Lucky

In case you were wondering, these are the reasons I chose not to have kids (despite being a uterus toting human).

1) I couldn’t afford them. Children aren’t cheap. They’re not like cats. Cats don’t need music, art, ballet, math, science lessons to augment their public schooling. Human spawn require clothing, school supplies and a post secondary school education savings account. Cats? They generally skip all levels of school and, now that I think of it, refuse to wear sweaters and pants. Hey, if I had a lux fur coat like my boy Cake, I’d eschew duds too.

2) Between work, painting (and, sadly unsuccessful, marketing efforts) and my attempts to have a social life, I knew I didn’t have the time. In case you weren’t aware, offspring require brain wrecking amounts of care. You can’t, as with our furry feline friends, just leave them to nap and amuse themselves for eight to twelve hours at a go. Plus, children need patient, loving guidance and love all the damn time. (yes, even when you’re dog-damned-tired or half lit and don’t feel like it) If you don’t put in the time you end up with a Don jr., an RFK jr., a Madge Trailer Trash Greene or some other freakishly twisted waste of oxygen.

3) My neurologists and neurosurgeons advised me not to EVER get up the spout. Why? The radical hormone surges that pregnancy brings act like bone meal fertilizer on your garlic plants (and aren’t we ALL growing garlic versus kids? Emmm, maybe?). The hormone deluge sparks acoustic schwannomas and assorted meningiomas to blossom like sunflowers in July. Not cool, not cool. I only mention it but my cousin Carmel knew this but went ahead and had not one but two spawn anyway. Yep, she clocked out of this good green world real early—didn’t get to see those two bairn grow up. My mother, who had four bambinos before she was diagnosed, defied the odds and saw all of us hit adulthood. I’m not a gambler—I followed my neurofibromatosis type 2 pit crew’s advice.

4) Did I mention? The odds of a person passing down Nf2 to their mini-me is 50/50. My mother had four kids—two of us have Nf2. My Uncle Matt had it as do/did two of his four children. Carmel’s two? I’m not in touch with her extreme evangelical widower (who remarried just a few minutes after Carmel’s body was cold) but it’s a safe bet that at least one of them has the family curse.

5) Between the hellish bullying of my own pre-adult years, humanity’s tendency toward heinous-osity (hello? Nazis, Republi/Fascists, MAGAts…but I’m repeating myself), the high chance of gifting Nf2 to potential offspring and the fact that the planet is already way overpopulated, reproducing felt cruel and utterly selfish. 

6) I’m actually not particularly fond of tiny humans. I can understand why some folks are but young humans are just not my bag. I tried to keep an open mind—I thought maybe, after I was in my 30s, I’d experience a flood of maternal yearnings. Nope, never happened. Also, adopting a kiddle was well beyond my budget.

7) I like and prefer cats but you knew that.

Not only did my med team strongly recommend against birthing babes, I couldn’t even do birth control pills. Why?

The pill elevates the body's levels of progesterone, which mimics pregnancy. The body behaves as though it is pregnant, disrupting the normal menstrual cycle and the release of additional hormones that cause a woman to ovulate. Progestin also thickens cervical mucus, which helps prevent sperm from entering the uterus. (source)

I’ve been careful and very lucky—I’ve never been preggers. If I did have an accident though, I live in Massachusetts not some idiot state that elects a bunch of midget dicked morons who think women are no more than organic sex toys, servants and fetus incubators.

Lucky—that’s me.