Have you ever felt like the world is passing you by? As if people are maturing faster than you, doing things before you, or even taking things that were yours even though there were no legal rights of you owing what they took? I felt like this recently. Although I am totally unprepared and far from ready to have kids, I constantly think of baby names. At my job, I read through numerous names and when I come across the ones that sound catchy, I repeat them to myself over and over. I go through my checklist: can it be pronounced in English and Spanish? Is it common? Is it the best way to be spelled? Can it be associated with offensive words in either English or Spanish? I wouldn't want my child to go through what I went through for years. In elementary school, I was teased by a boy on the daily. He called me Vanessa la mayonesa. (In English, "mayonesa" means mayonnaise.) I remember hating my name even more than I had before that horrible nickname.
I then put the name through this potentially-jinxing analysis: I sound out the first name with my boyfriend's last name--just in case I do end up being blessed with his child--and I make sure it has an eloquent and euphonious flow. But when I'm in a circle of soon-to-be mothers talking about names, they dance around those which I have already preselected. It's as if they asked themselves, "Which names has Vanessa already chosen so we can choose them too and use them before she can?" Deep down it annoys me because I'm not the one who is about to have a baby, and even though there is no rule against recycling names, I wouldn't want my child to have a cousin with the same name.
Some days, I wonder to myself if I am waiting too long to have kids. My dreams are to be young enough to keep up with them before my body begins to deteriorate faster than it is now; I'd want my grandparents to meet them and love the child I created; and I'd want my closest cousin's children to be able to play together. But at this rate, their children will be teenagers by the time I decide to have kids. On the flip side, I'm like: Hello, you're 22 and don't even know what you want to do with the rest of your own life! How can you decide for another human being? And is having the perfect, unused name for your child worth having to change the lives of two people before you both are ready? I would want to be able to provide for my future child with little struggle. I would want to be happy to announce my pregnancy (not be ashamed or embarrassed). And more than anything, I'd want to provide them with guidance and wisdom like the special people in my life have continuously given to me.
Since I'm already on this rant, I'll go a step further and ask you all: How can I get my boyfriend to not want a ton of kids? He is obsessed with the idea of having 4+ kids. Although I only want two, three is my absolute max! I just don't understand why he would have that kind of need. I don't think he has considered that we'd have to take 4+ kids to amusement parks and manage to not lose one of them, make sure they are all well-behaved at church, get them through school, and if the majority are girls, that would mean we'd have a bunch of quinceñeras to pay for. I mean, we could always be super cheap and conjoin all of our daughter's 15th birthday parties together, but I'd want each of them to have their special day. I wouldn't want to be like that family with 19 kids. That's just not my thing. Bottom line, I don't know how else to convince him haha!
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