People have already started asking me when I’m having the next baby. When I say that at this point I’m not thinking about any baby but the one that’s here and needs feeding every 2 hours, people usually respond with, “Well, you might get pregnant by accident. And what will you do then? It’s not like you’ll have a choice, right? RIGHT?”
All this makes me feel bad for Klara because it’s like she’s somehow insufficient.
If only you could see the face I’m making right now. So so many assumptions they’re making I don’t even want to unpack.
blink
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One person I know was asking me these questions a week BEFORE I gave birth, and in a very insistent way, too. It was weird!
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Questions like that come from a place of idiocy, as near as I can tell. If they want to make conversation, they should ask you about the baby you have and how you are feeling/doing now, etc.
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Exactly. Klara is still so tiny! I’d like to concentrate on her for two seconds.
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\ All this makes me feel bad for Klara because it’s like she’s somehow insufficient.
It is not that she is insufficient for you and N, it’s (most likely) the opposite way in those people’s minds . 🙂 Many people think it’s good to have several children so that those children won’t be alone in the world after parents’ deaths and/or won’t be the only one responsible for taking care of old parents.
(Even if a parent is in an old-people house, having a relative who visits and cares makes a huge difference both for the parent and for how the old person is treated by the staff. The latter is from the experience of my distant relative who was the single “visiting caretaker” demanding the old people’s house to treat person X correctly after X wasn’t mentally capable to protect herself.)
Lets stop with the depressing stuff … Isn’t your life much richer because of having a sister? 🙂
Of course, Klara may have a close relationship with other relatives, like your sister’s children, so having siblings is not the only possibility.
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I know, I’m already haunted by the horrible realization that when Klara is my age, I will be 80. It freaks me out a lot.
But I’m not even remotely ready physically to think about another pregnancy. I’ve still not recovered from this one.
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People can be both nosy and tacky. What else is new?
In this day and age, some people opt not to have children at all, some stop at one, some opt for more. What you decide is up to you. If there is another, most recommendations are to space the children 2-3 years apart. However, that’s another personal choice that no one else is entitled to know.
Out tacky presidential candidates in this case simply mirror the lack of manners in the general population.
Klara sufficient? Sufficient for what? She’s a beauty with a great future ahead of her and at this point in life, a virtually infinite set of possibilities. That should be sufficient for her.
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Yes, she is do beautiful. 🙂 And very loved.
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Ugh. There are so many things wrong with the conversations you described (how is pregnancy not a choice?). But Klara is lovely, almost assuredly intelligent, and obviously well-loved. As Vic Crain says, her future is bright. I don’t think there is any need to feel sorry for such a lucky little girl. 🙂
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It feels like people are trying to say they won’t give me a choice. 🙂 It really sounds kind of aggressive when they start with this subject.
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People… ugh.
You should not meet my mother-in-law. She always asks us when we will have another baby, and she tries to make us feel guilty about not having a second child. And I already feel guilty enough, because I do not want a second child, thank you.
Keep concentrating on your wonderful little girl.
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I really hope you’ll be in Montréal the first week of August. We’ll be there with the baby, and we wanted to invite you to the baptism.
I only hope that the priest doesn’t read my posts about the Russian Orthodox Church before the baptism or he’ll curse us. 🙂
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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