Babies

This new ward is babies, babies babies! I went to a new member RS meeting tonight and I was the only person there who hadn't had a baby. It seems like all the time I'm in conversations where we say how peer pressure isn't really an issue anymore, but if anything, it seems much stronger.
I'm in a ward with tiny skinny women who have babies and bounce back into their skinny mini shapes instantly and who eat whatever they want and seem to do just fine. Over and over we hear that this is the most noble of lifestyles. We talked in church today about how everywhere motherhood is being attacked, devalued, debased, but it goes the other way, too. As a woman in the church pursuing higher education, there are many times where I feel like what I'm doing is wrong--or is at least perceived as wrong. I am selfishly putting off having children, my duty, in order to pursue a lucrative career for my own fulfillment. All the male lds married students in law school have kids already or on the way. The women lds law students are mostly unmarried. I feel like I don't fit and it goes in with my being overweight. I weigh more than most of the pregnant ladies in our ward, for crying out loud!

I like to hang out with the ladies, but after a night like this, where everybody's talking about kids and pregnancy and babies, I come home filled with self-doubt and questions. Where does a career fit into motherhood? Is it selfish to want both? If I have a child now, would it just be to fit in or because I'm truly ready? Is there even such a thing as truly ready? Should I lose all the weight I want to lose before getting pregnant? Won't that just put me on the fat-track again? I feel like I'm being forced to choose between two parts of me that both need to be fulfilled: my desire to be nurturing and to have children of my own is compromised by law school, but my desire to have feel fulfillment through a successful career seems as though it could be derailed by having kids.

In my mind I feel it's possible to have both--I probably wouldn't work full-time, but I would be working and I could also be there for my children. But sometimes I feel like motherhood is an all-or-nothing commitment. If you are going to be a mother you MUST be home at all times. I feel like there's something wrong with me for wanting both. I feel like there's something wrong with me for being concerned about maintaining my weight loss and having kids. Despite a decrease in weight this week, I just feel uncomfortable in my own skin this week. I'll try to get over it...