When Your Biological Clock Goes Off, Sometimes You Should Hit the Snooze Button

(It’s August and Tuesday so here’s something from the archives. I remembered it after I read 7 Signs It’s Time to Have a Second Child on Baby Center. The author of “7 Signs”, Mommy Shorts, says it sparked some controversy. I say, if you don’t think “7 Signs” is funny, you shouldn’t have a first kid, never mind a second one.)

It must be a trend. Three people have told me recently that they’re trying to figure out if they’re ready to have kids. One of them is barely more than a kid, herself, so I hope she decides to wait awhile. The other two are both in their thirties, so I suppose they’re thinking that time is running out, but I hope they take a while to think about it in spite of the time crunch.

One mentioned having kids in the same conversation in which she mentioned that they were going to have their cat declawed. This is a cat that they adopted from the Humane Society as kind of a trial run for having a baby. She and her husband, Stewart, fell in love with this little black and white scrap of fur the minute they saw it and have been giving us goofy updates ever since.

I get calls from Donna on her cell phone on her way to work, to let me know that Cleo is so clever that she can turn on the faucet in the bathroom sink. She is so smart that she fetches her catnip mouse when Stewart throws it for her. She’ll only eat one kind of cat food and has to have her water bowl refilled every time she drinks from it.

Of course, this is the same kind of information overflow that you get with new parents, although maybe without the catnip mouse, and I thought it was a good sign for their future parenthood that they were so enthralled by this fur-baby. But then, when she was about four months old, Cleo started clawing the furniture. Suddenly, she wasn’t so cute or appealing.

Donna asked my advice, which is funny if you’ve ever seen the woodwork next to my sliding glass door. Thanks to my cat, Benny, who ignores sixty acres of scratching posts disguised as trees but never fails to scratch the door trim on his way out, the wood looks like a fast food restaurant for porcupines. We’ve tried everything to get him to stop, but nothing has worked over the six years that we’ve had him. No way would I give him away, so I just put up with it.

Not so, Donna and Stewart. Cleo was wrecking the arm of their couch and also scratching the leg of their dining table, so they talked it over and decided that Cleo’s front claws would have to go. When Donna told me, I counted to ten and then asked her if she knew what declawing a cat involves. She said it was like taking off their fingernails and they were asleep when it was done, so it didn’t hurt them.

I informed her that it does hurt and it’s not just taking off their fingernails (although I wonder how Donna would like hers pulled off.) It’s more like removing your fingers up to your elbow. I referred her to this website where you can find out everything you need to know if you’re thinking of having your cat declawed, hoping that she’d be more receptive to reading an expert’s opinion. Then, having negotiated that minefield, she moved on to the even dicier subject of whether I thought she was ready to have kids.

I confess. I waffled. I said I really couldn’t give that sort of advice, because it’s such a personal decision, but I did say that – if she and Stewart were upset enough to declaw a cat for wrecking the furniture – maybe they should really think about what their reaction would be to 18 years of what kids do to furniture, walls, your best white blouse, your ability to get a whole night’s sleep and complete a sentence.

I think she thought I was being facetious and we didn’t talk long after that. After we hung up, I thought of all the other ways you can tell if you’re ready for kids – not that we’re ever really ready for kids until after we’ve raised ours and have grandchildren. I think these are the questions people should ask themselves when they’re thinking of having kids.

First, of course, is “Would I declaw a cat?” If the answer to that is “yes”, probably the only kind of kids you should have are Cabbage Patch Kids. Ask yourself some questions that reveal whether you’re too selfish to be a parent. Do you always take the biggest piece of cake? Do you ever get up in the morning and worry about someone else before you’ve had your first cup of coffee? If you use your husband’s car, do you gas it up for him so he won’t have to do it?

Next, how much of a control freak are you? Control of your life is the first thing you lose when you have a kid. They have to come first, because they have NO control over their lives. They’re completely dependent on you for everything, which isn’t as attractive as it sounds when it’s three o’clock in the morning, your infant is screaming, your husband is throwing up in the bathroom with a stomach bug, your stomach feels queasy and you have a really important meeting the next morning with your boss and the people from Cleveland whose account you need to get to secure that raise or maybe even your job. If your main worry here would be your job, wait awhile to have kids.

How good are you at rolling with the punches, being spontaneous and thinking on the fly? Can you tell someone that their pet goldfish swam off into the ocean via the toilet bowl? With a straight face? Can you shop without a list with headphones on playing talk radio at full blast and with a monkey jumping in and out of your cart and pulling things off shelves? That’s a rough approximation of how you’ll be shopping for at least ten years if you have a kid.

These are just some of the questions you should ask yourself and your partner before you add the patter of little feet (that will need two pairs of shoes a year at around fifteen bucks a pop for almost two decades.) And even if you’re sure that none of the above phases you in the least, before you start marking fertile days on the calendar, there’s one more thing you should do.

Sit down with your partner and play twelve straight games of Candyland, Hi-Ho Cherry-o, or Sorry while simultaneously watching Barney, Dora or Blue’s Clues. Then take a break and have a big bowl of that radioactive-yellow macaroni and cheese from a box with a glass of cherry Kool-Aid to wash it down. If it stays down, you’re ready for a kid. (If you find yourself saying, Delicioso, or saying, “Swiper! No swiping!”while tapping your husband’s hand when he reaches for more, you’re ready to open a daycare.)