This happens every so often, and I’m never sure what starts it. Sometimes it’s seeing a friend with a baby… sometimes it’s seeing a mother with a young child on the street… sometimes it’s nothing I can put my finger on. This is one of the latter.

It’s almost a physical feeling, an ache in my heart, a twist in my stomach. It creeps through my body like a bad case of the flu, leaving me randomly weepy and distracted. The desire for a baby.

Tom tells me, “someday” but when the fever hits, someday feels the same as if he’d said “never”. Rational thought disappears and all I want is the feeling of a baby growing inside, a baby I can hold close… It’s not a feeling that’s easy to put into words. I know that Tom thinks we’re too young to get started, but my body tells me I’m 28 and more than ready. I have a steady job, so does he, we have a house, cars, dogs… isn’t it time yet?

Some people might blame the biological clock, but this feeling started in my early twenties, and there’s no way biology was telling me to ‘hurry up and shoot one out before it’s too late’ way back then. Some people might blame hormones, and there’s no doubt that probably plays a large part in this. But to me, it’s more than nature… and I’m not sure what.

Last night I dreamed that I had a baby; a boy. He looked about two months old, though he was a newborn in the dream. I was learning how to breast-feed him, and I remember how surprised I was that it didn’t hurt at all. I held him close and he smiled up at me as he drank. There was someone there watching, a woman but not a person I know. She was helping to teach me to nurse and she said I was doing it well, but needed a bit of fine-tuning. I played with the baby after I fed him, flying him through the air as he laughed. Though he was a newborn, he could hold his own head up. As the dream ended someone (maybe the woman?) told me that since I couldn’t have a baby yet, the baby I would have later came to visit me.

I told Tom about the dream, and he was quite unimpressed. I think he may have gone a bit pale. I told him I wasn’t about to start putting holes in the condoms or anything. He said he didn’t think that I would, but I’m not so sure. I saw the fear in his eyes. heh.

Sometimes I wish he was older than me, because maybe then he’d worry less. Other times I’m glas he’s as young as he is, because the baby fever tends to pass. And sometimes I’m glad that I only have myself to be responsible for, because sometimes even that’s too much. It’s one thing to make a mistake with my own life, it’s a whole ‘nother thing to mess up someone else’s. I know there are no perfect parents. I don’t expect mine to be. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be the first.

Sometimes I’m happy to just be where I’m at. But when baby fever hits, I have to just wait it out. And drink lots of fluids.

Posted on April 15th, 2004 by Kat
Filed under: General