“When are you going to have kids?”

This is a question I was never asked until I was almost 40. 

I’d like you to think that it’s because of my baby face, but the sad truth is that people have always thought I looked older than I really am. So maybe by the time I was 30, and mature enough to have children, everyone just assumed that my ovaries had already shriveled up from old age, so they avoided the question.

The more likely explanation is that I’m a lesbian, and we all know that two girls can’t make a baby together (my daughters are going to be so disappointed when they find out about this). But, actually two girls can make a baby together. It just takes a lot of extra work, and in our case, quite a few 0% interest credit cards.

But the fact that I am gay and look older than the hills didn’t stop absolutely everyone from asking me when I was going to have a baby. Namely, it didn’t stop my uncle.

This is a man who has no hair, a great sales pitch and lots of good intentions. He’s also married, has three grown children, a smattering of grandchildren and a cell phone with my home number in it that he’s not afraid to use on my birthday after he’s had a few cocktails.

“How old are you now?” he boomed into the phone when I picked it up. To his credit, he also said hello and identified himself before he started interrogating me about my age.

Still, I had to think for a minute.

“I just turned 36. Today, in fact,” I said.

“Are you ever going to have kids?” 

This made me pause for even longer, because I had no sarcastic response at the ready.

His question caused me feel sort of wonderful and horrified at the same time. It was wonderful because he actually considered my spouse and I qualified to raise offspring. And horrifying because we had already taken some steps to start a family but we hadn’t told anyone, yet. Not even my parents. Could he read my mind?!

“Possibly,” I said.

Always unstoppable, my uncle launched into a story about a friend — a single woman — who was getting to “that age” and wanted to have a child. She went to a bar, found someone she liked, and bam: baby on the way. That was the synopsis, anyway.

“Wow,” I said. “Thank you for that advice. I’ll give that some thought.”

And I did, eventually concluding that while it was probably the least expensive option for having children, it would likely be the most difficult. Here is a list of a few reasons that helped me reach this conclusion:

  1. I would have to get back into the bar scene. Not just any bar scene, though. It would be the straight bar scene where smart, attractive and slutty men hung out. I wasn’t sure I would have time to do the type of research necessary to find these types of bars and these types of men, specifically.
  2. I would actually have to pick someone up at said bar, take them home, convince them that it would be totally fine to have unprotected sex with a stranger all during just a couple of days during my time of the month. The odds of my successfully pulling this off as a thirty-something woman were very low.
  3. It would be easier to win the lottery than locate this same guy again if we wanted our first child to have a sibling that was a fully related brother or sister. And I wasn’t prepared for the awkward part of the conversation where I told him that he already had a son or daughter he had never met.
  4. And probably, the most important reason: My spouse wouldn’t let me, even though it was my birthday.

 

Author

Sarah writes with sarcasm about science, gender, feminism and fertility issues on her blog sarahanngilbert.com. She is writing a memoir about her experience becoming a parent. Sarah lives in Denver with her wife, two girls and an ungrateful dog. If she had more free time, she would spend it lobbying the state government to make down vests and flip-flops the official uniform of Colorado. You can talk to her on Twitter @sarahanngilbert.

2 Comments

  1. Loved this! It would be labor intensive to have to find a bar with guys who are *just* the right mix of smart and super slutty. It’s a niche market.

  2. I loved it! I actually think #2 would be much easier than you think if you pick a bar with the right ilk of men, however, I’m not sure that this is the sperm you want to use to create life with. Cheers!

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