Tick Tock Tick Tock

I'm afraid that very soon the subtle, quiet, easily ignored ticking of my biological clock will start sounding less like a small bedside clock to a tower clock and bell worthy of any good Catholic church! I am scared and excited about the day that the alarm bells sound and I have an answer to this question: Do I want Child/ren?

So many questions:

1. Do I want Child/ren?


2. If yes, do I want to be pregnant (at almost 38 years old) or do I want to adopt?


3. If pregnant do I want to have a known or anonymous donor?


4. If adopt do I want to adopt a baby or an older child?


5. Foreign or domestic?


6. Agency or lawyer

OK, i can't keep typing all the questions...let's just stop at 6. My partner isn't insistent on having children but if I say "yes" she would go for this in a heartbeat. I have two things that confuse me about the issue of children:

First, from a very early age I was told I could not have children and if I did ever get pregnant I wouldn't carry to term. Turns out my damaged ovaries and uterus healed themselves...so I'm not sure if I think I don't want kids because I trained myself to think that knowing I couldn't or if I genuinely don't want to raise children.

That leads second: when I was 22 I got pregnant. I was engaged at the time and realized I couldn't marry him, couldn't live in that town, wasn't at all prepared to raise a child the way they deserved to be raised...so I had the baby, got to choose the adoptive parents and we now have an open adoption. He is a great young man and I don't know what me having more children...with a "partner" no less...would do to him. I spent a long time keeping myself a mess so that he never had to wonder why I placed him for adoption but by now I am ready to shed the mess and have a full, rich, well-deserved life.

It's hard to picture my life either way. It is hard to picture my life as I'm older with no grandchildren to spoil and no one to treasure the things inherited from my mother, grandmother, great grandmother, etc. It is hard to picture my life now with children with less flexibility, less sleep, less money, less freedom, more noise...

Shouldn't a person know for certain? Is the fact that I'm not sure a bad sign or is it just that this is how I am - never sure of what I want to be when I grow up and so I float along until I bump in to something and say, "well look at this - I think I'll do this for a while." But I'm probably not going to bump in to a baby...so I should make a decision.

I also need to go and visit the fruit of my womb soon. I do miss him and want to have a closer relationship with him. I was talking about some of this with his Mom and told them my mother's concern about what happens to our treasures after I did since I don't have children to which he replies, "you have me." How that touched my heart to know that he thinks of himself as mine. It's true though; I'm not his Mom, I won't ever try to take her wonderful place but he is still a part of me...really he is "ours." How lucky is he to have two loving parents and two others, involved in his life, that he knows he "belongs" to us all. That's amazingly special. Below is a picture of my now 15 year old birthson. :)