The Surprise! Baby Club

After a full year of interacting with parents at my son's daycare, I have come to the conclusion that parents are generally crazy.

I recognize that I, too, am a parent. And believe me, I will be the first to admit that I am most definitely crazy. The difference between me and those who I am referencing in this post, however, is that I am crazy in a slightly neurotic, endearing way. The aforementioned parents are actually crazy. As in, up in a tree, out of their mind, nuts.

The greatest explanation I can come up with for this difference between myself and them is age. I don't flatter myself to think that I am any more normal than they are. I just think I haven't had enough time to sufficiently harden in my ways. Flexibility and an easy going attitude, typical characteristics of youth, provide a wondrous facade of sanity.

Without a doubt, I'm younger than most of the parents I know - a lot younger. While some of my peers were starting law school and med school and others were taking Wall Street or Silicon Valley by storm, I was locked in a bathroom stall at the Manhattan consulting firm where I worked watching the word "pregnant" appear on a stick. Not exactly what my mother had dreamed of for her promising (and very much unmarried) first-born.

To everyone's surprise, including my own, I made the decision to keep the baby. At the ripe old age of 23 - not even two years after my Harvard graduation - I became a mother. Here is a picture of my son when he was first born (he's now two years old).



As my friend, Ryan, likes to say, I am an official member of the Surprise Baby Club. At the time of my induction, I was the Club's only member. I could not think of even one person I knew who had a baby, surprise or otherwise. It was one of those things that "just didn't happen" to people like me. Yet, it did. And I've come to embrace the choice that I made. Gavin is an intellectually curious little boy with a mischievous grin and a soft heart, and I still can't believe how lucky I am to be his mother.

As an ironic addendum to this post, I now have a companion in the Surprise Baby Club. Ryan's son will be turning two in October ;)