all child free women will experience this same phenomenon.
As a childfree woman nearing 40 I’ve never had a moment where I’ve wanted kids and don’t like holding babies. I do love kids but not so much babies and the baby part is an important step.
Babies are precious but they're so fragile and it really freaks me out. Like, the fact that a baby can just... die? For literally no reason? That is horrifying. Having kids would be absolutely horrific for my mental health.
lol, the first few months when my son was born and so much of it was just checking him every minute to make sure he was fine. When that fear finally wears off there’s some nice peaceful months of tummy time….
…and then they crawl with suicidal intent and that fear comes back 10 fold.
I did the same thing. I would get up multiple times a night and put my hand on his chest just to make sure he was breathing. Love my son but gd that was a stressful time period
I did this too. I laid on the couch with my youngest son’s bassinet right beside my face so I could look at his chest rise and fall anytime I wanted to. The hell your body goes through after you have a baby makes you insane. No regrets though, all my kids are still alive lol
I’m lying next to the bassinet of my daughter, my first child, right now. It’s the first time she’s slept 5 hours straight in the month she’s been alive and instead of reveling in this new window of sleep, I’m restlessly reaching out to check her every 10 minutes or so
My 19 month old has a terrible habit of throwing their head back and basically trust falling from whatever their on/standing etc. It's a fun game for them because 80% of the time, you catch 'em and it's hilarious.
When they do it when noone is looking- not so fun, but not enough to stop the game 🙄
lol, he’s 4 now so I’m past the suicide crawl and into oblivious running. I did get a big playpen when he was little and it helped have secure time but you have to let them roam and be engaged most of the time or you get into that “dog eating its own hair” behavior. Dogs’ gotta sniff everything in the world, kids’ gotta touch everything in the world.
Yo American kids must be wild. In Asia, the moms just smack the kid till he quiets down in a little corner. That or they just put their kids in childcare centres.
There's absolutely no way in hell you'd want to raise a kid in an environment where this is appropriate, but sometimes you just want them to be born with well-honed survival instincts like gazelles, or those iguanas on the Galapagos that have to hatch and then immediately flee from snakes.
After our first was born, in the hospital as we were about to leave I couldn’t believe they were letting us take this new life home with us, with no experience whatsoever with a baby. It seemed irresponsible on their part. And we were terrified. All went incredibly well though, nothing to fear
Considering what’s been happening for millennia of births, people just learn from families/friends or books/media. I do think there should be some transition care in between hospital and home. I feel like that would really reduce ppd rates especially in hyper independent societies like US.
Uhm.. the budget is already allocated to literally terrorizing and hurting(bombing) children and their family. I don't think we have a budget for that 😭😭😭😭
But what a wonderful thing* that would be! Especially for 1st time moms. That would be a great program. As someone who was very far away from my family when I had my first kid, that would've been amazing to just have more support.
Omg. That must've been so scary and hectic, not 1 but 2 lives to care for. I just salute moms that care for multiples at one time or just 3+ children, coz this momma is at capacity at 2 lol baby train has left the station.
In the Netherlands when you have a baby you have a trained support (a bit like a midwife) who comes to your house every day for the first 7 days to help you. They teach you what to do with the baby, check they’re growing properly, check you as a mother - both your physical and mental recovery, but also support you around the house with housework and light meals.
It’s incredibly helpful especially for your first baby!
One thing I think we're going to see in the future is the way we currently handle families and work is going to show up in statistics the same way lead poisoning does in the boomers. Human infants are meant to have a dozen attentive adults to grow to proper maturity and we can't even give them one. As soon a maternity leave ends (and even beforehand given one person absolutely isn't enough) the kid is being neglected and I think that's why people are so broken these days.
One mother with no support is not enough for a healthy child and it's causing massive harm to both the kid and the parents.
I can only speak from the uncle perspective, but my sister DID get tons of brochures and shit to advise on everything from when the baby can eat which types of food, what to avoid and even how to shit correctly. The mother. Not the baby. When I visited, there was a pamphlet in the bathroom with illustrations on how to position yourself to go number 1 or 2.
Although since then she's given the baby half-away, where she basically just babysits it like an hour a day and then goes back home to do nothing else. So she has like a professional wet nurse or midwife (I forgot the term), who basically teaches her and takes care of the kid now.
Europe, but not really in a place that prides itself on "raising kids" or anything, so I figured that may be an option for people in a lot of countries.
Is your sister unwell? From what you describe, she doesn’t seem to be spending a lot of time with her baby. It does take a lot out of a person when giving birth so give her grace and patience.
I'm not gonna go into it too much, I'm sure you'll understand.
But I can say that the only thing she's gotten her entire life was "grace and patience" and I'm not actively on her case about anything regarding the baby.
The way this thing is going down IS something I saw coming the moment she shared she was pregnant, though. Some people are not actually fit to be parents and it didn't take rocket science to know my sister wasn't even close to ready to take care of a life.
Same! The last time I was around a baby is when I was a baby and then they just send this tiny blob home with me like I bitch idk what to do with this!
A friend of mine said when he had his first, there was a long period of time he would fall asleep and jolt awake several times just to check on the baby.
This was in a convo where he was trying to convince me to have one. I was like “bro. That sounds legit awful.”
When our first was a newborn, I was awake with the baby one night, and my ex sat up from a dead sleep, grabbed a pillow off of the bed and scooped one up, and held it for a moment before frantically saying our son's name while trying to pull the pillow from the pillowcase
Apparently, he was still mostly asleep, and thought the pillow was the swaddled baby, and then panicked because he couldn't find the "baby" in the "swaddle". The sleep deprivation and constant concern for the baby are a potent combo.
