sticky situation

Excerpt from a pretty heavy chat I had with a friend a couple of days ago (transcribing from memory, so exact wording is probably off):

him:	[SO] and I are expecting
me:	for real? holy crap
me:	um
him:	yes?
me:	am i supposed to console or congratulate you?
me:	need a hint here :)
him:	haha
him:	congratulate
him:	few months ago i would have said console
me:	congrats! super exciting!
him:	it was very unexpected
me:	i'm glad you're cool w/ it
him:	yeah i wasn't at first

After some discussion about why various attempts to explore termination options never panned out...

him:	i mean, i'm a big believer in the right to choose and all, but...
me:	well, believing that you shouldn't tell other people what to do is not the same thing as thinking that you should do something yourself

...which made me wonder what I would have done, myself.

I'm vaguely horrified by the idea of having a child, but am also kind of squeamish about the idea of actually terminating a pregnancy. I mean, I'm not afraid of doctors, and I'm perfectly fine being stuck full of needles, but it seems a much more invasive procedure than that.

On the other hand, I've heard some pretty bad things about being pregnant and about childbirth. No sushi and no alcohol aside, there's the possibility of debilitating morning sickness (worst I heard was someone who puked 2-3 times a day for 5 months), gestational diabetes (sometimes resulting in permanent diabetes), maybe having to be on bedrest for months, labor itself (my aunt was in labor for over 48 hours!), the possibility of a c-section, postpartum depression, other postnatal complications (surgical and otherwise)...you get the picture.

Disregarding pregnancy itself, there's the whole 18 or 21 or whatever number of years of taking care of the kid. I mean, is it acceptable to leave your child for a week because "Mommy wants to go to the Zurich office to work with the Swiss engineers for awhile"? What if my kid falls asleep in school and tells her teacher that she couldn't sleep because her parents were having a Starcraft LAN party last night? Am I guilty of neglect? Being a bad parent? What if I want to take a week-long trip to hike Machu Picchu? Learn to scuba dive in Belize? Ski the Alps again?

I think to be happy about having a child, I'd need to be convinced that his/her existence wouldn't significantly degrade my quality of life. When I send out an invite for a fabulous weekend bachelorette party in New Orleans, and someone responds, "Sorry, have to stay home with the baby", it makes me not want kids. I want to see more examples of parents who still do lots of interesting and exciting things.

I guess I can come up with a couple off the top of my head...

When I was in Vietnam last week, I met a girl my age who is a middle-school teacher in a suburb of Chicago. She was in Vietnam interviewing to teach at the American school, and was seriously considering the possibility of relocating to Vietnam. She is not of Vietnamese ethnicity, she doesn't speak Vietnamese; she just thinks it would be a great experience to teach for awhile in a foreign country with a totally different culture. And, she's single, with a five-year-old daughter.

One of my basketball teammates is an M.D./Ph.D. (I think in hematology or oncology?) who used to work at Stanford and recently joined a startup. She makes it to nearly every one of our basketball games and practices; she's our resident 3-point specialist. She also has two small children under five, and manages to get home to make them dinner every night. Awesome.

Unfortunately, two examples are not enough. Show me more, people!

Back to the question. What would I have done? I honestly have no idea.

(People like me are probably why most developed countries have declining birthrates.)