Great question

A friend saved my life today by asking me a very interesting question.

"What's the thing you're looking most forward to, having a baby?"

And I realized that for the moment, if I were being super honest, I would have said, nothing, but I couldn't really say that so I had to reach into my mind and turn it inside out.  I need an attitude adjustment.  Because yes, this whole process is terrifying, but I wouldn't be going through it if I didn't want to have children.  I do want to have children.  I have always wanted to have children.  I like them, I like being around them and I get a lot of enjoyment from the ones I teach.

I told him I'm looking forward to being there to watch a child discover things for the first time, to be able to introduce the things I love to another person who will be (at least for the first 5-6 years) consistently blown away by the world.  And I was sort of making that answer up, but as I said it, it also felt really true.  I am looking forward to that.  "What thing will you be most excited about introducing him or her to?" my friend asked, and I said everything, I mean, dinosaurs!  How cool are dinosaurs!  And that's just the beginning.  But when I thought about it more, my answer is: story.  I'm most excited to introduce story to my child.  Music a close second.

Ever since that moment, I've realized how much fear is running me for the moment.  I'm not proud of that, though I can give myself a break and admit it's pretty reasonable and normal.  I'm so frightened of what I may be losing and how painful this change is going to be that I have no space to dwell on the amazing thing I may get in return.  Because even without story or dinosaurs or music or anything else, I'm about to bring more love into the world.  Maybe more of some other things, too, maybe a little more mess or order or science or art (or crazy), but no matter what, I can teach a child to love, and my family can help, and that will ricochet through our lives forever.

I'm mostly still terrified.  And I do deeply fear losing myself to this person who doesn't exist yet.  But a tiny corner of my brain opened up this week to the idea that maybe, just maybe, this might be fun.