Dear Tootie,

surprise! You're an avocado. I really love the avocado. Perhaps you will too. Your father didn't care for them at first, but they are slowly growing on him.

I was talking about you again at my Drinking Liberally group. (I know, it seems like I talk about you all the time. I can't help it. I'm excited.) I was having a conversation with a really lovely woman who said that she had no interest whatsoever in having children. I replied, "great!" I'm not going to be one of those proselytizing breeders. If you don't want children, you most definitely should NOT have them. There are few things worse than bringing an unwanted child into the world just because you feel some social or family pressure to reproduce.

Sometimes, though, I feel as though I have to defend myself to people who not only don't want their own children, but don't think anyone else should be having them either. Now, I won't deny that the world is overpopulated. Not having children is a very respectable choice, and I would never fault anyone for that. It's a choice that a lot of socially responsible people make.

What that can mean, though, is that the socially irresponsible people are having a disproportionate number of the children. In the words of my new friend from DL, if they have all the children, then we are ceding the future to them.

Now, let me be clear about one thing. Your father and I decided to have children for a lot of reasons. The first and most important of these is that we want you. Never, ever question that. You were created because we really, really wanted to create you. We talked about it for years before we started trying. We already had names picked out. It was never a question. Wanting children was a basic part of our relationship, which we made sure we agreed about before we got really serious about each other. We are having you because we dreamed of having you.

HOWEVER... I won't deny that, in my quiet dreams, I do have some big hopes for you. I don't care if you decide you're more conservative than I am, and I don't care if we disagree about things. I hope we do. I hope we can learn from each other. I just want you to be GOOD. To be FAIR. To be able to step into someone else's shoes and see the world through someone else's eyes. When I imagine how you look inside me, I picture you as a little shining light, coming to drive away some of the darkness in the world. Your character is such a blank slate right now. I can't wait to fill it up with love and compassion and empathy. I hope you will want that too. I'm ceding the future to you.

Can't wait to meet you! I'm going to go eat a piece of your Dad's birthday cake now.

Love,
Mom

16 weeks, 6 days in the oven