Unplanned Without Regret

I started considering this idea thanks to a post in the archives of Missuz J. She's the BadAss Mommy listed in the blogroll, and you should read her stuff.

My little girl's arrival wasn't so much a mistake as not really the plan. My wife and I knew we would have a child eventually, but we just didn't expect it would be barely short of nine months after our wedding.

You might be surprised how uncomfortable this admission (even the fact I call it an admission alludes to the influence their reactions has had on me) makes people, how many strained smiles and downcast eyes follow it.

Part of it seems to be the whole idea of an unplanned pregnancy carried to term. It is as if they wonder whether we even knew where babies came from, but, look, short of the pill (and I'd rather my wife not pump herself full of hormones), its always a numbers game. And there is the abortion issue. When I told a friend, a tiny feminist lesbian Butoh dancer painter, that abortion wasn't even on the table for us, she asked "Oh, isn't your wife pro-choice?" as though being pro-choice precludes the possibility you will choose not to have an abortion of convenience.

But, there seems like there is something else there, too. I feel like I have to quickly add something about not trading the world for my little girl now, how much the rewards outnumber the drawbacks, but it feels empty to me because I don't see any conflict here, no BUT, no real need for reassurance. My little girl was unplanned AND I love her more than the sum total of the rest of existence.

I think that perhaps people are uncomfortable with the idea that someone can recognize their actual life as just one of any number of possibilities, not inevitable or destined but what happens to have been true, AND be ok with that. I think we are all uncomfortable with the idea of somebody else's opportunity costs when viewed through the lens of our own values, and that we believe at least a little that acknowledgement of those costs equates with regret.

I just don't agree. Mainly because regret is a funny thing, and we often mistake something else for it.

Think about it. How often is regret actually a wish that we could have had it both ways? How often, when you think you feel regret, would you actually go back and change things at the potential cost of losing everything you have now?

When the cost of changing your present so obviously outweighs the costs that are dissolving into the past, regret falls away.

I love my unplanned daughter without regret.

Wouldn't that make a heartwarming t-shirt?