Now the thing about having a baby (and I can't be the first person to have noticed this) is that thereafter you have it. ~Jean Kerr

My husband wants a baby. He points out babies that are cute. He goo-goos when he sees babies in the grocery store and will actually play peek-a-boo with small children who are sitting at a table near us in restaurants. He even sighs over little bitty clothes. No kidding.

Of course (you've guessed it) I'm less excited by the prospect. The real problem? My sister was born when I was a teenager (whoops!) and my father had a job that required a lot of travel. My mother, meanwhile, has a problem with degenerative discs in her spine, which means that she cannot carry heavy things and she is often in bed, in pain.

So guess who did a large share of childcare when she was growing up. Yup. Me. About four weeks after my sister was born my father was out of town and my mom was in bed. When my sister would start crying to be fed in the middle of the night, my mom would get me out of bed. How did she do this when she couldn't sit up? The telephone. She would call me.

I talked on the phone so much when I was a teen that my parents put a second line into the house, which ran straight into my bedroom (kids didn't have cell phones back then). I thought this was super cool. Until my sister was born. So it would run like this:

Me: [snoring]
RRRINGGGG!!!
Me: Unghngh, hellow?
Mother: Mallllllllll - eeeeee - naaaaaaaaaa. I need you to do me a favor. Could you get up and make a bottle? And feed your sister?
Me: What time is it?
Mother: Feeding time.

So I would drag myself out of bed, make the bottle and go sit in my mom's bedroom so she could oversee the feeding. ("Hold her head a little higher - that's right. Now you have to burp her.") It was an intensive on the job mothering training program.

I also had the dubious honor of toting my sister around, since my mother couldn't lift her (or a lot of items at the grocery store). I wore her in a sling, in a pouch that left her arms and legs free, and, eventually on my back in a backpack. (People used to come up to me and tell me I was a little wh*re and personally responsible for the downfall of America's morals, but that's another story for another day.)

I have the dubious honor of having been thrown up on repeatedly, peed on, and there was even an episode involving explosive diarrhea that I won't get into. She has also thrown up in my shoes twice and in my purse once. I see lots of blogs out there with moms complaining about the above. Imagine having to deal with it when you're a teenager. And you didn't even get any sex out of the deal. Yeah.

I don't really resent my parents for putting me through all this. They were doing the best they could with what they had. And now I know what it takes to raise a child. Intimately. So, the thing is, I feel like I've been there, got the vomited/pee/etc-stained-t-shirt and don't necessarily need to go there again. I recently met an older lady bemoaning the fact that her recently divorced 27 year old daughter had just moved back home. With three grandchildren. All under the age of 6. She shook her head and said, "I love them, but I already raised my share of children. I don't really want to do it again." Boy, could I ever relate.

But my husband is seriously obsessed with babies. He keeps asking me if my biological clock is ticking yet (his mother confirms he was definitely born male). All this talk about children made me wonder what was up with him. Why do people decide to have children anyway? Maybe I'm missing something. I had to laugh at the comments to this blog post. There are a lot of people out there who vehemently maintain that having children is SO TOTALLY WORTH IT. I don't disagree, I love my sister very much, I have lots of war (and embarrassing!) stories to tell, and she is a wonderful person.

But I kind of feel like it's a zero-sum game. That is to say, kids bring a lot of pain and suffering and difficulty and expense to your life. And they also bring a lot of joy and happiness and pride and pleasure. So you're sort of back where you started before the pain and suffering.

Judging by the comments to that blog post, though, a lot of wanting to have children (if you're not a huge kid person) is due to some sort of biological drive. Which is good! It means that, at some point, my horomones will kick in and make me desperately feel like I need to reproduce. I certainly hope so. Because right now I literally wake up just about every morning and think "WOOHOO! NO BABY!!!"

Why oh Why Did I Get Married?

Ok, so I've been working on this for a year now and here's what I've learned: I really hate being married. I don't think it's as much my husband as it is the institution. Well, maybe it's my husband too, to the extent that he's focused on the institution. I just hate all the emotional baggage and hidden expectations that go along with marriage, and by that I mean the expectations that each person has about what it means to be married.

Third parties also have expectations, interestingly. For example, we are apparently supposed to know where the other is at all times. If someone asks me where he is and I respond that I don't know, they look at me like I've suddenly sprouted a second head from my neck that is singing in Swahili. So, I've started making up answers (Oh, he's at a meeting, a golf tournament, home washing his hair...). I suppose he could be off shagging some other girl, but for some reason I'm not particularly worried about that. It's not for me to play his mommy and keep tabs on him, so long as he comes home at night.

The tougher expectations have been the intra-marriage ones - the things we expect from each other. I expect my husband to look around the house and, if something needs doing, to do it. That expectation hasn't really changed from when we were living together. If the trash needs to be taken out, take it out. If something needs to be put away, put it away! If we both do this, the house will be tidy. I can't do it all myself. Also, although I don't keep tabs on him, I do start to worry if he's not home by 10-11pm, so I'd like a courtesy call around that time to tell me where he is. That's about it.

His expectations have been less well defined. I'm not sure I even know what they all are, but I do know that his help with the laundry and the dishes have fallen off to the lowest levels in our four years of living together. I don't know if that's an expectation or not, but it definitely seems to be related to our getting married. He also has apparently designated himself CFO of our household. I have some investments that were given to me by my grandparents when I was young (and they were still alive) and I decided I wanted to sell them. He told me no.

Seriously, just "No." Um, sorry, but they're mine? You don't get to tell me "no" about anything, much less things that are my personal property. Then he started talking about capital gains and cost purchase basis and taxes and planning offsets and who knows. My position: my grandparents gave it to me and I should be able to sell it if I want. End of story. He would never think about it twice if we weren't married.

The other thing I dislike about being married are the titles. He really makes a point out of presenting me to everyone as his "Wife." Sometimes he forgets to tell them my name. Once, after a long silence, someone responded, "Well, nice to meet you, Wife." I hate feeling like I've been reduced to a label. Especially since I am much, much more than just a wife. But just using my name is enough for me - Malina. Ask me about my name sometime. It has a special history and I love telling people about it.

So, about now, you're going to say something like, "Have you talked to your husband about all this?" And I'll tell you no. Why? Because whenever I try to imagine that conversation ("Honey, I hate being married, but I think it's the institution, not you") it just doesn't end well. If it has not been made clear, sure, my husband makes me nuts sometimes, he does goofy or stupid things, he screws up. So do I. I forgive him for all that and I don't want to break up with him. I just don't want to be married.

Perhaps you're thinking what a terrible person I am, or you're shaking your head thinking that I'm the next divorce. Maybe both of those are true. But here's the thing: I don't think we'd be having these problems if we hadn't gotten married. And I was the idiot who WANTED to get married. He was perfectly happy before but I thought I was missing out on some amazing experience. My happily married friend keeps telling me that I'm trying to be too independent, that we need to combine our lives more and always think about the other person (so, I should have been thinking of him when I wanted to sell my property, instead of myself). But the truth is that I feel trapped and stifled in a relationship that didn't make me feel that way before.

Of course, I still get the "How's married life?" questions from people I don't know that well. And I tell them (with a great big smile on my face): "GREAT!"