Well, I decided I needed a place to write. Everyone else...yeah...I'm using the "everyone else is doing it" line...seems to be having a lot of fun blogging, so why not see if it'll be fun for me =) We'll try it for a while and see what happens. I sometimes find myself so filled with thoughts and feelings about birth, babies, hosptials, homebirth, midwives, doctors, God...I need a place to express these feelings, so bear with me. I hope this will be good. Enjoy!
Jenny

Is there ever a right time to have a baby?

I have a dear friend who has been asking this question…for some time now and I found myself reflecting upon it one day when I was driving. I was trying to understand it myself. How does one decided? Should we decide? I sit irresponsible to accept many children? Any children? Is it irresponsible to prevent a baby from entering our family at anytime? Or is it irresponsible to deny the gift from God that a baby truly is? WOW! Talk about a heavy thing to try to figure out. Some find themselves pregnant WAY before they were every ready and some try for years to no avail. I can’t wrap my head around some of those scenarios but found myself reflecting upon my friend and when it is right for the couple who are committed to each other, who enjoy kids, who are responsible adults and who have it within their very heart and souls to be wonderful parents. For that couple, when is it right?

I decided having a baby is a lot like skydiving. Have you ever gone skydiving? I have. WOW!!! What a rush! When my children are raised and I feel ready, I will certainly go again. I only went once, but the memory has stayed quite fresh! I thought a lot about going skydiving before ever committing to it. I thought about it for years actually. I tried to imagine what it would be like. Then I found myself working with a gentleman who went skydiving a lot! He would talk for hours about it! He was in love with it! There was nothing he could say about it that didn’t make him smile; even some of the risks were worth it to him.

Having a baby is a lot like that. I thought about having babies my whole life. I knew I wanted to do it, but I knew I had to wait for the “proper” time. I would visit with mothers about having children and they could talk for hours about their kids. Even when sharing the less glamorous things of motherhood, they still spoke warmly and lovingly of their children.

Then you reach the point of committing to it. With skydiving, I finally reached a point when I was ready to do it. I was psyched; it was time to “just do it!” I looked around for different places to jump and found three. I chose one that fit my location best, and also looked in to the cost of jumping and the options. Do I want to do it by myself, or do I want to jump with a partner? Did I want to have pictures taken and have it videoed? When did I want to do it? Was summer best? Or would it be better in the fall with all the great colors. Did it really matter?

Same with having a baby. You decide, yep, I’m ready. Let’s start a family. You look around you and see what others are doing and how they added a baby to their lives. Did they go to the hospital, birth center or did they do it at home? Did they use an OB, family doctor, midwife or unassisted? Do you want to remember the moment with photos and video, or is it a quiet moment remembered only in your heart and soul? Is there a better time to have a baby? Is your family committed to something in a certain season, or do you have the desire to go on one last trip before moving to the next stage of your life? There are so many considerations.

So finally I said, yes, I’m going sky diving. I chose the location. I picked my options and I even scheduled the date. Guess what happened next. It was too windy! Who knew wind would factor into whether you could jump or not. I scheduled the jump several times over the next year before I finally found the day that was perfect!

Couples do this with babies as well. They spend so much time trying to figure out when the perfect time for having a child is only to find when they are ready to commit, they don’t conceive the first time, or the second, or the twelfth. Sometimes the timing is just not right, but the important thing is the fact that they are trying. They are still calling the jump zone and scheduling the jump. Without scheduling the jump, you’ll never get the opportunity.

Not to “jump” ahead of myself here, but just a thought. Would my life be just as important and full of promise and life without the jump? Of course! Would I be any less of a person, any less interesting without jumping? Of course not. The jump just added some spice to my life. It added an event in my life that was out of the ordinary. It forced me to step out of my comfort zone and take a risk. As many people know, we grow the most when we are tested.

Again, it’s the same with children. Do couples or individuals without children have any less to offer society than their counterparts with children? Of course not! Are they any less interesting without children? Of course not! Children just add a certain spice to their life…sometimes the spice comes in the form of a ketchup stain on their pants…but children just force you to step out on a limb. You have to take a risk and say, no, I’m not perfect, I probably won’t be a perfect parent, but I sure want to try to! I want to take a risk and see how good I can be. Once again, by forcing ourselves out of our comfort zone, we are tested and through the testing, we often grow to new levels we never conceived possible!

So back to the jump, after months and months of scheduling and rescheduling, it’s finally time! The day is perfect! The weather is beautiful! The sun is out, the clouds are not. The wind is slight but not enough to cancel the jump. The drive took about an hour. That was a very long hour! I had wanted to do this forever, but now that the time was before me, I was terrified! What in the world was I thinking?! I must be out of my mind!

