The Miracle of Life: To Have a Child or Not

By Tom Payyappilly

In this book, Tom narrates his journey during the last quarter century from being a young man who did not want children to being an accomplished Dad, leading a fulfilling life with his family. He explains the reasons why he was not in favor of having children in the first place and how his views gradually changed over time and he started enjoying his role as a father. The point he makes is that it is possible for people to change their views over time and if it is a long enough period of time like 25 years in his case, a person’s views may be diametrically opposite what he held earlier.
Although this book has little to do with politics and in spite of the fact that Tom holds extremely liberal views on the vast majority of hot, contentious, social issues, when it comes to having a baby, he now holds the position that it is better to go ahead and have the baby. He hopes this book will be able to convince parents who are on the fence about whether to have a baby or not as well as mothers who are already pregnant and torn about the decision of keeping the baby or not. Independent of all that, it is good family reading. Most important, this book was written for his daughter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tom Payyappilly
• Release date: Jul 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005642648

Tom Payyappilly

Tom Payyappilly is a computer engineer who has worked in the software industry for over two decades. He currently lives in California, USA, and works for a large semiconductor company. He has been granted more than 100 patents worldwide in the telecommunications field. He writes part-time on world issues, philosophy and other matters of interest to him.

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The Miracle of Life: To have a Child or Not

Ajith Tom Payyappilly

Published by Ajith Tom Payyappilly

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2020 Ajith Tom Payyappilly

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedicated to my daughter

Table of Contents

Chapter1: Introduction

Chapter2: 1997-2000: The Skeptic – Youth

Chapter3: 2001-2004: The Agnostic – Early Middle Age

Chapter4: 2005: The year of Reckoning

Chapter5: 2006: The Home Stretch

Chapter6: D-Day:2006 and the first year

Chapter7: 2007-2011: The years before school

Chapter8: 2011-2012: Kindergarten

Chapter9: 2013-2018: Elementary School years

Chapter10: Conclusion-The Believer

About the Author

About this Book

Chapter1: Introduction

Today, a bright sunny day in mid-May 2020, is my daughter Teresa’s fourteenth birthday. Since most of the world is locked down due to the pandemic and California has not yet lifted its restrictions, she did not have a birthday party. This is the first time in fourteen years we have not invited either her friends or our friends or relatives over to celebrate her birthday. My wife baked a simple cake, Teresa blew a candle and the three of us just celebrated on our own with a Zoom video call with her cousins across the world in San Jose Bay Area, New York, Washington D.C, India and China. I used the opportunity of spending time with family to narrate to my daughter the story of her birth and why I consider her a miracle child and more broadly, the miracle of life itself.

At the time I got married, almost 24 years ago, I was a deep skeptic of the whole concept of having a child. Over the years, I came to change my views. This book describes that journey. My goal in writing this book is to help couples who maybe on the fence right now about whether to have a child or not, and for women who are already pregnant to make a decision on whether to proceed with the pregnancy or not. The idea of writing a book was triggered by two recent conversations I had. The second was what I mentioned above, when I explained the circumstances of my daughter’s birth to her on her birthday.

The first was about a month or two ago, when I had a long discussion with a young lady, a college student, who happens to be a good friend of mine, in-spite-of there being a rather big age difference between us. She is in her mid-twenties. One day, she told me she intends to never have children. I cannot remember what exactly the catalyst for this profound statement was. Right now, she does not even have a steady boyfriend, leave alone being married and settled down. So, there was no urgency to make such a momentous decision. I brushed her off by saying there is plenty of time to think about this topic and she may change her mind in future. But she insisted on continuing the conversation and wanted to know my views. So, I spent a length of time explaining my opinion to her. I remarked that maybe I should write a book. Then I forgot all about it until today when I had a similar conversation with my daughter, but with many more details. This time I decided to write the book while the points I made are fresh in my memory.

Please note that by no means am I trying to make any moral judgements. It is perfectly acceptable for a person to read my book, understand all my points and continue to stick to his or her decision to not have a child. That is what my good friend did; at least for the time being. Not sure if she will change her mind in future. She did say her mind is more open now after listening to what I had to say. People are different, and it is natural for people to have different views on this important matter. Also, the last thing I want to do is tip the balance too soon for a person who really is not sure, and afterwards, the person regrets having a baby. There is nothing worse for a child than being unwanted and unloved. So, I would certainly like to avoid that at all costs. All I am doing is describe my own journey, so people understand both points of view, and realize that it is possible for a person to have a diametric change of mind over the course of their life, before it becomes too late biologically. There is no moral or religious point to be made in this book.

