The decision to have children can be an easy decision to make, or it can be the most difficult decision you make in your lifetime.
My experience with this choice was no choice at all. I recall with absolute clarity that as a very young girl, I wanted children.
I came from a large family of six siblings. But my family was dissimilar than most of the children that I grew up within the 1950s and 1960s. The difference was that my fraternal twin and I were the youngest, and there was a wide age gap between the two of us and our older siblings. My older brother was almost twenty years older than we were. And my oldest sister was fifteen years older. And the next oldest was eight and seven years older.
As a result, my older siblings began marrying and having children when I was about ten years old. My sisters visited often and brought their babies and toddlers and little kids over to their grandparent’s house (my house) to visit. I fell in love with every one of these kids as they came along, beginning with my oldest niece, Maryellen. She was so smart, adorable, and affectionate. She was a happy baby. And her smiling baby face is one that I can still picture to this day.
Some kids at the age of ten or eleven might be jealous of the attention these little ones received, but I wasn’t, not for one moment. I looked forward to their visits with anticipation. When they arrived at our house, I would immediately want to take them to show them off to my friends and their families.
I started babysitting my nieces and nephews before I went to high school. I loved spending time with them. There has never been a more dotting aunt than I was. I resolved that I too would become a mother someday.
I met the future father of my children when I was quite young. I didn’t have to look that far. As it turned out my best childhood girlfriend, Joanie had a boy cousin that I had known. I decided that this was the person I would marry. In fact, as an adult, after we were married, my mother told me that when I was about ten, I told her that Bobby Culver and I were going to get married someday.
And we did marry in 1974 when I just turned twenty-three and Bob turned twenty-five. Bob recently returned from serving in the Navy during the Viet Nam war. Bob decided to go to school to study photography. He attended Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, Ca.
As we all know, life doesn’t always follow the script we write. It takes its course and then there are the occasional bumps in the road or roadblocks.
I hit a roadblock. My doctor informed me that I was infertile for unknown reasons. After years of Doctor’s visits and tests, I was able to conceive and give birth when I was thirty in 1981. There was never a happier pregnant young woman than I. Even though I had morning sickness for almost the entire pregnancy.
Jeanette was a beautiful baby. I can remember the day we brought her home from the hospital as if it was yesterday. We put her in the borrowed bassinet. Bob and I stared at her all day. We are waiting for her to wake up. We could hardly believe that we had created this beautiful child. She seemed a miracle to us. 
When you bring your baby home, it is like falling in love. It is an all-encompassing feeling. If you remember the first time, you fell in love. It is a similar feeling except you are responsible for the health, the safety of this fragile dependent creature. And it’s your responsibility to teach your child how to talk, walk, eat, dress. You will always be their parent, even after you pass from this life. It is an awesome responsibility.
Jeanette said her first word, light when she was four months old. And she spoke in full sentences before she was two and a half. Jeanette is highly intelligent. And challenging first child. She didn’t sleep through the night until she was almost three. She could climb like a monkey. I had to put gates everywhere. Between the dining room and the kitchen because Jeanette would climb on top of the stove, and climb up the stairs.
She scaled the dining room chairs and climbed on top of the dining room table and dance on it. I would find her balancing on top of the rocking chair and rocking it. She accomplished these acrobatic feats in the blink of an eye. You might think I wasn’t watching her, but Jeanette would be there one second and gone the next. And there she was on top of the dining room table.
When Jeanette was about two and a half, we decided she would benefit from having a sibling. And so, in time, her sister, Bridget was born in January of 1984. 
To say that Jeanette was happy by this turn of events would be an outright lie. She had a raging case of sibling rivalry. We had to put a gate in the doorway of the baby’s room. If Jeanette made her way into Bridget’s bedroom, she would climb into the crib and jump up and down. Yelling, “I’m giving the baby a ride.”
Over time as Bridget grew and Jeanette was able to play with her and Jeanette’s tolerance for her new sister grew to acceptance.
Bridget was a happy baby, smiling and easily pacified if she cried. Once she learned to crawl, she followed Jeanette everywhere with her stuffed bear between her arms and legs. Bridget sucked her thumb until she was four. But somehow, she could speak clearly with that thumb planted firmly in her mouth. Bridget learned many new words by listening to Jeanette talk.
So, although their personalities were very different, they did have similar talents and interests. They loved games and puzzles and drawing and creating things. They both came to love reading as I took them to the library every week throughout their childhood.
There were never children born that were loved more than Jeanette and Bridget. I spent every moment of my life playing and talking to them and teaching them. I was a stay at home mother for seven years.
The good news is that by the time Jeanette graduated from highschool with Bridget three years behind her, they developed a better relationship.
And here they are now grown women who are as close as sisters can be. And they’re each other’s best friends even though they live eight hundred miles apart.
In conclusion, I would like to say becoming a parent is both a blessing and a challenge. Everyone who has children brings more love into their lives. But having children also brings fear. Fear that something unforeseen may happen to your precious child. If you are strong enough to bear that fear, then being a parent is a choice for you. My life without my children would have been narrower, less challenging. I would have missed out on one of my life’s most fulfilling experiences.