First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage…

I’m NOT pregnant. I’m NOT trying to get pregnant. There. Got that out of the way first!

Never before have I thought about having children as much as I do now. There are some obvious reasons for this: I’m closer to 30 than I am to 20, I’m married, and, well, I happen to like kids. Usually. But I never really felt terribly pressured to have kids. I would have to say that the majority of my close friends are either married, engaged to be married, or in committed relationships. But the majority of my close friends do not have children. Do we talk about having kids? Yeah. But I don’t think any of us are mapping out our ovulation cycles yet.

And then I moved to England. More specifically, RAF Lakenheath. At first, I generally just felt old. Nearly all of Andrew’s new friends were under the age of 20. But a lot of them were also newlyweds, so there was still common ground. Now that we’ve been here for nearly 9 months, I’d say our friends now cover a variety of ages, but I’m often still surprised when I hear how young some people are. And they’re usually surprised to hear how old I am, haha!

Once I got a little more settled here and started just living (versus unpacking, freaking out about driving on the other side of the road, and trying to figure out what the heck rocket was), I started noticing something new. Not only are there a lot of young people and young couples here, there are also a lot of pregnant women and kids here! Sometimes I feel like this is what I see all the time:

If it’s not very pregnant women I’m seeing, it’s a young mom trying to wrangle 2-3 kids while having lunch or coffee with her girlfriend who is also trying to tame her little ones. Sometimes I smile and think, Oh, those kids are so cute! I can’t wait to be a mom. And then there are times when I give The Death Stare and think, If you can’t keep your kid from shrieking every ten seconds, perhaps you’re not supposed to have him in public! And please do something about your other kid eating fries off the floor!

Don’t worry, it’s not just me. When I bring it up, everyone agrees that if you’re not wondering when a woman is going to go into labor, you’re trying to maneuver around a herd of strollers. I’ve been told that we are at a “young” base, so I have no idea if it’s like this at bases back in the States.

Clearly, I am torn between wanting to start a family and relishing our just-the-two-of-us lifestyle. And I end up thinking about it more than I would like to, since I’m visually reminded about it every time I’m on base. So I really didn’t think twice about ordering a book that I came across on Amazon regarding parenting. More specifically, a book about an American trying to parent in a European country:

I mean, with all the oops-I’m-pregnant situations I hear about, why wouldn’t I want to get a head start on learning some parenting tips? And with the military dictating where we live for the next 20-ish years, why wouldn’t I want to learn how other cultures approach child-rearing?

“Bringing Up Bebe” was not only interesting to read, it also was pretty funny! When I wasn’t laughing out loud (usually in public…I’m sure they all think I’m nuts), I was reading whole paragraphs to Andrew and musing about how we will raise our future little ones. In a nutshell, American parents tend to be a little over zealous in their approach to parenting. According to the author, French parents just don’t understand why American parents drive themselves to exhaustion and completely give up their adult needs to being parents. When I read excerpts to Andrew, his usual response was, “Well, yeah, why wouldn’t you do it that way?”

A lot of things that French parents do are just common sense. They don’t read parenting books like they’re preparing for the GRE. They trust themselves a lot more than American parents seem to. And they don’t freak out if little Billy isn’t walking at 12 months, reading before kindergarten, and involved in extracurricular activities every afternoon. They let their kids be kids more than they try to push them to be one step ahead of their peers.

So am I ready to fully embrace French parenting? Nope. While I agreed with a lot of things I read in Druckerman’s book, there were certain things that I knew I just wouldn’t be able to do. I still plan to breastfeed my infant until at least 6 months of age. I won’t let my child have a pacifier in her mouth until she’s 4 years old. I won’t starve myself to fit into my “skinny jeans” just 3 months after Junior is born. But I hope to be diligent in enforcing a sleep schedule early on. And I hope we can be patient but persistent when it comes to introducing new foods and not letting our kids be picky eaters.

One thing that seems very important to French parents is remaining people first and parents second. And while I do agree with that, I know it will be easier said than done. At this point in my life, I’m excited to just be a couple with Andrew and go explore England and Europe (eventually) sans children. I still think about having kids pretty often, but for us, the “then comes the baby in the baby carriage” part of our life is still a ways off. For now anyway. 🙂