Writers get all kinds of advice, helpful things to muse upon, I guess. My favourite is to write the truest you can, and I’ve found writing that follows that acutely is usually the best. Not cognizant of reaction, not writing for an audience, just to “get real” with yourself (imagined Dr Phil overseeing the process or not) and pen it.
I usually do this, even if it’s totally soul-baring and puts me in a vulnerable position. I won’t spew verbal diarrhea about everything I think, especially not things about other people because I don’t think that’s being “honest’, I think that’s being catty and gossip-y. I also don’t go too much into what I think abut stories I cover as a reporter because it’s possible the newspaper’s readers might read what I write in my blog and infer some kind of bias. And I am all about keeping my job.
But there’s something I haven’t written about, even though it’s been at the forefront of my mind for a while now. It occupies my planning, my future goals, my day-to-day thoughts and musings. It’s something that I think if I say it, it won’t possibly come true, like I’d be jinxing it or something. Truth is, I’m scared if I say it out loud it can become one of those things I often discuss but never actually get around to doing, like horseback riding.
I really want to have a baby.
Those baby-fever thoughts have danced in my head since I was a 15-year-old girl watching TLC’s Baby Story when I was home sick from school, and not just because it was the only thing on TV. It’s gone from knowing I want to someday be a mother to a need, a desire an “I would give up almost anything” ultimatum I throw out to the universe daily.
Now, this is a want I share with the husband, but I am only speaking on behalf of myself in this forum. See? There I go getting all cognizant of my audience. Write what’s true, write what’s true.
I have so much love ready to give it almost barfs out of me. My poor kitten and puppy get smothered wit it all day long. I want so badly to take care of a little person, reflect every day on his or her life’s possibilities and coo about the sanctity of innocence.
And it’s a process. Irresponsible teens might get knocked up on a daily basis, but it turns out it takes a little more than a lack of planning, naiveté and alcohol to cook up a fetus.
People invite us to go on trips and sign up for races and I agree with great enthusiasm, hoping they can’t see my internal hesitation. And if they can see it, I hope they aren’t hurt. It’s just that in my head, the dialogue is asking ‘But what if I’m pregnant then??’
People of course feel free to ask me all the time when we’re going to have kids, because it seems that this is a natural and obligatory conversation to have with a newlywed. I want to scream out “NOW!!!” but of course, I say that it’ll happen when it happens, cautioning myself more than I am my conversational partner that “it can take awhile, who knows?”
I really hope I’m not one of those cases that takes years and years and has to go to special doctors and pay a bajillion dollars for a one in a thousand odds. That is my biggest fear right now. Because if I have this much to give and this much enthusiasm, then I can just see how frustration will turn into sadness and into loneliness and hopelessness and when I’m living in a super small town in the arctic, that can’t be a recipe for good times.
That said, there are times when I look over at the husband and feel supremely satisfied and comforted, like if it were just the two of us forever that might not be so bad. But then the whiny me voice in my head goes, “C’mon! You know that a crazy insane house full of running, giggling kiddies is exactly what you want.” And I go “yeah, you’re right.” And meanwhile the husband looks at the blank stare on my face while this conversation plays out between me and myself in my head and asks what I’m thinking and I just hug him and say, I just want a babyyyyyyyy”
I don’t know how long it will take, I don’t know what the circumstances will be, I just know I’ve got my heart set on something and I hope the universe doesn’t make this too difficult a feat for me to attain.
Here’s hoping.

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