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One couple's perfect response to people asking when they're going to have kids

Choosing to have kids or not have kids is no one else's decision but yours.

Photo via Carrie Jensen/Imgur, used with permission.

She’s giving birth to a puppy.


"When are you guys going to start having kids?"

Like many couples, Carrie Jansen and her husband Nic had heard this question a million different ways, a million different times.

The pressure really started to mount when the pair, who've been together for eight years, got married three years ago. While Carrie loves kids (she's an elementary school teacher, after all), she and Nic simply aren't interested in having kids of their own. Now or ever.

"It's not what I was meant for," explains Carrie in a Facebook message. "It's like, I love flowers, and everyone loves flowers. But that doesn't mean I want to grow my own. I'm perfectly happy admiring other people's gardens."

Carrie wanted to tell her family that they don't plan on having kids but knew if she did, they'd say something like, "Oh you'll change your mind one day!" and that pesky question would keep rearing its ugly head.

marriage, adults, children, social pressure, pregnancy

Dressed to the nines on their wedding day.

Photo via Carrie Jansen, used with permission.

Rather than continue to deflect the question over and over, Carrie decided to do something a little bit different.

Since the couple was adding another mouth to feed to the family, they decided to announce it with a series of maternity-style photos, revealing the twist: The new addition was a puppy named Leelu, not a baby.

pets, viral, moms, dads, maternity, babies

Look at my newborn baby... puppy.

Photo via Carrie Jensen/Imgur, used with permission.

"My husband and I have been married 3 years and everyone is bugging us about having a baby. Close enough right?" she captioned the photos.

Her pictures went insanely viral, with many of the commenters giving her props for hilariously addressing the dreaded "kids " question.

kids, choices, population, survey

The adorable pup.

Photo via Carrie Jansen, used with permission.

"If you don't want kids, don't have kids. Seriously. Have fun with each other. I had three kids early and it's all about them now," wrote one user. "I wish people would just mind their business raising a kid ain't easy and cheap," wrote another.

"I got my husband a vasectomy for his birthday this year. Best gift ever," chimed in a third.

Carrie was overwhelmed and inspired by the viral response. "Having children is definitely a hot topic, and one that is evolving in this generation like so many other social issues," she says. "It's exciting to find others that feel the same way I do.”

Carrie is hardly alone in not wanting to have kids — in fact, a record number of women are choosing not to have kids today.

In 2014, the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey found 47.6% of women between age 15 and 44 had never had children, which is the highest percentage on record. Despite the numbers, however, because we still live in a patriarchally-driven society, women regularly face the expectation that they should be mothers, and they often are judged if they decide not to be.

Whether you want to have one kid, five kids, no kids, or a puppy, the choice should be yours and no one else's.

holidays, gifts, woman\u2019s rights, gender equality,

The holiday photo in front of the Christmas tree.

Photo via Carrie Jansen, used with permission.

No one else has the right to put pressure on you to change your body and life in a drastic way. Thankfully, because of women like Carrie — and partners like Nic — who aren't afraid to bring the subject out in the open, the expectations are slowly but surely changing.


This article originally appeared nine years ago.


Comedy legend Carol Burnett once said, "Giving birth is like taking your lower lip and forcing it over your head." She wasn't joking.

Going through childbirth is widely acknowledged as one of the most grueling things a human can endure. Having birthed three babies myself, I can attest that Burnett's description is fairly accurate—if that seemingly impossible lip-stretching feat lasted for hours and involved a much more sensitive part of your body.


RELATED: A mom's raw photo after a C-section shows how badass the female body is.

I found childbirth amazing and empowering, but I can't deny that parts of it hurt like hell. Even my easiest and shortest labor felt like my body was being split in two for a while, and if you don't know what "back labor" feels like, imagine being stabbed in the tailbone with a white hot knife. With each birth, I got to a moment where I didn't think I could do it anymore. Each time, I hit a point where I would have happily handed over everything I owned to make it stop.

I chose the unmedicated route, but women who get the epidural or have their babies via c-section go through drastic bodily transformations to have their babies as well. No birth is a walk in the park, and everyone who sacrifices their body to grow a human being and then bring that human being into the world is super badass.

That's why a Facebook post from a new dad describing the awe he felt watching his wife give birth has gone viral. Witnessing the strength and stamina of a birthing woman is enough to make anyone feel awed, but William Trice Battle's poetic description has got thousands of us all up in our feelings.

RELATED: We need to fundamentally reexamine how new moms are cared for after childbirth.

He wrote:

I honestly don't know how she did it. The pain was so intense, so overwhelming, that even I felt it. Everyone in the room felt it. Yet she pulled through. Her pain was gruesome. Her struggle seemed almost unbearable. I found myself gritting my teeth when she did, tensing my entire body when her contractions hit, and shedding tears along with her. All while realizing that I was merely a passenger, never to truly understand the excruciating pain she was experiencing.

She gave her labor every ounce of life and energy she had in her. And then gave a little bit more. And through it all, at the end of it she selflessly gave all of us a glimpse into what she has been enjoying exclusively to herself for the past 9 months. We all finally get to love and hold the boy that she sacrificed her body, comfort, energy, and self for. My son is an absolute miracle. Babies are absolute miracles. But to me, the greater miracle is his mother, who has shown me what selfless sacrifice really is. What love really is.

My wife is the real miracle.

"My wife is the real miracle." Absolutely beautiful, Mr. Battle. Here's to the birthers of babies who go through immense self-sacrifice to keep the human race going.

Many moms lament how long it takes to "get their bodies back" after giving birth, and most of us find it more of a distant wish than a doable reality. Who knew that building a human practically from scratch and then extracting it from your body would take its toll?