Chapter2: 1997-2000: The Skeptic-Youth

I got married in 1997 at the age of twenty-five, the same age as my wife. At the time, I was deeply opposed to having a child. I know the experts and marriage counselors always advice couples to resolve big questions such as this before deciding to spend the rest of your life with someone and getting married. But truth be told, my wife and I had not figured out most things when we decided to get married. We were the proverbial young and naïve couple, who thought we could sort out everything later. But that is the subject of another book, some other time. For this one, I will just stick to the baby part. Both my wife and I are of Asian-Indian origin. So, it was a bit strange that we were even having this debate. For our generation (Gen-X), it was considered the natural progression of life to get married in our mid-to-late twenties and soon after, a couple would just have a baby. It was like America or Europe in the 1950s. Unlike Western cultures of the 1990s, where the question of whether to have a baby is something to be carefully considered and in some cases, a deal-breaker for marriages, in Indian culture of our time in the 1990s, it just was not.

Yet, I was seriously debating this very thing in my mind. For one thing, my childhood was not spent in India. I grew up in the Middle East, where I was exposed to Western and other cultures a lot. So, I used to challenge a lot of conventions that traditional Asian-Indians would have just blindly followed. Another reason was that, soon after our wedding, we immigrated to the United States. So, I was trying to think the way an American would in this matter. I had a few reasons for being opposed to having a baby:

The first and primary reason was psychological. During those days, I was going through a stressful phase of my life. My mom had been battling cancer for six years. The four years I spent during college was not a fun period for me. The college was in my hometown in India, so I used to live at home, rather than on the campus. My Dad was away in the Middle East for his job. So, a lot of responsibilities of running the household fell on my mom and me. My main memory of college was not about studies or parties or any of the normal activities’ kids do when they are in college. It was about accompanying my mom to the cancer hospital for various surgeries, radiation, and other treatments. Seeing her struggle, my joy of life had gone. I used to question why human beings are born in the world to suffer like this. Although I was a Roman Catholic, the Buddhist religion seemed to make a lot of sense that all life is suffering and the goal of life should be to gain enough knowledge and attain salvation in the end so that one can escape the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. So, I figured, why not prevent this problem by not having a child in the first place. I can spare him or her the suffering he or she is sure to endure if born into this world!

The second reason was I did not have particularly happy memories of my early childhood. When I was very little, all through the early years of elementary school until around third grade, I was a sickly child. I kept falling sick with various common childhood ailments. In those days (mid to late 1970s), kids were not given vaccinations for mumps, measles, or chickenpox. As a result, I got all three of those ailments when I was in second grade. In addition, my teeth were bad, I used to constantly require root canals, fillings for cavities and other problems with teeth. To top it all, I used to get the flu every winter. In those days, there was no flu shot where I grew up. Up to third grade, my attendance in school was barely above 60%. The only reason I used to get through to the next grade was because of my mom’s superhuman efforts to make me a studious boy and overcome the hurdles caused by health problems in academics by making me study extra hard. This of course caused even more stress to an already sick child. By the time I got to fifth grade, my health had improved, and I became a ‘normal kid’. My memories of middle and high school are therefore much happier. Nevertheless, I could not forget my early tough years, and this was another reason I wanted to spare my child from having a similar tough early childhood.

My third reason used to drive my wife nuts. She thought she was married to a crazy person! I told her in my opinion, the world is an evil place and an innocent child must lose his or her innocence and become shrewd and ‘street-smart’ to survive in this world. Being a kind, and nice person would only lead to one getting exploited by unscrupulous people in this world. This viewpoint of mine was shaped by a few bitter experiences and I was still scarred by them. But that is also the subject of another book. My wife correctly pointed out that there is a difference between being nice and being naive.

The above three reasons were deeply personal reasons. But there was one more reason which other people can relate to. It was economical. We were young and poor. When we landed in the United States for the first time, a few days after our wedding reception, we had around $2500 in cash. That was it. Out of that, $900 went into the security deposit for our rental apartment, another $900 went as the first month’s rent (housing in Southern California was expensive!), and that left $600 for all other expenses. We lived the first couple of months without any furniture or a TV in our apartment. We slept in sleeping bags and led a frugal life. I did have a job as an entry level engineer, and six months after we arrived in the U.S., my wife also secured a job.