Baby Rant

All the stories in the paper about the conflict between Lebanon and Israel are freaking me out. It is a very scary thing to see pictures of children and mums walking beside their former houses, or inside make-shift body bags.

I spend a lot of my time as a newly married person fending off questions about having children. I never thought I would get married - I never imagined that I would meet a guy I liked enough or who liked me enough to stay...so shock number one is still sending me realing...so asking me about babies is so beyond anything...I am still working my way up to the idea that I might actually own a house!!!

So here is a shout-out to all the people who ask about the parenting plans of their married or coupled friends:

"None of your damn business...n'k?"

When you look at the situation in the world and you realise that while we are not all having bombs dropped on us - the birthing and raising of children is a perilous thing...so much can go wrong.

In our highly mythologised "perfect" western world we are rarely confronted by this fact. We are very lucky at what is available to us. We don't tend to see polio victims, or conjoined children anywhere but on telly, and we don't have to live with the fact that a house fell on our family. We see sentimentalised, perfectly formed-and-casted über babies who never cry, and only have the kind of defect that is a cute one. But things can still go wrong.

Spare a thought - I may be thinking about having kids but is that anyone's business?...I may also be in my little head thinking of all of the above and freaking out, worried about medical conditions, miscariages and wondering if I should have children at all - so before you ask: do you really want to know?