The #1 argument in favour of teen pregnancy**

A few Sundays ago, we went out to dinner with Rob's family to celebrate his Nana's 90th birthday.

Needless to say, Milo was the life of the party. He's Rob's parents' first grandchild, and they are stupid-drunk in love with him. They passed him back and forth between them all night, walking around the restaurant whenever he got the least bit restless and introducing him to the other diners. By the time we left, I think everyone in the entire restaurant knew his name.

Nana was pretty good about being upstaged by her great-grandson at her own party. She was thrilled to be surrounded by three generations of her descendants. As I sat there beside her, I couldn't help but feel a twinge of envy. Chances are slim that I'll ever know any of my grandchild's children (assuming, of course, that Milo will one day decide to put those family jewels of his to some use other than diaper soiling).

Like so many other women these days, I waited until I was in my mid-30s to have my first child. I certainly don't regret that decision. I was WAAAY too immature in my 20s to even think of having kids. There's no way I would have been able to take care of a baby -- I could barely take care of myself. (Seriously. I once spent two years surviving almost entirely on food from the local 7-11. Granted, this was in Japan, where convenience store food puts most North American grocery store offerings to shame, but still. I think most of the vegetables I ate during that time came in dehydrated soup broth packets. And let's not even talk about the times when I showed up for work wearing clothes I'd gone to sleep in.)

Thankfully, the scant amount of wisdom I actually did manage to acquire by my mid-20s made it glaringly clear to me that I had a lot of growing up to do before I could even consider taking on the responsibility of having a baby. And that was a good thing. In the process of doing all that growing up, I got a Masters in English, I worked abroad for several years, and I traveled to a handful of different countries in Asia. I learned a lot about different cultures and different people; but I learned far more about myself.

I cherish all those different experiences. Without them, I know I could never have been a good mother to Milo. And honestly, I'm glad I wasn't in a hurry to grow up. By the time I was ready to start a family, I had really gotten a lot of sh*t out of my system. I had become bored with doing the same old things with the same old people night after night. Don't get me wrong -- I love my friends to death. But it had begun to seem to me like we were always doing the same things, having the same conversations, and nothing ever changed. And that's how I knew I was definitely ready to evolve.

So here I am, a 35-year old woman (who still feels like she's playing at being an adult) with a five-month old baby boy, and I really couldn't be happier. I feel like I became a mother at precisely the right time in my life.

And yet, when I think of Rob's Nana (or his other Gramma, who also has a small posse of great-grandchildren to her credit), I can't help but feel a bit wistful. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to watch Milo grow up and someday have children of his own. But it's unlikely I'll ever know their children. That's the price you pay, I guess, when you spend too much of your own life being a child -- you miss out on the childhoods of your descendants.

However, the upside to all this is the fact that Rob and I made our parents wait SO long for a grandchild that they're now doing backflips to see him and are willing and eager to come babysit for us at the drop of a dirty diaper. So there's a silver lining in every cloud, I guess.

** I do not mean to suggest by this title that either of Rob's grandmothers were teenaged mothers. It's actually meant to refer to MY descendants -- for only if Milo knocks up his high school girlfriend or one of his kids is a teenaged parent will I ever get to meet my future great-grandchild...