Where I'm At

Ahhh, the weekend is here! The plan this morning was to sleep in, but Piper was on one of her puking sprees. After I was awoken the third time by the sound of kitty heaves coming from somewhere near my feet, I scrapped the sleeping thing! So, after a bagel and a cup of coffee, I’m back where I spend a disgusting amount of time these days - in front of the computer.

What on earth keeps me attached to this machine so many hours a week? Let’s see - there’s Ghost Hunters on You Tube, there is Spider Solitaire (which is even better when played during Ghost Hunters, since very little actually happens on that show), there is Facebook, there is the blog world, there is Google news, and, I’ll admit it, there are the many websites designed to give hope (realistically and not-so realistically) to women who find themselves consumed by the desire to become a mom.

Most of the women on these sites face the double stigmas of being both childless and objects of the degrading stereotypes about women and their "biological clocks". I’ve always felt kinda sorry for them, in the tepid way you feel sorry for someone you don’t really relate to and can congratulate yourself for bearing little resemblance to. I even managed to get pregnant without ever having to join in on one of the indelicate discussions that goes on in these TTC forums.

But that was before. I’m no longer pregnant, and every month there is an escalating urgency to getting pregnant, which I am having a hard time talking myself down from. If you are thinking right now, “poor Ross,” you are right! But it’s like this mysterious mandate (and please, nobody say biological clock or I’ll kick you!) and I feel overwhelmed by it. One of the things about these sites is that you see a picture of where you could end up - superstitions and crazy diets and unsavory mail order products - and it scares me.

Oh well. This is life. Suddenly we look around and find that, without a lot of forethought or intention, we’ve started off on a new path. I accept that this is my journey right now, and, as embarrassing as it may be, it includes eager attention to minute bodily change, fistfuls of home pregnancy tests, and pathetic Google searches like “negative pregnancy test but still pregnant?”