However, one mama has turned that notion on its head completely. After winning her 12th World Championship gold medal in the mixed-gender 4x400m relay, runner Allyson Felix has beaten the gold medal count record she co-held with Usain Bolt. But the real kicker? She did it just 10 months after giving birth to a premature baby via emergency c-section.


There are not enough superlatives to describe how freaking badass this is.

RELATED: 3 moms recorded their first weeks home with a newborn. It got real — real quick.

During her pregnancy, Felix developed severe preeclampsia (also known as toxemia), a condition marked by excessively high blood pressure and a posing a host of dangers for both mom and baby. According to NBC Sports, Felix ended up delivering her daughter Camryn via c-section on November 28, 2018, at 32 weeks. Born at 3 pounds, 7 ounces, Camryn then spent 29 days in the NICU.

So not only did this 33-year-old Olympic champion recover from a complicated pregnancy and birth and go through the difficulties of having a baby in intensive care, she got herself in good enough shape to break a world record in her sport less than a year later. Unreal.

All the standing ovations for this mama.

On a related note, Felix was part of a group of female athletes who went to battle over their sponsorship negotiations with Nike after becoming pregnant. Felix wrote in a NY Times op-ed in May that the company had wanted to pay her less after she became pregnant. She wrote:

Despite all my victories, Nike wanted to pay me 70 percent less than before. If that's what they think I'm worth now, I accept that.

What I'm not willing to accept is the enduring status quo around maternity. I asked Nike to contractually guarantee that I wouldn't be punished if I didn't perform at my best in the months surrounding childbirth. I wanted to set a new standard. If I, one of Nike's most widely marketed athletes, couldn't secure these protections, who could?

Nike declined. We've been at a standstill ever since.

Felix ended up dropping her Nike deal and signed with Athleta in July. Nike's loss, Athleta's gain. After fierce backlash over the issue, Nike announced in August that it had changed its policy so that female athletes would not "adversely impacted financially for pregnancy" for 18 months—six months longer than its previous policy.

RELATED: Sweden's parental leave laws have revolutionized the lives of moms.

While Felix's performance 10 months after giving birth is remarkable, it also shouldn't be the expected standard. Felix said she "felt pressure to return to form as soon as possible" after her daughter was born, despite the complications in her pregnancy and birth.

Just the act of growing and delivering a baby is a physical feat that deserves praise and admiration. A study on the limits human endurance found that pregnancy demands the same energy levels as an ultramarathon. Seriously.

The truth is that all moms are amazing, whether or not they are smashing gold medal records 10 months after giving birth. And that undeniable truth is what makes Allyson Felix breaking her and Usain Bolt's record all the more impressive.

When I was pregnant with my first baby, I didn't understand why people talked about the newborn period being so hard.

I mean, it's not like newborn babies are crawling around getting into things or arguing with you about which color cup they want. They eat, they sleep, and they poop. How hard could it be?

Then I had my first baby — and the world turned upside down.


Photo by Philippe Huguen/Getty Images.

Having a newborn is so much more than just snuggling with your sweet-smelling infant. There's the childbirth recovery, the hormone surges, the engorged breasts leaking all over the place, the crying (yours and the baby's), and the sleep deprivation — OMG, the sleep deprivation. It's used as a form of torture for a reason.

There's also the weighty realization that this tiny person's life is literally in your hands, and you have no real idea what you're doing. It's all-consuming.

Three moms recorded their first weeks home with their newborns — and nothing was held back.

Cortney, Melissa, and Dorian all had babies this year. Melissa had her second child (she also had a toddler at the time), and Cortney and Dorian were first-time moms. They each used home security cameras to candidly document the first few postpartum weeks and shared a bit about what life has been like with a newborn.

One mom slowly eased her just-gave-birth body onto the couch and said, "Aw, f*ck." Yep. I remember that feeling. And the sound of those newborn cries is enough to make any mom's gut clench with feeling.

Of course, there is an indescribable beauty and magic to newborn babies. If someone could figure out how to bottle that baby-head smell, they'd be billionaires. There's nothing softer or silkier than baby skin, and sometimes all you want to do is just sit and stare at their perfect faces.

But that's only a fraction of the story in those early weeks.

These moms shared what surprised them about having a newborn, and it's a powerful reminder of how hard it really can be.

"Having a newborn is not what I expected," Cortney tells me. "I knew it would be tiring, but I didn't realize how exhausted I would be. It's literally a 24/7 job with no breaks."

Dorian reiterates how exhausting that period can be. "The main thing that surprised me was how serious exhaustion could be," she says. "Especially in the first two weeks. It felt like sheer willpower to put one foot in front of the other and keep going because I was so tired."

Image via Canary/YouTube.

Sleep deprivation is no joke, I'm telling you. And when you add "recovering from childbirth" to the mix, it's a miracle new moms function at all.

"I wish people understood how difficult it is," Melissa says. "Being pregnant, giving birth, and the aftermath is a lot. Not only do you have to figure out how to meet the needs of a baby, but you feel worn out."

New moms need support, and that starts with acknowledging how hard they're working and how valuable that work is.

Did you know that the U.S. is the only developed nation that doesn't guarantee paid maternity leave for new moms? The only one. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Meanwhile, 36 nations offer at least a year of paid leave for parents, and dozens more offer, at minimum, 14 weeks.

If we want our citizenry to be healthy and productive, we need to acknowledge that new mothers need time to recover from childbirth, tend to the needs of their babies, and adjust to a huge life change. New motherhood is hard — awesome and amazing, but hard. Let's all do what we can to support new moms as they adjust to their unexpectedly upside-down worlds.