You need to make plans for your future, so plan your own future.

There has been, for some reason (or more likely an unfortunate accumulation of reasons) a trend over the past several decades for parents to do the work of parenting in the isolation of their own homes - and not only that, this trend has overlapped with the other trend of much deeper parent involvement in raising kids. That you also represent trend No. 3, more people raising kids solo, has only exacerbated a close-to-no-win situation.

If you're not sure what you want, then hold back from making plans or responding to invitations until you have a chance to think about it.

One way to make tough decisions is to take incremental steps that don't commit you to anything yet.

Apparently you have ample proof from experience that you're not going to stop world evil by debating your in-laws into submission, so it's okay to choose not to try.

I think we'd all hate to be the one who gets declared undateable by one's entire grad-school population based on a couple of told and retold stories.

I realize that people fly with small children all the time, and that babies are easier in some ways because all they do is sit/lie around anyway, but damn it's hard to keep a baby comfortable on any flight, much less a long one, particularly amid the looks of horror they will get from fellow passengers as it dawns on them that their 10- to 13-hour flight might come with a soundtrack of screaming baby.