Stacia and Jax
I even told people I didn’t want to have kids.
I found out very early on that this notion offends people. Or confuses them. Or, at the very least, it puts them off somehow.
I wasn’t worried. I’m like that sometimes. And I try not to stick my nose in the private business of others.
You’ll change your mind, everyone said.
Yeah, right.
Enter Jackson, my child.
And when I say “enter Jackson,” I am definitely alluding to his personality and strong will, the way he barrels into the room and the way he barreled into the world, three months early and in the middle of a hurricane.
After all the NICU (neonatal intensive care) trauma, my 20-month-old is, without exaggeration, the happiest person I’ve ever known in my entire life. He plays hard, eats everything and grins pretty much from the moment he bounces out of his crib in the morning until the moment he returns to it at night to curl up in a ball of dinosaur pajamas and curly hair.
I’m not lying when I tell you that I wasn’t even out of the hospital after delivering my son when the questions about when I would have a second child began.
First, it was a nurse telling me that “Second babies are easier,” and not to worry that “all my other pregnancies” would result in premature birth. (How could she possibly know that?)
Then it was all the references to Jax as not my son, but my “first child.”
To be honest, I wasn’t thinking one way or another about having more kids at that time. I was reeling from the most traumatic experience of my life. I was basking in the miracle. I was up to my proverbial elbows in diapers and breast pump parts that needed to be constantly steam cleaned.
Do this again? Are people nuts?
I’ve talked to friends, co-workers and relatives about the (im)possibility of having more children. The people who know me get it. Even if the threat of a second premature birth wasn’t all but medically imminent for me, I still feel content in my decision, and I feel supported by those closest to me.
But to all the others, from the casual acquaintances to the strangers, I have to say that the obsession with everyone having second babies is no less intrusive, unwarranted, baffling and often downright offensive than the obsession with having first babies.
Only kids are lonely kids, people have said to me.
There are 7 billion people in the world. There is ample opportunity to try to combat loneliness. Anyone who is worried about people not having babies anymore need only remember that — or watch that show about the Duggars (what do they have, like, 30 now? Is it “30 and Counting” yet?)
And if that doesn’t do it for you, check out my Instagram feed. You’ll see the happiest little man in the whole world, looking not remotely lonely. He’ll make friends. I’ll drive him to their houses, or host fort-building and s’more-making parties.
In other words, I’m not worried.
