Bridget McNulty

I am the anti-brood.

// January 27th, 2009 // Inspiration

As most of my friends and family (and definitely my man!) are aware, I am the opposite of broody.

I can’t imagine ever being unselfish enough to look after something 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, for at least 18 years. And then never really be able to let go of the thing.

Yes, I just called babies things. I love my niece to bits and pieces, but I have no desire for a baby of my own. I’m hoping hormones kick in around 30 years old. So is my mom!

That said, I found this really rather lovely passage on ‘dooce’ (www.dooce.com) – this fantastic American blog. And it made me ever so slightly lean over to her side of the argument. What do you think?

“But these risks and these sacrifices, I think, are a fundamental component of this unique experience that has given me more insight and understanding into other human beings than any other of my life. And all of this is to say thank God we chose to have children. Thank God for those endless, sleepless nights. Because I now know what I know. Because raising Leta more than anything else in my life has helped me piece together the puzzle of what it means to be human. I understand my own childhood so much better, understand my own parents so much better, and there is so much about myself that I have tried to improve that I didn’t know I needed to improve until I was reduced to a late night pair of pacing legs.

So much more makes sense now, and I don’t know if there is any other way I could have gained this type of insight into life. And I think this is what a lot of us are talking about when we say it feels like we were let into a secret club, a club we didn’t know existed until we got here, like we had no idea there was this much to know until our children showed it all to us.”