How Baby

We didn’t really have a family size in mind when Kev and I started thinking about having kids, because for the longest time, the number was zero. And then, after Momo was born, things were so dark and so hard that I couldn’t possibly imagine willingly doing it again. Then, there was a whole pandemic – respect to the people who chose to have babies during that! You’re made of stronger stuff than me!

The biggest reason, though, is that we’ve never fully felt secure in our ability to provide for another kid, from money to just not having enough space. As apartment-dwellers in HCOL area, getting that extra bedroom was a no-go, and asking kids to share a bedroom hits different when they don’t have a playroom or backyard to go be alone in. Possible, yes, but not something we wanted to choose – and less and less so, as that potential age gap got bigger. Even if we somehow had a kid now, pretty soon it’d be a 16yo sharing space with a 4yo, and that’s not fair to either. The opportunity to have children growing up together… is gone.

I used to think that I was lucky to not have any regrets in my life. I could see the inner purpose of all the things I’d endured, and was grateful for their role in shaping me. Eye-rollingly, I was just in my twenties, and in the spring of my life I hadn’t yet experienced an opportunity truly passing me by – like this one has.

It’s sad in the way that has no real form or aim. It’s something that was never possible, and will never be possible, and there’s a real weight to that knowledge. A true regret, but also a blameless one. A simple sadness at the state of a world, of a lack of resources.