A honest chat about children

It happened again as it usually does, I got accused of hating children.

It's a lie, I don't hate them. Half the time I disagree with their parents about how they are being raised, which is no fault of the children, but I don't hate children.

Do I know how to socialize with them? No. But then again I find more and more that when I am not at work having to talk for 12 hours straight I am failing at being able to socialize with anyone, much less someone 20 years or so younger then me.

Children used to be my dream. I wanted kids of my own so badly, I wanted to specialize in child psychology, I wanted to be a paediatric nurse, dream job was Sick Kids Hospital.......but then something switched. I don't know when it happened or why it happened but something switched.

I'd consider myself maternal, if I wasn't I wouldn't be a nurse (not to gender stereotype or anything). I'm not trying to blame my job either, but I think that's what caused the switch.

I don't know how women (and men) do it. We spend every moment of our job taking care of others who have no relation to us. 90% of your job is fixing whatever someone is complaining about. It's your responsibility. And then for many nurses to go home at night and take care of kids....I don't know how they do it. I'll be honest, half the time I want to lose my cool on patients, I don't want to go home with a negative attitude towards my children. I don't want to resent them for the fact that other people stress me out. They don't deserve a constantly cranky mother. My future husband doesn't deserve a nasty wife.

I also have fertility issues. They may or may not make it more difficult/impossible to have children. I'm really open to adoption but maybe I'm just afraid of failing? I don't know. Maybe I'm just scared that my life/body is going to change drastically. Who knows. Everyone has told me "it's different when they are your own kids", and one coworker even said she was in the same boat as me, didn't want them but her husband did and now she couldn't see herself without them. I believe, truly deep down, that when/if I have kids they will be my whole world and although sometimes they may drive my patience I will love them unconditionally.

But does it make me a bad person that I don't feel my biological clock ticking? That I don't think I can be a nurse and a mother and maybe the thought of pausing/ending my career so early into it really upsets me? I have wanted to be a nurse, officially, since I was 11. Every course I took in school was geared towards getting a nursing degree. I don't know any other job. And most days I love my job enough that I can't see myself doing anything else. But I don't think I can nurse and be a good mother at the same time. I don't have that calm, unconditional nurturing ability like some of my close nursing friends do.

As much as I talk about how I'm happy just having a dog, I am sure I won't feel complete without kids in my future. Although I do think that women who don't want children shouldn't be crucified for it, or made to seem like a bad person, and women who are unable to have children shouldn't be judged or thought less of. It's not a lack of caring or compassion that causes women not to have children in their lives. Some women have children and don't give a crap about them and then these poor kids grow up in awful homes.

Maybe I'm just going on a tangent because it's 7 am, I haven't slept, and there's a lot on my mind, who knows. If I marry a man who wants kids will I give him beautiful loved children? 100%. I would never deny a man fatherhood. Will I have to probably quit my job? Most likely, for the sake of my children. And maybe that's one of the many things that scares me. But that doesn't make me a bad person. If you aren't scared about how your life is going to change when you have kids, then you probably don't know what it entails to be a good parent.

End of venting.