Want to have a baby but don't want a baby. T_T

Lately, I've sort of been feeling like I want to have a baby.

My entire life, I have either disliked or run from children. At dinner parties, if I see one coming, I'll sneak into the bathroom or whatever is closest with a door. (Actually, the best was when my brother and I both locked ourselves in a bathroom until we deemed enough time had passed for a child of its age to probably lose interest in us and wander off.) ...I don't like them. I have no maternal instincts. I have no idea how to interact or what to say to them. For instance, when I do say something, I speak above their intellectual level, I guess, and they look at me like I'm an alien. Et cetera.

So why the ***k do I feel like it's time for me to have a baby? Is this just my "biological clock" ticking away, telling me I'm in rip-roarin' form to start cranking out a kid? I am 24. Has anyone else experienced this kind of thing?

I just recently got married, and of course this also brings up all kinds of cultural and stereotypical topics about having kids, even though I've never wanted any. So, this could be a factor - peer pressure, or subconscious pressure from the long-stated order of 'marry, kids, house' etc.

I am taking birth control pills. Could this have anything to do with it? If anything, based on side-effect listings, it seems like it would have the opposite effect.

As a side, IF I ever decided I want children, I'm 97% sure my husband would want to, provided the setting was sound (he loves kids), but he is content having none. We've had many conversations before marriage, of course - that's a big deal. So I'm not being pressured or anything.

Anyone else had this happen? Maybe I just need to buy a dog. >.<

As I am fond of saying, getting married will change your life, but having kids will REALLY change you and your life Forever.
If this is not something you ever wanted, pay attention to that; it's okay. As long as your H is good with that. Having a great life together is a worthy life too, ya know? Your path may be a different one.

Your body may be telling you something, but actually, you have lots of time to listen and decide.

My daughter is going through this right now. She is 10 years older than you so she is really thinking hard about what she wants the next 20 years to look like. In her case it's; a) slave to child or b) living happily w/her H & doing other worthwhile things.
I have assured her I will not be the mom begging for grandchildren, (but I wouldn't hate it if she presented me with one either.)
Money is a major consideration for them, they have it, but know it will take even more than they are planning to need for a future with kids.
I think your thought of caring for a living thing, like a dog, is a great idea. It will give you a taste of parenting.
And hey, you are still so young. You have lots of time....

I am not telling you to have a baby (24 is still quite young!) but as a person who was never really a 'baby' person or kid person, I can tell you, your own kids are much different.

I was never a baby person.....& at 60, I'm still NOT a baby person. I went into my marriage not wanting to have children.....ever.....I was more interested in a career & never related to kids my whole life.

I ended up getting pregnant a couple of years after I got married. I wasn't a good mom.....I didn't know the first thing about caring for a baby & really had no interest in learning.....so my husband being good with kids (the only thing he was good with) ended up doing most of the care with her & my parents were also willing to care for her while I finished my degree & had my engineering career.

With all the fighting in the marriage, it was a good thing she had my parents for a good stable home to grow up in.

Honestly, if you aren't good with kids & you really don't have the desire to have or be around kids, you are probably better off NOT having any....because so many kids don't have parents that are good with kids & end up messed up later on in life because of it.....definitely don't just have kids because you think your internal clock is telling you something....listen to your logical reasoning above & beyond everything else.

baby cravings! every woman gets them I think once in a while. even at later ages. I think it's the animal instinct in us to reproduce, and the natural maternal instincts. It always passes, especially when it really comes down to it you don't want kids. Be careful though....it can be overruling. It's how I got both of mine

baby cravings! they are normal and you will experience them once in a while for ever after I think. I think it is a natural instinct for maternal nurturing and reproduction. Be careful though, it can be overruling. It's how I got both of mine . Trust me when I say there is absolutely NOTHING to prepare you for the amount of stress, anxiety, and overwhelming sense of all loss of understanding. Kids are more than hard. Especially when you have a history of depression you need to be extra careful and pay attention after you have one for postpartum depression. It can create a monster and there are woman who have "lost their mind" and done horrible things. I'm not trying to scare you. Just things you need to keep in mind. Make sure you are strong enough for trials the rest of their lives.

It's normal to have twinges of wanting children/become pregnant.

You are still, just 24. You have time to sort through what these desires mean for you, and can still decide if you really want one. I was 28, when I had my first child.

Used to think, I didn't want kids, at the same time, kids would gravitate towards me. Holding a newborn, before having my own, scared the heck out of me.

