If, like me, you’re in your mid-twenties, you may have noticed that your friends have started reproducing on purpose.

In high school I was TERRIFIED I’d somehow (magically?) get pregnant. I remember playing Would You Rather at slumber parties and one of the more divisive questions for the group was always “Would you rather get pregnant OR get an incurable STD”? Every single time, I enthusiastically accepted a future of blistering sores on my most private of parts if it meant I would be pregnancy free.

Now, everything’s different.

For one, Would You Rather is now a drinking game (a drinking game that I’m great at thanks to my slightly prudish approach to life) but also – pregnancy is no longer a life ruiner.

Visiting my best friend in the hospital after the birth of her first child yesterday, I couldn’t help but be struck by just how much my mindset has shifted lately. I guess it makes sense that with a biological clock and a body chockfull of estrogen, I’d want to be a mom – but it was more that, not only can I have babies, society would allow me to have one. No one would bat an eye.

In my overeducated, yuppie-centric DC bubble, 26 is still on the young end for getting knocked up, but it’s not out of the question. Plenty of women in their early twenties walk around with bulging baby bumps and happily go about their lives.

The fact that my fridge contains only wilted basil, a Tupperware of suspicious-looking pasta, and half a bottle of red wine suggests that I’m ill-prepared to care for a child, but the fact that I have a steady job, a roof over my head, and a vehicle with gas in the tank says maybe, just maybe I could handle some actual responsibilities.

I don’t plan on becoming someone’s mama anytime soon, but it’s nice to know that when I’m ready, it won’t be a Teen Mom situation. Maybe it’s crazy that it took until 26 for me to have this revelation, but hardly any of my friends have even gotten married yet, let alone popped out a human being…

I can’t wait for everyone to start making babies!

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