When I grow up ...

When you were a small child, what was your answer when someone asked you "what do you want to be when you grow up"? For my seven year old nephew the answer is that he wants to be a builder or a policeman or an army guy.  Right now he wants to be a Jedi (he's such a cool kid!).  When I was little, my initial answer was singer, dancer, and movie star. But eventually my answers changed. And good thing. I have zero talent for singing, dancing or acting.  In fact, I am as far from those three things as possible. 

As I was saying, eventually my answer changed.  I told anyone who would listen that someday I was going to be a doctor and deliver babies.  I was absolutely positive that this is what I was going to be when I grew up.  Until I realized exactly what that entailed (of course I didn't realize this till I was about 12, but still - it was a rather rude awakening).  Then I wanted to be a pediatrician.  But I worried about having patients die and that sort of turned me away form that career path.  I knew I wanted to do something in the medical field, I just didn't know what.  I was super excited when I got chosen to be in a medical program my senior year in high school that allowed me to shadow local doctors and get a taste of the possible career choices.  Unfortunately, I never really found anything I loved.

So instead I've spent my years in college pursuing a management degree and then business because I really don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I was never the one in school who had a plan all mapped out for my future. I envy the young men and women who attend school at the automotive college I work at because they know what they want to be and they have such a passion for what they are doing.  I wish I felt the same way about something, anything.  I envy most people who are so sure about what it is that they want to do.

Just recently I had an epiphany.  Why does "what do you want to be when you grow up" have to be about a career choice?  Why can't it be something else? Why can't "i want to be a wife" or "i want to be a mother" be an acceptable answer to the question? Looking back, I realize that what I was meant to be started early. I just missed it, or it was so much a part of me, that I couldn't see what it was. 

I loved my barbie dolls growing up.  But what I loved more than them were the Quint Dolls I received for Christmas one year.  From then on, every play scenario involved Barbie and Ken with their 5 babies.  I spent hours playing with my dolls. Pictures below are of the Quints house and the Quints by Tyco dolls.

After the barbies it was books.  At that point my focused shifted slightly to anything and everything to do with twins.  I would read anything and watch anything that had to do with twins.  I was obsessed.  My favorite books were the Sweet Valley series about twin sisters Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield.  My junior year in high school I had to take a Research class.  During the class we had to write 2 research papers.  I knew I wanted to write something about twins, but it was difficult to find information that would make a compelling and informative research paper.  So instead I wrote my first paper about Multiple Personality Disorder.  For the second research paper I again wanted to do something dealing with twins, but knowing it wasn't content enough, I started to research the idea of multiple births.  This research led me to how multiple births occur. And the basis of my research paper was born. 

I know .. I was a weird kid in high school.  But I was fascinated.  I never knew the complexity of having a baby.  I mean, you hear so many stories when you are a teenager about girls getting pregnant the first time they had sex - now I realize that while that is certainly true and does happen, those type of stories are more often told to young, hormonal teenagers to help scare them into either abstinence or practicing safe sex (seriously - I am not knocking this approach at all). You just assume that having a baby is easy and when you are ready, it will happen just like that. Too bad I know better than that now.

But I digress.  One day, recently, I woke up and realized that more than anything in this entire world I wanted to be a mom.  The one thing I have always been interested in and passionate about was babies.  I feel like I should have realized this much sooner.  Especially after one of my friends once said "I have never met anyone like you; who looks at having a baby the way you do".  At first I thought she saw me this way because we have been through so much to have a baby and we are still going to have to go through so much more to get there so my perspective on having a baby would be different from other people, without our infertility issues, who want a baby.  But really, I think it's because my desire to be a mom far outweighs a lot of other things in my life. I just hope that desire becomes fulfilled instead of a plan that is fraught with disappointment.

So .. final conclusion, I sit here proudly and proclaim:  When I grow up I want to be ... a mom!