I am more familiar with biological clock talk, from women in their mid-to-late 30's, not 24. Women in their 40's, these days, have babies.

Now that you are trying to sort through where all these feelings are coming from, it's a good time, as any, to really think, if motherhood is something that you really want in life.

It's not even remotely easy. Even mother's who have a natural inclination, have a tough time. Then there's all these societal pressures, knowing the right and 'wrong' ways to discipline. Cost of diapers and day care or stay at home care, and on and on. How well do you handle, exhaustion, isolation, interruptions, what if there's a developmental delay or such, a birth defect. Having to put your own needs behind theirs? How to handle the begging and whining of the kids, as they get older? What if they break you new tv screen?(happened to my cousin), what if you need an emergency C-section? What about gestational diabetes, high blood pressure? What if you are bed bound during the last stages?
Ever been puked up on? Along with all other bodily movements?

And yes, what about post-partum depression?

I'm kind of going through the same thing. I'm 26 and got married a year and a half ago. Then my husband got a really good, stable, well paying job. And then the baby clock really started ticking...

When I was younger, it was, I don't want kids and I don't want a husband. Which turned into I don't want kids. Which turned into I don't know if I want kids. Which is where I'm at now. My husband has always wanted kids, but the older he gets and the more he sees his sister and her disaster of a family, he's starting to think not having kids would be okay. He used to want to have kids young, and now he's all about waiting if we do have kids.

But I'm the same way as you, I still don't like being around other people's kids. I don't know how to interact with them. I don't know how to hold a baby. I don't feel like I've got any maternal instinct (which my T and my mom have both told me isn't true, I just don't see it). So here's what I'm doing. I'm A) waiting to make a decision until I am fully functional without medication. And B) learning absolutely everything I can about having children, from being pregnant, to breastfeeding, to thinking about parenting, schools, and discipline, and how our finances would be impacted. Right now, I'm just absorbing as much information as possible. You and I both have time to wait to make this decision. I've noticed the urge comes in waves, though. I don't know how long you've been feeling this way, but for me it started right around the time we got married and then it went away for a while, and I went back to saying "IF we have kids." It comes and goes depending on whats going on in my life. Just sit with it for a bit and take all the time you need to make this decision. It has to come from you and your husband. There is no wrong or right answer.

Your mom & your T are both WRONG just as my mother & everyone around me was WRONG when it comes to that maternal instinct.....there are some of us who NEVER do get that maternal instinct even when we do have the baby.

I grew up as an only child & was never around kids & the younger kids I was around I never had a desire to be anywhere close to them...their actions only aggravated me......

Getting married wasn't high on my list of things to do either.....should have listened to my internal instincts on that with regards to the guy I married also.....but I ended up getting married.....then summer vacation came from working on my degree & the pill wasn't an option because of the problems it caused.....so oops.....I ended up pregnant....strange thing is I realized I was pregnant about 15 minutes after....just something inside felt different & sure enough....I was right which was really wierd. I didn't tell anyone for quite awhile as I was trying to decide what I was going to do....going into marriage I made it known that NOTHING was going to get in my way of getting my degree & the first comment that came out of my H's mouth told me to take off a couple of years of school & go back later.....those were fighting words in my life especially with him as a H & the marriage wasn't good from the beginning......

I'm glad I decided to have our daughter now....but at the time I sort of thought if I did want a baby later on abortion could mess that up....but now I"m so thankful I made the decision to have her because my concept on abortion has changed 100%.....anyway........

All through the pregnancy, I kept up all my major exercise, swimming every day, riding horses, skiing in the winter right before having her.....my obgyn said that if you have a good pregnancy there isn't anything you can do that you are used to doing that will mess it up....he even had a lady that was sky diving throughout her pregnancy.....back in the late 70's even before ultra-sound.........

I ended up only gaining 10 pounds throughout the pregnancy & my daughter was 8lbs 2oz of that.....so I really ended up loosing weight in the overall pregnancy......last month was stressful when I found out I had to have a c-section because I was too small to have a baby her size otherwise.....that stress was part of my weight loss as I normally react to stress in that way. Throughout the pregnancy, I never had that feeling of how wonderful it was.....it JUST WAS.......& I was shaking so bad after the c-section, I really had no focus on her when they brought her to me......H was sitting in the waiting room for long after the delivery.......I have some really cute just born pictures of her & in the hospital....but I never had any close maternal feeling toward her.....I refused to breast feed because I was finishing off my semester in college & wasn't about to be tied to her & had no desire to be tied to her either in that way.....probably because my desire for my degree was greater than my desire to have a child......I had no idea how to bathe a baby....my H did as he had 3 younger siblings & he was already 5 years old when the first sibling came along......& because he had been such a jerk about my taking time off college which I refused to do, I made him do most of the care of our daughter.....so part of my lack of maternal feelings might have been my fighting feelings against the direction my H wanted me to go in....but the feelings just really weren't there. I was able to relate to her better the older she got.....but even to this day & have no desire to be around young kids & babies are something I never gravitate to. Some kids I relate to well but many, I really want nothing to do with.......

