I’m at my dad’s now, having been unmercifully stuffed with blue crabs for the last few hours. I LOVE blue crabs, and of course you can’t get them in San Francisco, so whenever I come home they always buy me a couple dozen blue crabs to eat. Whew! I’m positively gorged. Blue crab is SO much tastier than Dungeness, even if Dungeness are bigger.
Spent this afternoon with a close friend from high school, and her two kids, aged 2-1/2 and 7 months. Nice kids; for the first time I can sort of see the attraction in motherhood. It would be nice to have a bona fide family and raise children.
That said, I have extremely mixed feelings on the subject. While I would sort of like to have children, it’s a tremendous amount of effort and would keep me from pursuing a lot of other things I currently enjoy. I’m also not convinced that I would make a particularly good mom – I’ve got lots of patience but have a tendency to get caught up in my own pursuits, to a degree that I suspect is incompatible with motherhood. At the same time, I see many of my friends having children…and it seems more and more attractive. at 36, I have a few more years to consider the question, but not a whole lot of them. I think a lot depends on how things work out with Mike, and whether I decide that I do want children.
Compounding my decision is the bipolar disorder. The medications I’m currently taking are not approved for pregnancy; also, postpartum depression has been known to instigate bipolar cycling. So being pregnant would entail a significant risk to my own life, and that gives me pause. I don’t want to go through that last round of cycling ever again. I’d rather die (and I mean that quite literally).
The other factor is genetics. Bipolar disorder is one of the most strongly genetic mental illnesses, with a 70% correlation in twin studies. There’s a 25% chance of my kids inheriting the disorder from me, and I personally would not wish it on my worst enemy, let alone my own child. Granted that there’s a 75% chance that they’d be normal, and that I have a lot of good genes as well, it’s still enough to give me pause. I’m not into adopting, otherwise that would seem like a good option. Bipolar disorder can be manageable, but I have a particularly severe form and I would dearly like NOT to pass it on. Unfortunately there is no genetic test for it just yet; it seems to be the result of many different genes.
So anyway, I’m thinking about it. Don’t expect an answer anytime in the next two years.
Meanwhile, I am about 20″ into my entrelac shawl. I was very cranky to discover that I accidentally knitted two sections with the “wrong side” facing outwards, but fortunately it’s a lace pattern in brushed kid mohair and I’m hoping it won’t be too noticeable. No way am I going to rip out 1/3 of my work just to fix it, so I’ll have to live with it.