We get there and are given a jump suit to put on over our clothes. We’re even given a little hat/helmet thingy to wear. Why? It’s not gonna protect me if we crash into the ground? Maybe some skydiving junkie can e-mail me the reason for the helmet thingy. So anyway, I’m a bundle of nerves and ready to just get this over with, but not yet…I have to sit through a short video telling me I could die! Huh?! Talk about a confidence builder. Then I sign some papers stating that if I do die, my family can’t sue the business because I was stupid enough to jump! WOW! So anyway, we make the long walk to the plane and we get in.

Again, we can see how this is the same thing as with a baby. You finally commit to the baby, you conceive the baby, and you grow the baby. You are on the final stretches of the pregnancy, the labor and birth loom before you. You prep for the birth in whatever manner is appropriate for your site of birth. You read things, you watch videos, you hear about moms and babies dieing. You are on the brink of mother or fatherhood. The contractions start, you sit back and enter labor.

With the jump, there were six of us going up. Five of us would jump, leaving one person to land the plane. Good plan, huh? We’re going to jump out of a perfectly good airplane; interesting thought. There is the photographer, my husband (boyfriend at the time), myself and the two guys who are going to jump with us so all we have to do is enjoy the fall! The trip took about 20 minutes to get high enough. If I remember correctly, it was something like 10,000 feet up. It was high. My husband and his partner maneuver to the door, open it, and after a moment, leapt! The entire plane lifted higher as their combined weight of over 400 pounds left the craft. I was dumbfounded. He did it! He didn’t even really care if he jumped; he was just doing it because I wanted to. Hum.

Next the photographer goes to the door. He doesn’t jump, though; he shimmies out, hanging onto the wing of the plane with the camera strapped to his head waiting for myself and my partner to exit. On the video you see me awkwardly moving to the door and then after a moment, tumbling forward and out. What you don’t is inside my head I am freaking out! What was I thinking!? This is foolish! I’m going to die! I’m too young to die! I don’t want to do this. In the briefest nanosecond after I jumped, I thought I did die. And then it was elation! I didn’t matter that we’re falling to earth somewhere around 115-130 miles per hour, I was in ecstasy! It felt like we weren’t even moving. We were so high, you couldn’t tell we were plummeting to earth!

With children and labor, you wait and wait and wait for it to start. Then it finally does. You’re excited, but you think, what was I thinking?! I’m going to push a 7 or 8 pound child out of a very tiny place! This is foolishness! This is ridiculous! What were we thinking? Then it dawns on you, you’re about to be a mom or a dad. WHAT! No matter your age, you think “I’m not old enough to be a mom or dad”! No matter the age of your parents when they had you, you think they were much older and wiser when they had you. You watch friends go through birth before you and you’re astonished that they did it. You knew they would and that they had to, but just the same…how could they have done it? You look at their faces after and they are filled with joy. How can this be? This labor thing is scary! Birth is scary! Becoming a parent…it’s scary!

Then you enter labor and you find the rhythm to it and you become one with it. You don’t fight it anymore, because you can’t. You move with it. You enjoy it. You talk with it. You talk to your baby. You reach down and feel the baby crowning. You keep your hand there and the baby’s head is in the palm of your hand. You have burned the imprint of that child’s head into your hand and your soul. That very surface of their head will always be a reminder of what you first touched of your child. You will stroke that part in days later and marvel over the fact that you touched your child first there. After another moment…it seems like a lifetime…though it could be several seconds or two or three minutes, the baby slides out into your hand…or hands…whatever you were able to get to function in that moment of joy. You are a mom or a dad. It’s real. It’s here. It’s now. There’s no turning back. You were just handed a gift from God. You are in ecstasy! The pain or discomfort you may have been feeling just a moment before is gone. It’s vanished. It is as if it never was. Your thoughts of foolishness about having a child are gone in that moment. Of course you can be a parent. Of course you can raise this child. Give this child away; pass it by, chose not to have it?!?! Are you crazy, you would give your very life for this child! Nothing is ever the same afterward and that’s exactly as you would have it. Are there moments when you reflect upon life without a child? Of course! But if given the opportunity to give your child away, could you? NEVER!

Rocking just inside the door of the airplane before the jump is what it is like just before you commit to having a child. Terrifying and exciting all at the same time. When you jump, there is that immeasurable moment of shear terror, followed by pure ecstasy!