So I truly believe that there are some women who do not have that maternal instinct & even though there aren't many, there is nothing wrong with NOT having it....it's something we just need to accept about ourselves & not feel guilty when others try to make us feel that way.

Sorry for the longer post...just something I've felt passionately about for most of my life because many have no understanding of how I could possibly feel this way being a woman...because so many are under the mis-guided belief that all women have maternal instinct.

Eskie, I'm sorry if my post upset you. I didn't mean to, and I was not suggesting that because my mother and my T both said I do have a maternal instinct means that every woman does. It was a specific comment about myself. It's not something they've just said, like "Oh, of course you do, don't be silly. It'll just come naturally when you have a baby" It's a, "I can see it in you, specifically you from your actions, and it's your insecurities getting in the way." I think both my T and my mother would agree that there are women that just don't have it in them, and that there's nothing wrong with those women. My T doesn't have any kids of her own. I guess the point I was trying to make was that sometimes we don't know our own strengths and abilities. And that maybe motherhood is one of those strengths we don't know we have because we've never been in the position to experience it. I'm not suggesting every woman should run out and get pregnant just to find out if she'd be a great mother. But maybe, in some cases, we should take our own opinions of ourselves with a grain of salt.

Also, to be fair, you said you never wanted children and the way you said it, I took to mean you never even had the urge to have a baby. I guess I don't think that if someone wants children, or thinks they may want them one day, they should not have them because they're afraid they won't have a maternal instinct. Of course, you have to take in all the other variables as well, like why you want to have children, but whether or not you think you have a maternal instinct shouldn't be the deciding factor alone. Sometimes, we're harder on ourselves than we need to be, demanding perfection and feeling like everyone else knows how to do it, so why don't I? when in reality, no one really knows what it's going to be like until it happens.

Again, sorry if I upset you. And hey, I haven't had kids yet, so who knows what my future will be like?

I'm your age and also recently married... I have felt the same way.

Also, I got a puppy. She pees every 1-2 hours and I wake up once in the middle of the night to her cry to go out and pee. I have to walk her every day. This one has a ton of energy. I have to get her to meet new people and dogs, get her socialized. I get few hours of sleep, but I nap during the day. If I was in school, or working, I wouldn't know what to do! We are so tired lol. I can tell she misses her family badly and I try to make her comfy, buy chew toys and train her not to play bite other people. She's going to obedience classes soon. Etc. Etc... BUT, she's wonderful, she makes me happy, I smile every day because of her.

I don't have children. I personally had intense baby fever. I know it won't be all about me anymore.. as people told me it will change your whole life and your body too and around $15k-$30k to deliver shocked me. Some things I didn't think about. I'm being honest. I would look around and friends and family are pregnant, my mom wants a grandchild. All that should not matter. It's for you and your husbands decision only to have a baby. I visit my aunt's sister-in law when I want a cute non-pooping instababy to smother so I can satisfy my cravings cause we all know that's not reality

RomanSunburnYour post didn't upset me....it's just that for so long in my life everyone kept saying that all women have maternal instincts & if they think they don't it comes when they have a baby.......just wanted to make it known that for some that just isn't true & that women really need to KNOW THEMSELVES....not what someone tells them about themselves.

You expressed it very well in your post that there is a lot that goes into that decision....& no woman should take the responsibility of being a mother lightly or think it will just happen when they have the baby......thank you

I just posted on another thread so a short and simple note to address this specifically: I wanted kids, really liked them, love my kids (ages 14 and 16), but oh my gosh--NOTHING and NO ONE can tell you the amount of emotional ups and downs you will have. Overall, my kids are pretty good (none of the typical, horrible teenage behaviors you hear about) but sometimes I want to scream because I just never get an emotional break from being a mother! And don't start me on all the money we have spent on them! Think long and hard. There is no obligation to have kids just because you're female.