I Think About It All The Time, Too

For me, my motherhood journey will include a trip to the cryobank.

My Brat.

“Everyone’s pregnant right now,” said my friend Isabel, who I’ve known since middle school. I ran into her in Washington Square Park the other day, walking alongside one of her friends who was pushing a stroller with a baby in tow. I was killing time and latched onto their trio, which doubled as catch-up and entertain-the-baby time. 

We sat on a picnic blanket as the baby shoved little pieces of banana pancakes into her mouth. I watched her, fascinated by how keenly she watched us. I joked multiple times that she’d been here before, that she already looked world-weary.

“So true,” I said. Everyone is, in fact, fucking pregnant right now or has recently given birth. The United States birth rate might be in decline, but it isn’t on my Instagram feed. And those who aren’t already are trying to become pregnant. Some of the people in that category are friends of mine who have to delete Instagram from their phones from time to time because the constant reminder of others’ fertility while theirs is in question is a kind of cruelty they shouldn’t be subjected to when they’re trying to unwind on their lunch break.

I sometimes share this urge, not because I’m struggling with fertility. In fact, I’m not sure what my status is on that front at all. I have an appointment soon to determine whether I should get a uterine fibroid removed¹, all preparation for my in-vitro fertilization journey. I’ve known I’ll have to undergo IVF ever since Rob was diagnosed with cancer in 2019, and doctors told him to get his sperm frozen before starting chemo if he ever even thought about having children. He did it, but children seemed far off to both of us back then. Now, I’m approaching my mid-30s, and I’m finally starting to research what exactly IVF entails. 

I just imagined that Rob would outlive the cancer long enough to be with me through it all.

So I, similarly, feel a bubble of bitterness licking at my insides when I see a baby announcement, an ultrasound printout, a photo of a happy couple with their hands gently resting atop a pregnant belly. And I imagine the photo shoot I’ll have, alone.

“Congrats!!!” I reply, anyway.

Charli XCX’s new album, Brat, has quickly become a Cultural Moment in my corner of the internet. I can’t go a day without seeing the lime green album color cover superimposed on everything, replacing avatars, memefied to hell and back. I don’t mind it. I really enjoyed Brat, so much so that I won’t be surprised if Charli or one of the songs from that album end up on my Spotify Wrapped by year’s end. While my most listened-to songs are the ones that epitomize the 30-year-old-plus party girl lifestyle (I can’t go an hour without hearing “Yeah, I wanna dance to me, I wanna dance to A. G.” or “Should we do a little key? Should we have a little line? Ah ahhhhhhhh ahhh”), I’ve developed a soft spot for the manic “Everything Is Romantic,” the grief laden “So I,” and what I’d like to call The Baby Song: “I Think About It All The Time.”

“I Think About It All The Time” is, sonically, a little too cutesy to me, but I love it anyway and appreciate her vulnerability. It has perfectly tapped into the push and pull regarding motherhood that a lot of my peers can relate to. In it, Charli encounters a friend who is now a mother. She’s different, but she’s not a stranger, which comes as a relief. Charli went into more detail in an interview with Rolling Stone UK: “It was crazy seeing her standing in the same clothes she’s always worn, but now she has this completely different perspective on life than I do. She’s not enforcing that on me; it’s just a fact. She’s not alive for the same reasons that I am now”

Charli admits to thinking about motherhood and its implications constantly, a fact that, in itself, challenges the perception of what motherhood could look like. Does motherhood mean giving up the party girl spirit? Can you have your cake and eat it too? Does it really matter in the end? 

So, we had a conversation on the way home

Should I stop my birth control?

'Cause my career feels so small in the existential scheme of it all.

The song has hit a nerve for a Millennial of a certain age and has already generated a few culture pieces: The Cut asked, “Should I Be a Mom, or Should I Stay a ‘Brat’?” and Paste wondered, “Are We Entering the Golden Age of Baby Fever Anthems?” Meanwhile, Vogue wants to know “Are You Ready for Saturn Return Girl Summer?” Saturn return is a concept in astrology referring to the approximately 29 or so years it takes for Saturn to return to the same position it was in when we’re born. It’s meant to signify true adulthood, riddled with a new slew of responsibilities and challenges. It’s believed that the influences of Saturn’s return can begin as early as 27 and last through one’s early 30s.² 

(If I think too hard about this, I go a little insane. I was months shy of 29 when Rob first got sick, and I just turned 32 when he died. Is Saturn done fucking me yet?)

