Keep it Coming

I was in such a hurry this morning I started an ovulation test and then between getting ready for work, finding the maintenance men to stop the leak in the bathroom, and trying to fight through the dump trucks taking up space on the road to work, I forgot to read the result. By the time I called my husband to read it, it was blank. Oh, well I thought, better get on with the day. Sorry or later I'll find out if this is the month. It turned out to be sooner.

In the midst of a morning that continued coming unglued even after I arrived at the office, yes, you guessed it, Aunt Flow came calling as she has every month since I was eleven. I shouldn't complain since it's only month four that I've been on the pill and we have been 'trying.'

This is such an ironic phrase that I can't fathom because for so much of my life - all of it since that Flow's first visit actually - I've been doing the opposite. Disciplining myself (very badly) as a single not to have sex to avoid getting pregnant and now, trying to have as much as we can so that we will.

I shouldn't complain because one of the first short stories I wrote, "Baby" was about a friend's struggle with infertility. That went on for six years; she now has two boys. The average friend seems to take about a year.

Since I was so adamantly not wanting to have a baby up until now I think this period of uncertainty is God's way of making me realize why I do want it. The past few months I've felt a slight hole in my life: I see now we have room for another person. Whereas I used to give help, love, affection, assistance to anyone who wanted it, I'm now hording all of that energy to myself.

What better place to put all this energy than in a baby?

As my husband said when I called him later, "Guess we'll have to keep it coming."

My friend, who is now pregnant with her second, said, "It gets exhausting."

I imagined that in my story "Baby" from what my friend was telling me.

I hope I don't have to find out just how much so in person.