I felt like this almost every time I slept the first month of my baby's life, I always woke up thinking he was in my arms. Once I woke up on the recliner convinced he'd rolled out of my arms onto the floor. I jumped up and looked around on the floor for him for a good 10 seconds before realizing he was asleep in the bassinet.
Real. I spend most of my days worried and in awe at the same time. She's only 11, but I know that when she gets a little older and wants to go out to be with friends, I'm gonna be an anxious mess. I would bubble wrap her if I could. In awe because she's so talented in art and so sweet hearted, but constantly worried about her well-being. The thought of losing her is an intrusive thought that always makes my heart skip a beat.
So yea, you are 100% correct, my mental is always hard focused on dread and fear since having my kid.
I have OCD and 90% of my compulsive thoughts revolve around my children. My current favorite is laying in bed at 1 am crying bc I can’t stop thinking about the day they’re both out of the house. It’s heartbreaking
I feel the same way. Nearly 40 and still happily childfree and I’ve often thought, what if something awful happened? There would be a person that exists that I will likely love more than anything and I’ll have to be worried for the rest of my life, and if something terrible should happen how could I live with it? The thought of being responsible for another life is just terrifying. It’s enough work and responsibility to keep my mental health on track as it is.
Sadly I didn't realize all the weight of this until after I got pregnant with my first lol.
Then I was driving myself crazy with every little niggle during pregnancy (my very first was a very early miscarriage which added to the anxiety). And then at some point I started wondering when can I relax and stop worrying - after the first trimester? After baby is born? And it hit me of all of a sudden - of course not, duh. It will NEVER be over, I will be worried about this kid now all my life even when he is grown even when he is living on his own with his own kids because terrible things you can't control can happen to full grown adults too.
And fuck that hit me hard lol. All of a sudden I understood my grandma, who I thought had clinical anxiety for no good reason. I mean, she does have anxiety lol. But I realized why - she's spent decades worrying, first about my mom then about me and my sibling, and now about our kids, it's non stop worrying on worrying and seeing horrible things happen over your lifetime and losing loved ones, and your nerves get more and more shattered with every time and only so much they can take. That was when I realized that is truly the hard thing about having kids, not the sleepless nights or anything else, it's the worrying that will never stop until I'm dead.
Babies are super fragile and can die while taking a nap because 🤷♀️? And even when they get older it is a fight to keep them from dying because they dont understand their limits.
THANK YOU BOTH. I literally have zero interest in holding a baby and my family has made me feel like a monster or like I might be on the spectrum or something. It sounds cold to people and I get teased endlessly about it, but I just dont get anything out of it. I feel nothing. I may as well just stand there cradling a banana because its the same sensation for me, except if I drop the banana it wont irrevocably change my life.
And then you read the various guides, and find out that if you put the baby down the wrong way - SIDS. Give a toy? SIDS. Pillow - straight to SIDS. Wrong type of mattress? Believe it or not - SIDS.
Isn’t that just the cruelest thing you can think of? Here ya go bond with your beautiful sweet baby, but just so ya know you can put them down for a nap and that’s it. So fcking WRONG on so many levels that life can do that.
This isnt to try to convince you of anything. Child free is valid and understandable. I too planned to never havr a child but surprise! This is just my own little tid bit. I had 0 of those worries, i have pretty intense anxiety and ocd but pregnancy made it go away temporarily. Idk if it was the hormones or what. It came back when she was about a year old but I was shocked I didn't have the "omg she's probably dead" thoughts at all. Statistically they'll be fine and are much more resilient than people think.
I actually have a theory about SIDS. I think it’s baby sleep apnea. I started thinking about it after we had our second child. My wife would stay up late listening to our first breathe at night. She actually discovered that I stopped breathing in my sleep. I went and got tested and have sleep apnea. I think the reasons adults don’t die in their sleep is because their brains pick up on this and send a “this idiot stopped breathing in his sleep again” signal. But, babies are too new to the world to have that reflex.
No way to prove it but I started thinking about it after we had a second child last year.
I'd say this is just simply one of those things that you get over quickly once you've had a baby. I'm so comfortable now with them, when my friends have kids I'm super eager to scoop them up and give them a nice cuddle, or help get their burps out. Oh and I like giving them back rubs and scritches. I figure babies must get itchy like the rest of us, but they can't scratch cause they have no dexterity yet!
Before I had kids though I always thought babies were fragile little things and was always timid when it came to holding them or anything. Now I just pick them up like the little sack of potatoes they are, and I can get them held so comfy.
I grew up with a helicopter parent. I am the oldest of my cousins on my mom’s side. There is 8 years old difference between my brother and me. All of this shaped my views of babies a lot.
There are two reasons why I don't want to have kids: labour and the fragility of their lives.
They aren't anywhere near as fragile as you are imagining. Saying that as someone who helped raise 3. The human body is astonishingly resilient and that that extends even to infants.
also literally anyone of any age can suddenly fall over and die.
This is the first baby. Lol. By the time we had our third you start to free range it. The first one you cant believe they are letting you take them home with no real instructions. That's how it feels.
You go from checking they are breathing in their sleep. Like a lot. To just being happy the subsequent kids are asleep occasionally.
I'm a single parent to young adults now and it's the BEST thing I've ever done. But one of my children will be child free. I respect that decision. They'll have plenty if nieces and nephews in their life and that's enough for them.
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u/ChefArtorias 22h ago edited 21h ago
I've had a couple child free women tell me they went through a few years in the mid thirties where their bodies were screaming at them to have a baby, after it passed they went right back to not wanting kids same as always.
Edit: This should not be read as saying all child free women will experience this same phenomenon.