What does it mean to have a child?

Today I read something disturbing. Pre-term baby statistics. You can find it here because I dont want to retell anything. Its too damn depressing. The worst part? No consideration for the carrier of the lost life. The women are lost.

I have never had a child. I have never been pregnant. In fact, as a teenager I had a very strong fear of sex because I knew... "the implications". That said, I was also a child of divorce so I never really wanted that to be a thing that the kids I ever had to go through. Just generally.

I do, however, have friends with kids. I also have many acquaintances with them. While I acknowledge that children are amazing, it is incredibly important, in my opinion, to be able to afford them.

To afford the time, resources and attentions. Children are one thing but we must remember that they grow into human beings. Fully functioning, we hope, humans that make a positive difference in society. 

I was brought up in a mixed family. When I was about 7, I remember my stepmother working with UNFPA and having me a kind of after school class at home about puberty and stuff. I got stuff to read, I had folder of sheets of paper with little questions and stuff. At the time I figured it was all stuff being shoved down my throat but today I guess Im glad that happened. I figure it started early because she and my dad where about to have my little brother and so I needed "to know where he was coming from".

In other words, I was terrified by the whole damn thing. 

When puberty actually hit me, I was an angry, angry young woman. I used to get violently sick and I hated everything including the crappy baby bag and its associated parts that would put me in pain and make me throw up everywhere. Where? In a school bin during winter school in Primary. In many, many bushes. At several office bathrooms. In all the different female toilets in both high schools I went to. I think I threw up in front of a bakery in Lami in a bin at one point. 

Why tell you about this? Because in my head, if period nausea was bad, how bad was pregnancy nausea going to be? If my depression during my mid cycle was bad, what about post-baby blues? 

And with all these thoughts, I am the minority. I think about my own body, my own life, in the face of the possibility of a child. I am afraid that many women and young women might not have that opportunity. I should not be the minority.

Societal expectations may force a newlywed couple to procreate. Shotgun weddings are frequent. A woman is barely consulted on the whole family planning front and she will get shamed (Still!) if she seeks out contraceptives. Education systems still dont teach the whole notion of a cycle and when to track your own fertility - a last resort if medical centres and otherwise are far away or just uncomfortable. It still seems like we barely allow women choice over their own bodies. 

Shame on you, society. Our mothers, sisters and women in general deserve so much better than this.