Fertility Diary: Childless as Opposed to Child-Free The first time I got pregnant - a week after my wedding - I called one of my best friends in Florida. I mean, my husband and I were planning on having children, but the reality freaked me out: Was I sure? I knew Debbie would understand. See, she was a few years younger than me, and she also had mixed feelings about having children. She'd been married for a while but hadn't been able to decide. And like me, she knew the time to decide was now. Maybe it was easier when having children wasn't a choice, when women didn't have to make any decisions. We just did what was expected of us, no matter how we felt about it. But that era is over, and, as Peter Parker's uncle says, "With great power comes great responsibility." I wish there was a female superhero I could quote. "When did you have that maternal instinct?" one 35-year-old reader wrote to me. She is on the fence about having children and wanted to know if I felt the same at her age. Will a desire for children creep up on me? Some people aren't born with a maternal instinct. For a long time, I did not have that empty-belly, baby-cooing, oh-my-God-tell-me-everything-about-your-child's-poop feeling burning inside of me. I did not have the yearning. The concept of the maternal instinct is as ingrained in our culture as the falling-in-love myth, i.e. immediately "just knowing he's the one," like in the movies. But is the maternal instinct necessary to being a good parent? Is it necessary at all? I didn't "just know" I wanted to have children. I didn't just know I didn't either. I did a lot of soul-searching to figure it out. Despite my uncertainty, without that innate maternal instinct of "just knowing," I decided to take the plunge anyway. And later, when I felt the baby growing inside of me and saw its heartbeat, I knew I had made the right choice for me, even though that pregnancy did not work out. In the last year, as I tried to conceive, I've hashed it out with Debbie. Because we are older, we have no romance about having kids: We know that it can be exhausting and take a toll on a marriage, and that child-free living can take a toll on a marriage in a different way. I could help talk Debbie through her choices, because in my heart I know I could have gone either way. Yes, it's true. I can picture myself happily married (which I am), traveling the world (which I can't do now while trying to conceive), writing, working, working on my marriage, enjoying my seven nieces and nephews and the handful of other children I play "auntie" to now. Jack, Sunny, Zev, Ezra, I'm talking to you! Without children. My child-free friends and I are not in a judgment war about each other's choices. In fact, our choices help each other. As Debbie took her own temperature on the subject, I think when she saw the lengths that I am willing to go through - two miscarriages and now beginning IVF - she realized she didn't really want to have children that badly. And I'm happy for her. I'm happy that she made a decision - not an easy one, not one that won't be without some regrets and "what ifs," just as mine is sometimes fraught with glances at the road less traveled. As we go on our separate paths, with mine hopefully ending in children, and hers filled with love and friendship and work and other people's kids (mine!), I hope I will be able to watch her life unfold parallel to mine, and know that that could have been me.