A Hypocrite for Wanting Babies?

So basically, I feel like a hypocrite. For years and years I thought, well in my mind I knew, that I didn’t want to have children. It just wasn’t for me. I watched my friends get married and I had all the conversations with them about babies and how excited they were and the whole time I sat there and said no thank you. And the whole time they always said the same thing to me: just wait. Or, you’ll see. Or, once you meet the right guy, you’ll change your mind.

This infuriated me! It always felt so smug and condescending. I did not want kids. Yes they were my friends but who were they to tell me I didn’t know my own mind?

And now, ugh, things have changed. I think I’ve found “the one,” (though I feel really silly using that term) and things are completely different. I don’t know how to explain it but everything I thought I wanted when it came to “settling down” with a family has changed. I DO want kids. The idea of starting a family with him makes me unbelievably happy. I see him around children and I just smile. And this is totally not like me. And it isn’t as though this is my first serious boyfriend or anything either. I had a couple before and almost got married once. I saw them around children and never got this same tingle. Never the same feeling. The plan was always no kids with those other guys.

I know when I’ve talked to my mother about kids she said basically the same thing. She never wanted children until she met my father. Then she realized what a great dad he would be and how happy it made her to think of him in that way and ta da! So maybe it’s just one of those things where it’s like mother, like daughter. It just takes having a great man in our lives for us to realize our motherly instincts. But I still feel like I’m betraying a part of my former self in some way.

The whole thing makes me very conflicted. As I said before I feel like a hypocrite because for so many years this is not what I wanted. I also don’t want all my friends to smugly do the “I told you so” thing. But, as a feminist, am I not allowed to have this change of heart? Does it make me less of a feminist to suddenly want this life and go back on what I said in the past? Especially if it’s because I finally “met the right guy?”