i don’t know if i want to be a mother

I’m turning 33 next month, and I’ve been thinking about babies a lot lately. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m just at that age where everyone is saying “if you don’t have them now you’ll never have them” or if it’s because everybody on Facebook is pregnant or maybe it’s because of all the cute little random baby reels that keep showing up on my insta feed.

All I know is that I feel torn about it.

One part of me wants to have a family that I can be the matriarch of. The smell of candied yams and collard greens cooking in a La Cornue kitchen. Children and grandchildren flying in for the holidays to stay in their childhood bedrooms. Getting drunk on spiked eggnog and Kahlúa while the kids open their perfectly wrapped presents. But then the unsentimental part of me remembers how much my mother struggled to feed us sometimes. The lonely she must have felt, taking care of four children on her own.

I can’t recall ever going to bed hungry. My mom always found a way to put food on the table. But I remember the days when she would need to go to the pantry because we ran out of Link. I also remember how stressed she would get when my little brothers would sneak and eat up all the food that was supposed to last us a week. Scarcity was the fifth child in that house.

It was hard for her. My mother had four children by the time she was 28 years old. I asked her why she had so many kids so young. She told me that she didn’t think she had any other options. So she made it her mission to make sure that I had some. From the moment I got my period, she told me to tell her when I was ready to get on birth control. At the time it was an extremely uncomfortable conversation to have with her, but at least six girls I knew got pregnant in high school, even one in eighth grade. I didn’t though.

She made it abundantly clear that she did not want me to end up like her. Or as she’d put it, “I want you to be better than me,” and “do the things I never got to do.” Turns out doing those things costs money.

Full-time infant daycare in LA runs about $1,900 a month. That’s more than half my rent. That’s the pair of Louis Vuitton sandals and the matching keychain wallet I’ve been eyeing.

But the money isn’t the part that stops me.

I’m a full-time student, but my classes are packed into two days. I work part-time the other three. Studying during the week is nearly impossible, so weekends are homework, then the gym, then whatever’s left for a social life. Somewhere in there, a baby would need to be fed, held, changed, dropped off, picked up. I keep looking for the hours and they just aren’t there. And the money that keeps my lights on is tied to me staying enrolled, so a baby that interrupts school interrupts how I eat and where I live.

So the question was never whether I could love a child. It’s which of these I’d have to hand over first: the apartment, the degree, or the time. I don’t know which one I’d pick. I just know I’d have to pick.

I could wait. I’ll graduate in a year and a half, but then I’d be starting a career I’d need to step back from almost immediately. And even if I had the money, even if I had a man who stayed, I’d still be away from her in the early years. Maybe I’d want that. I don’t know.

There isn’t a perfect time to have a baby. But I’m not looking for a perfect time. I’m just looking for a time that won’t make me regret having her.

The only thing scarier than having a baby before I’m ready is having one with a man who decides he isn’t — or who decides, a few years in, that he doesn’t want me anymore.

My parents had me too young. They broke up when I was barely two, and I’ve only ever heard versions of why. The wild part is they got back together when I was 16, and they’ve been together ever since. So their story ends fine. It’s the fourteen years in the middle I’m afraid of.

And then there’s the state of this country. I know that every generation has its problems, but it’s looking real Handmaid’s Tale right now. I was 28 when Roe v. Wade was overturned. For a country constantly pushing for women to be barefoot and pregnant, they sure as hell don’t believe in supporting us. And as a Black woman I know this administration doesn’t want more babies that look like me anyway. They’ve spent the last year dismantling DEI — they’ve been clear about who they think this country is for.

Deciding to be a mother as a Black woman, carries its own heaviness. We’re three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women. The thought of some cold, emotionless nurse ignoring my cries for help while in labor scares the shit out of me. I can’t tell you how many TikToks I’ve seen of Black women telling their birthing horror stories.

But even after weighing all of this, I still think about the “baby fever” collection I have saved on my Instagram. Babies sucking on their parent’s nose or chin like it’s a bottle. The smell of a newborn. A baby asleep on my husband’s chest. I don’t have a husband. But still I want her.

My mom has never lived on her own. She went from living in her mother’s house to living with me and then three other kids. She never got to live in a fancy apartment in DTLA.

But I am.

I have a fancy two-bedroom apartment, a sick ass car, and a part-time job as a Junior IT Tech. And this is all thanks to my mother. The second bedroom is my closet.

To this day, I’m on birth control.