Friday, April 11, 2008

Indecisiveness

Despite being very impatient, I have never really been able to make a decision on anything that important without a lot of questioning and second-guessing. Even what to eat for dinner stumps me on an almost-daily basis. And yet, it still shocks me that I'm having such a hard time with deciding on whether we want to start a family now.
When I started law school, having a baby in my third year seemed like a genius idea. Then the summer after IL year, I thought, the longer with sleep and without kids, the better. (I think this was my way of coping with / rationalizing my decision to work in a big law firm). Then after I watched the opening to Idiocracy, I thought, ohmygod, is that going to be me? Am I going to keep waiting for "the perfect time" and get so wrapped up in my career that I won't start a family without needing frozen sperm and a surrogate?! (Perhaps slightly over-dramatic)
Nevertheless, the idea of having a baby in my third year started to seem like a great idea again. When else would I be able to have most of my day free (and the rest of the day not very stressful) in the early months of raising a child? I would also be starting work balancing family, friends and career rather than have to learn that after a few years of giving everything to my job.
But then I thought, what about being young and irresponsible? Going out and drinking on the firm tab this summer, traveling during my last year of law school and the post-bar trip, sleeping in and generally doing whatever we want. The reality is, we don't go out that much as is, we don't get great sleep (thank you cats) and we have already been blessed enough to travel quite a bit (although of course we always have more places we want to go).
We could easily wait; I just turned 25 and P is 27. Even if I work for a few years before having kids, I'll be late-twenties, by many standards still young. There is no urgency. But most of the time, now feels like a great time.
So I go back and forth on our decision at least once every day, sometimes several times a day. I don't know if I'm just being overly analytical because it's becoming real, or if I really do feel this unsure. I know that whatever happens I will be very happy, I just don't want to HAVE TO MAKE the DECISION. This was our first month trying (or not trying to not try) so in a few weeks, we'll see what happens and see how we feel. That might be a horrible way to approach this, but so far it seems like the only way I can stay sane (or at least as sane as I can be).

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