I think about it all the time, too, but it’s not much of a debate over whether I want to have kids or not. I’ve known since I was a kid that I wanted to have a kid one day. I simply cannot relate to handwringing about whether to be childfree³; that’s none of my business. But my journey into motherhood will not be a matter of stopping my birth control. It’s a process that already seems so sterile and so lonely. A series of medical procedures without Rob being there to hold my hand, or waiting for me in the waiting room, or taking the train with me to appointments, or driving me home.

I’ve had friends volunteer to stand in. I think it’s sweet. I’ll likely take them up on this offer. It’s just hard to believe I’ll ever be their priority in the same way a partner has to be.

The thing about the worst-case scenario happening once is that you’re convinced there’s nothing stopping it from happening again. At least you are if you’re me and have been riddled with anxiety about death and dying and illness since the Clinton years. At least you are if you’re me and watched someone die of a type of cancer that one in 300 Americans are diagnosed with every year. Literal one-in-a-million bullshit.

I know you’re not supposed to worry about sounding crazy in front of your therapists, but I do whenever I dip a toe into discussing my myriad of fears surrounding potential motherhood. Here are a few of them:

• I’m infertile

• Rob’s sperm sample is somehow defective

• Rob’s sperm sample, which was moved from a facility in New York to one in California last year for whatever reason, will become destroyed during The Big One

• The backup generators at the cryobank where Rob’s sperm sample is frozen will backfire and won’t be useable

• One of the above happens and I deduce that my life has very little meaning left

• Dying during childbirth

• One or both of my parents will die before I start IVF

• One or both of my parents will die when I’m pregnant

• One or both of my parents will die when our child is an infant

• I’ll have a miscarriage

• Our child will be stillborn

• Our child will have some sort of debilitating illness or disability

• Our child will die before me

• I’m not planning to have a second child, so if my kid dies then it’s one and done and that’s it it’s over

• I have twins and go insane

• I have just one kid and go insane anyway

• I’ll fall down the stairs while pregnant

• Our child will have a normal, healthy upbringing, and have no curiosity about the father they never got to know

It was not hard to come up with this list. I think about it all the time. 

That day at the park, we watched the baby crawl around, try to stand up, and reach for things she shouldn’t (namely, my phone). We made her smile, baring her teeny tiny teeth at us. When it was time to leave, her mother put a hat on her head and secured her in the stroller. It looked like a nice stroller, and for a minute, I considered looking up the brand. As if I’m in the market for a stroller right now. As if I’m the person who should be Googling “Wirecutter best strollers 2024” right now. It’s a demographic I expect to be in one day, but my timeline still feels iffy. 

I keep telling my parents that I want to start egg retrieval by the end of this year, get some embryos frozen, and then try to actually get pregnant by 2026, assuming I’ll have finished writing my book by then. They’d love for me to get pregnant sooner, but that’s because they’re old. I’ve told Rob’s family a similar timeline, but they’re not pushy. When I relay my plans to friends, it’s accompanied by the addendum, “I’d like more time to get fucked up and go out dancing before I get pregnant.” 

I don’t mention that part to the parents. Maybe Brat really was written for my ass.

Sometimes⁴, I’m convinced that I’m too neurotic to be a good mother. I imagine myself as one of those helicopter moms, constantly worried that their child is going to be kidnapped or that every time they enter a car will be their last. I laugh at those suburbanites convinced that they’re going to be sex trafficked every time they walk through the Target parking lot by themselves, but maybe I won’t be much better. Again, once you know you’re not above being a victim of the worst-case scenario, it’s impossible to think that that sort of misfortune is out of your life for good. 

Still, I daydream positive images of myself as a mother into my head to counteract all the noise. I imagine taking them hiking like their dad would have done for them. I imagine teaching them how to read. I imagine trying to help them with their math homework, but being absolutely useless because schools changed the way that basic multiplication and division are taught now. I imagine showing them the letter Rob wrote for them, to be opened when they’re 16 years old. I imagine them asking about Rob. I imagine myself answering. I imagine them caring.

Before he died, Rob wrote out a list of his preferred boy names and girl names. I think about that all the time also, and it’s one of the few things that makes me believe, “This can happen, this will happen, you deserve it. He’ll live on in one of these names, in that child, and everything will be okay. Maybe. Probably. Hopefully. And they’ll shove banana pancakes in their mouth. And they’ll reach for my phone. And I’ll push them in a fancy stroller that Wirecutter told me to buy. Because everything will be okay. Maybe. Probably. Hopefully.”

1. “Tell me you’re black without telling me you’re black.”

2. No Doubt’s Return of Saturn became a lot easier to appreciate when I got older and began to relate to an entire album dedicated to relationship anxiety, marriage, and wanting to be a mom. It’s truly an underrated album if you ask me.

3. When I say childfree, I mean people who are childfree by choice, not circumstance.

4. Read: often.