Are you pregnant yet?

"Are you pregnant?" This was a question that the check-in desk attendant put to me and a friend as we were issued our boarding passes for a return flight yesterday.

"No, we're not," my friend said.

"Well, at least one of us might be," I countered. This is the truth; as I write I don't know if I am or not. And I don't know if I dare hope to be or not. So I feel nothing, trying not the read the signs of my body one way or another. Is it PMS? Or is the early signs of life growing inside me?

I spent the week with my friend, the young mother, as part of a panel presenting at an academic conference. My friend had the idea to return home early as she missed her one year old baby and husband. I had a lot of work to do and relished the idea of being home two days earlier than planned to recover from the week of being away. Of course I hoped my husbad and I might also spend a little time together over the weekend, knowing we had busy weeks ahead.

I enjoyed sharing a room and in general a good time with my friend on our trip despite the constant mentions of her baby, motherhood. She knew we were trying to conceive and had been one of the constant 'just checking in' inquirers over the past three years. I shared with her our experience thus far -- she herself had taken six months to get pregnant when first trying.

The week before leaving for a conference, I had a catch up with a college friend over the phone. She told me in detail that I really appreciated, about her own year journey with conception and her recent discovery that she had regularly had her period but not been ovulating.

"I spent most of my life trying not to get pregnant," she said in her charming North Carolina accent that I missed from our college days. "And now that it's okay, I can't to save my life."

We laughed at that and about this blog; about all the people around us that were 'popping them out' and our desire to maintain our careers, marriages, and the prospect of families.

Now I'm back home and oddly our very good friends have not officially invited us to their son's two year old birthday party tomorrow. They are pregnant with their second child and their first is like a nephew to us. We think of him at the airport on various trips around the world and were there the day after he was born. We've taken vacations with them and have another one coming up soon.

Did they not invite us because we don't have a child and this was a child's party? This seemed a strange but plausible explanation. Which leads me to the question: if we aren't able to have a baby for some reason -- and it's far too early to say yea or nay on this -- is this the future that awaits us? Awkwardness as people prattle on about their infant children; isolation from those events that invovled young families?

Normally I think women feel spurts of jealousy when they see others with husbands or babies that they want to have for their own. But this week I felt neither, just a mild curiosity about observing my own lack of reaction from afar, like an out of body experience. I conditioned myself to life the life I wanted; I didn't want to be a mother of three at twenty like my mother or twenty three like my sister.

I've always said I would love to adopt and stand by that as we head into our fifth month of 'trying.' This week we should know for sure either way what is happening. If not, the plan is to be tested when we are home for the holidays. What a journey bringing a life into the world is.