I have never wanted children. DH has. I was just wondering fellow CF people, what are your reasons? I think I'm too selfish.
But i have several people who chose to be CF until late 30s and changed their minds, so wondering if you did want the CF life, but changed your mind, why did you?
I've been meaning to respond to this thread.
I can't say I ever really dreamed about being a mother. If I did, I don't remember much about it. I think what I was mainly focused on was completing my education. (Which my mother implored me to do, since she hadn't, and her life was rough as a result.) After that, what I mostly wanted was someone who really cared about me. And I was fortunate to have found that person before I even completed my education. Life was good. We had dogs, two incomes, got to do what we wanted, when we wanted, without a lot of complications. In some ways, we could see that continuing on.
But in the back of my mind, somewhere, and down the road, I saw myself with a child. Specifically, a daughter, and probably just one. The thought of pregnancy wasn't something I was relishing, at all, though, so I avoided it for a long time. DH could've gone either way. So life went on and it remained a "maybe some day". Many years went by. We were around a lot of kids as friends and family were having them, and frankly, sometimes it scared us! Kids seemed bratty, and it looked absolutely exhausting, lol. Dogs were a lot easier, and we loved them.
Then some of the people we were closest to either became pregnant, or were trying. We sort of thought, half reluctantly, that maybe it was time for us to jump in, too, so we did. (Yikes, this is the part that gets painful, still.) Just about everyone we knew became pregnant and/or had children, but we were unable to. That launched us into a journey we hadn't expected: the difficult and uncertain road of infertility. Suffice it to say, it was a hard time. But we were fortunate that eventually we became pregnant, too. With twins. A little later than most of those around us, but hey, we didn't care much. We were blessed with a boy and a girl.
(So I always thought of my little boy as "gravy"!)
Life got crazy for a while, and I remember thinking at one point, "What have we done?"
, but I often thought of how close we came to not having them, and I thanked God every day for these two blessings we'd been given. (Still do.) So we were glad we finally jumped in, because despite the exhaustion and other difficulties, it's been one of our lives' biggest joys, raising our kids. We still get to have all the other things we had before (with the exception of money
), but if we could go back in time, we wouldn't change anything, as we'd want the two kids we have, and I think that working so hard to get them helped us appreciate them more than we might have had we not gone through all that. Or at least in a different way.
I think if you're on the fence about it, just keep an open mind to the possibility. Ignore others who bug you about it - I really think they probably just want you to experience the joy that they experienced in raising their own families. That's how I think of it anyway. (Don't we do the same thing when we tell people they should try Disney?) Best Wishes to all, whatever you choose!
I don't think the two really have anything to do with one another. We have 1 child, now grown, that we took to Disney a number of times. His first time (at age 7) was my first time too (at age 37 
) and I was more excited than he was! DH and I have also gone several times on our own and I've gone without either of them. Honestly though, I'm pretty much over it. We spent a day at DLP last year because I couldn't imagine being that close and not going - it just didn't seem right; KWIM? But looking back on having wasted one of the precious few days of our once-in-a-lifetime trip to Paris doing that - I'm truly appalled at myself. We're headed to SoCal for a week on Wednesday and I really don't have the slightest desire to go to DLR. 
