Baby

[bobquasit]

There's a baby in the office.

A little while ago I saw someone walk by holding a baby. It was tiny; couldn't have been more than three months old at the most.

Just now I heard one of those reflexive little baby cries from far away. My heart jumped in my chest, and instantly I wanted a new baby so very badly.

I'm sad now.

Comments

[fickledame.livejournal.com]

Isn't there any way you can?

[bobquasit.livejournal.com]

It's really up to Teri. Sebastian's birth was awfully hard on her, so hard that it would be wrong of me to pressure her to have another.

On the other hand, she knows that I've always wanted more kids. And I suspect that as Sebastian gets older, there will be times that she'll consider changing her mind - she's done it before.

In the year or two after Sebastian was born there were several times that she decided that she wanted another baby, but she was changing her mind so rapidly that I thought it would be unfair for me to take her up on it. Now, of course, I know that she was bipolar, and it really WOULD have been unfair. But at the time she hadn't yet been diagnosed.

She's talked about adoption, but I don't want to do that. I know it's a good thing to do, etc. etc., but at the risk of sounding awful I want my own children, not someone else's. It's arrogant, I know, but I want to perpetuate my genes - I think rather highly of them. :D

[moonlitmagik.livejournal.com]

=(

[klyfix.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't have children and surely never will so I can't really empathize beyond a theoretical level. The thing is, we're hard wired to like little babies; pretty much any mammal is. So of course that kind of response kicks in. What makes us Human is that we can know better than to just go with instinctual, emotional responses.

[bobquasit.livejournal.com]

I suppose, but there are a lot of people who don't like babies.

And in my own case, just because there's a strong instinctual reason to like babies doesn't mean that my liking them is somehow less valid. Nor that the urge to reproduce is somehow invalid, or less human, or anything like that.

Reproduction is the closest we can get to immortality. So while the instinctual element is certainly real, there are also very solid, logical reasons to want to have children. Particularly if you feel (as I do) that your children are likely to be intelligent and make a positive contribution towards the survival of the species.

[klyfix.livejournal.com]

Deleted previous comment; realized that it was an overly serious and probably offensive thing. As was my original comment, I suppose. :(