What Does It Mean to Be "Ready" to Have a Baby?

With any luck, you're done by now with all the shopping and cooking and entertaining and cleaning up, and you're looking at a long slow Sunday filled with blessed nothingness. You'll put your feet up, pour a cup of tea or a glass of wine, turn off your phone, and read. Or: None of that will actually happen, at least not for longer than 15 minutes. So here's about 15 minutes' worth of recent articles that are worth your time. The loose theme: readiness. How do you know when you're ready to have a kid? Here, a few writers grapple, in brief, with the question of when's the right time to try to bring a small human into the world.

Wrestlings by Kyla Kupferstein Torres in Literary Mama.

"In the beginning, I wanted to talk, but he didn't like what I had to say. Then he was ready to talk, but I had no answers, nothing to say. So, we sit next to each other on the couch, we watch movies, and drink wine, and dream of moving to California, and talk about everything but the thing that is wearing out my sneakers as I train five times a week and get faster. I race, and feel good about the times I post—running, running, running away."

Tick Tock: It's Time to Stop Bullying 30-Something Women About Their Biological Clocks  by Melanie Berliet in Thought Catalog

"I’m tired of the narratives we feed women about pregnancy. We caution young ladies that if they wait to procreate, they’ll face devastating setbacks down the line. We tell them that their bodies were built to carry babies sooner rather than later (i.e. now!). We say there’s “never a right time” to have a child—as if women should drop everything and get pregnant regardless of how prepared they actually feel, financially, emotionally, or otherwise. If the “right time” never arrives, is it so crazy to presume that a woman might not be cut out for motherhood after all?"

17 Million Frozen Sperm Await the Perfect Moment by Laurie Wax in the New York Times

"This window of readiness is brief: 12 to 24 hours. When I detect that ovulation is imminent, the vial is defrosted. Ninety minutes later, 17 million sperm are inserted into my uterus via a catheter. I do this because I am 39 and single and my craving for a child eclipses everything else, including my secret fear that this process will be successful."

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.