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!!!"