My extended family is huge: I have approximately 20 cousins, a dozen or second cousins (or cousins once removed for all you pedants), and then some other relatives like my mother’s cousin’s daughter’s kid, and that guy who’s not really my uncle but I call him uncle, and the kid of my cousin’s husband from his first wife’s kid. At least half of my cousins have had a baby when, to put it politely it might not have been a great idea. You know what I mean: they got pregnant and the guy flipped out, called her a whore, and then left her, never paying child support again. Or they got knocked up when they were dirt poor and now are working ten jobs and resentful of their child. Or they knocked up someone after two months of dating and were surprised when the relationship didn’t last forever ever.

Now I get it, pregnancies can happen when you least expect them and are extremely unprepared for them. However there is always another option, aka abortion. Because if you really really don’t want a baby you don’t have to have one. The end. However if you decide despite all the not so good elements in your life that you want to have one, then good luck to you. I think you might be a bit mental, but hey, someone’s got to have kids and I guess as they say there’s no right time to have one. But this blog post isn’t about you lot who’ve decided to spawn, it’s about us who haven’t.

Parenting is fucking hard, no two ways about it, but you know what else is hard? Not getting pregnant. At first it seems easy: condoms. But then there’s that whole thing that they suck and are fiddly and they chafe sometimes, and I believe they can be uncomfortable for the person with the penis, and anyway they’re not 100% reliable with a ‘typical failure rate’ of 15%. FIFTEEN PERCENT. Are you freaking out yet? Because I am. So you think I’ll back this shit up, I’ll use hormonal birth control, because drenching my body in synthetic hormones is fun fun fun, and that’s something I feel happy and safe about doing.

So you try the pill, but the first one you take makes your boobs swell till they’re 4 cup sizes bigger and so tender just breathing hurts. The second pill gives you spots so bad they’re inside your freaking nose. The third give you ‘breakthrough bleeding’ for month: aka you bleed, like your period, for an entire fucking month. Yeah that’s right, a whole fucking month. What’s the fucking point of that? I mean it’s not like you’re going to be having any sex when that’s happening so you might as well just not be on the pill at all.

And so you think about the coil (it seems kinda scary and painful, though some people say it’s fine), the injection (your mum grew a ‘tache), and the implant (your mate ended up in hospital after an allergic reaction). Promptly you consider celibacy but what with having urges and a partner, that seems kind of redundant, so you just use a condom, or the pill, or a sponge, or a femidom, wait, have you ever used a female condom because if so: I want to know about it, they seem, well…. odd? Like they would rustle or be strange or noisy or you know: just confusing. But anyway, you find a method and you stick to it and you cross your fingers each month and pray that you’re not up the duff and what do you get? Where are your congratulations cards? Where’s your moment at the family function when someone says “I’m so proud of you”?

Until now, there was none. You were languishing away in smoker’s corner, even if you don’t smoke, and feeling resentful. But no more. I proclaim today and every 15th of August from now, on HAPPY YOU DIDN’T GET YOURSELF OR SOMEONE ELSE PREGNANT DAY! It’s a little cumbersome, but you’ll get used to it. Send a friend a card and tell them how proud you are of them successfully navigating this treacherous maze of contraception and lust. Thank a childless friend for not popping another baby out onto an already overpopulated planet. Or just hug your boyfriend and blow all the cash you would have spent on nappies and teething gel on getting proper wrecked and doing karaoke. Those of you with babies get all the credit, and you’re welcome to most of it, but it’s time to start sharing, because damnit, it’s time we non-breeders got some of the cake and bunting too.

Still from A Slightly Pregnant Man and photo by Dash Snow

Someday, in my uterus, where nothing other than blood, lining, and maybe a few lonely sperm cells have been, there may be, A BABY. Although I don’t particularly want one any time soon, or for a long time at all really, the thought sometimes enters my head and plagues me for days. Maybe it’s a sign that I’m getting older and more mature friends but I know of a handful of people pregnant in real life, and a few of my favourite bloggers are either getting ready to, or have just popped one out.

Excited as I am for them the idea of one day having one of my own freaks me out. Making a life? With someone else? And then looking after it for the next eighteen years MINIMUM? BEING RESPONSIBLE FOR CREATING SOMEONE WHO WILL ONE DAY GO ON TO BE A MEMBER OF SOCIETY? I’m having palpitations at the mere thought of it. What if you or your future baby daddy has a disease that you didn’t know about and you give it to your kid? Or you fuck them up badly when you thought you were parenting them in all the right ways? What if you drop the baby, or feed it the wrong thing? What if you just don’t love it?

But never mind any of that what about being pregnant? My mum said that she watched Alien not long after conceiving me, and sometimes when I kicked she would freak out and worry that I was an alien going to burst out of her stomach. It’s a thought I return to frequently when I see my friends bursting out of their dresses, waddling to the supermarket. They look amazing, but what if? what if?

People have always been around pushing babies out left, right and centre, which leads me to believe it really can’t be that bad. I try to soothe my anxiety related thoughts by telling myself that if it was so dreadful people would have stopped once effective contraception had been discovered, and we’d have slowly died out as a race.

So many people make it look like a fun, enjoyable way to spend time, rewarding even, but then there are the slew of programmes

that make it look like the worst idea you’ve ever had. In fact anything involving teenagers, or god forbid teenagers having babies, makes it look like hell.

All in all I think my paralysing fear of having a baby because it will a) inhabit my body like a parasitic host, b) change my life FOREVEREVER, is a good thing. This way I’m extra vigilant about making sure I don’t get in the club, and if and when it does happen I’ll have thought about it so much over the years that hopefully I won’t fuck it up. Or maybe I’ll fuck it up worse? Oh no, now a whole new can of worms has opened up in my brain!!

I really need to stop watching things like Teen Mom, 16 and Pregnant, Kizzy: Mum at 14, and reading things like Love It!, Hello, and old issues of Closer, and looking at other people’s baby’s with a stink eye while on the bus. I might get a reputation…

I have no idea where either the photo of Dakota Fanning or Lindsay Lohan came from, sorry!