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| Our sweet Hadley |
After talking with a friend about how we as new parents used to, and still do for that matter, handle things I came to the conclusion, we are weird creatures! Beginning with trying to conceive parents become so sure about how they want things to turn out. From there you have several possibilities, you either end up pregnant, you end up using fertility treatments, you go the adoption route, or you decide maybe things weren't meant to be. Any road shapes who you are going to be in the coming years.
Should you end up being parents you begin a long road of decision making, planning, dreaming, and opinion making. I have not met more opinionated people then those who are parents, including myself. I was never really opinionated about things in life, even those topics which don't pertain to parent-hood, until after I had Hadley. I often wonder though, are parents making decisions for the shock factor (i.e. to gain attention from others) or are they truly making those decisions because they think it is the best thing to do?
If you end up having a baby of your own accord or with fertility treatments you start with planning the birth process, whether to find out the gender or not, what to name the baby, or babies, and creating a nursery. These decisions are all necessary but we often meet at least one person who doesn't agree with a certain decision. We bring out the big guns, order the troops to the front line, and defend like we've never defended before. I remember when we shared Hadley's name with people before she was born you could tell those who thought it was a "different" name, even if they were not as openly objective as some. I became defensive with the first two people and then didn't care, it was our child, we were happy with our decisions so who cares what others thought.
Even with adoption you have a lot of decisions to make like which organization to go with, whether you want an open relationship with the birth parents or not, preferences on age and gender. Each decision is a big deal.
What's great is we all have choices and while it's easy to say one way is better than the other, as new parents do we really know? We've only had the experience once thus far. Even if we do things differently with subsequent children can any one person say their way is better, their decisions are better? Those decisions are better for that particular parent. Our goal as parents should be to raise healthy, responsible, kind adults so however we can accomplish this should be encouraged by other parents.
