A girlfriend and I spent a morning at a local play cafe with our three kids. Her son and mine are just a few months apart, straddling 18 months. She has one on the way. My daughter is just shy of three. We still have relatively young children. We are both at the end of our twenties. However, we were noticeably younger than the majority of the moms there.
I never thought of myself as a young mom.
Heck, growing up, if you were mid-twenties with a kid that seemed completely normal to me. I’m almost 30, with two young children. I’m not sure how we felt young, but we did. I feel young when I drop my daughter off at preschool. Young when my son and I head out around town to run errands. Especially young when I get those looks.
I look young. I don’t mean that in a gloating way, either. Believe me, my driver’s license picture at 29 is noticeably weathered compared to the 25-year-old picture I had to replace. When it comes to being out around town though, a lot of people think I’m the babysitter. Some even have an obvious look of surprise when my kids yell mom! Come on. Even if I was 25 I’d be old enough for these babies.
When I was about seven months pregnant with my daughter I went to watch one of my husband’s hockey games – alone. It was a weekday evening, somewhere in the third period, so roughly around 9:30 or 10:00pm. An usher approached me with nothing but good intentions, I know this. She tapped my shoulder and asked me if I needed a ride home, that it was probably past my curfew. I laughed, turned enough to show her my gigantic basketball belly, and told her I was here watching the game and I would be leaving with my husband afterward … who was down there (pointing) on the bench, working. She gasped and said I looked about sixteen and that she was sorry.
An older man who used to live near us saw my husband and me every day in the gym together before I got pregnant. We continued working out together all throughout my first pregnancy. By the time I was really showing he chuckled and told us to be careful around town. Why? “Because it looks like your husband impregnated a teenager.”
I’m old enough to have these two kids.
My husband and I have been together for eight years, married for five. We’ve graduated university, gotten adult jobs, bought a home, cars, we have life insurance policies and multiple retirement funds. We’re fortunate enough to have our lives together and two amazing kids to go with it. There’s no look that makes you old enough to have kids. There really isn’t a definitive age that makes you ready, either. Despite the simple fact of noticing that I’m younger than a lot of moms I encounter, we have one very important thing in common: We’re in this whole motherhood thing together, and loving it.
Thanks, though. It does make me feel good sometimes!
