I Had 12 Babies This Year

I am at "that age" when all my friends are going through major life accomplishments: getting married, buying houses and having kids. The latter really hit me last year, and made me realize just how at "that age" I am.

Although there wasn't one born every month, there were 12 new babies brought into the world by my friends and acquaintances last year alone!

Not all of them are extremely close to me and in my life, but they have all touched my life somehow. They range in closeness from one of my best friend's beautiful baby boy (the first in our tight-knit circle of friends), to more casual friends, to my boyfriend's step sister, my old high school best friends, and not one or even two, but THREE coworkers!

This makes for a lot of time spent commenting and liking their photos on their facebook profiles when they post videos and pictures of the little ones. Which brings me to my point. Each set of parents have very different styles of parenting, and although they're barely one year old yet, you can already tell what kind of people they are destined to be. I'm not suggesting anyone's parenting style is better or worse. I have a friend who does not post pictures of her baby on facebook, and prefers to email her close family and friends the photos instead (which is much appreciated), and I have another who posts every moment of her baby's life, including photos taken during the birth.

But whatever their choices are, one thing I've learned is that being a mother is very hard work and requires a lot of planning and sacrifices. I have a friend who rarely goes out, although she could, but prefers to put her baby to bed every night, even on weekends, and I have an acquaintance who is out at the clubs drinking almost every weekend. She's obviously not putting her child to bed on the weekends; this takes me back to my days of Psychology 101 and the great debate of nature verses nurture. I've seen the stacks of books and heard the old wives' tales about doing things a certain way. But I've come to the conclusion you never really know what kind of pregnancy you're going to go through or baby what kind of baby you'll have until it's all said and done.
These 12 very different babies have made me realize I should not be in a rush to start a family just for the sake of "being at that age" (not that I'm feeling any pressure). Too often we see people use babies as a way to "fix" their relationships and this only creates more problems in the end. A baby should be brought into the world with love, and lots of planning. And from what I've seen, I know I will need to be good and ready. In the meantime, I have 12 that I can get my baby fix from, whom I can gladly hand back to mom when I don't know know what to do. The first my 12 babies just just turned one, and the last one won't turn one for another 10 months. That gives me lots of time to decide which ones I will offer to babysit for when they start turning 2.