The Po Show

Ambivalence

I feel like I might be pregnant.

I'm almost certainly not, since there is the matter of Ross' vasectomy four years ago. Yeah, I know they sometimes reverse themselves, but it's very highly unlikely.

Still, my skin broke out last week in the most zits I've had at one time in years. I've been absolutely hormonally sodden for over a week. I want to cry at the drop of a hat. I bawled like a, well, baby, watching that footage of the baby in Brazil in a plastic bag being fished out of a lake. Okay, I'll give myself that one, but there have been at least a dozen episodes in which something I heard on the radio or something I thought about has made me choke and tear up. Now that's NOT normal for me. I've also been snacking uncontrollably, which is also not at all normal.

Plus, I've got the feeling. I've got that sort of warm internal (for want of a better word) glow. That special feeling that makes you want to hug your arms around yourself, and grin, and radiate.

I really think it's psychosomatic though, which has me feeling ambivalent. I know I really want a baby. But what are my real reasons? I know it's in our best interests as a family for us not to have another baby. But what are "best interests" anyway?

Well, first of all (I seem to be doing the cons first here), it's in our best interests not to have an already overwhelmed and frazzled mommy get even more overwhelmed and frazzled. Being the solo parent for most of the hours in the day, there never seems to be enough of me to go around as it is. The plan has been that I am going back to work ("back" being a sort of strange term here, since I'm hardly going back to the place I used to work, and the what and where of this hypothetical work is way up in the air) next year when Tessa starts kindy. I've been looking forward to this for so long, to get back into an adult environment again and try to get some semblance of my former intellect back.

Another con: Ross really doesn't want another baby. He loves ours, and he's a great dad, but he is done with the time consumption babies require. Our kids are so super high needs that this is understandable. Plus, he's already, in the last year and a half, fallen so far out of the loop regarding their everyday lives and the minutiae of their needs (being gone 13 hours a day does that). He doesn't want to fragment the kid time he has available even more.

I have to examine my own desire for a baby too. Why does the desire fill my heart to bursting? Why do these "symptoms" fill me with hope that it might be true?

I realize that the fact that we found out a few weeks ago that Ross' SIL is pregnant is definitely a factor in my ambivalent freak out (that's a WHOLE other story. This is Ross' only brother and his wife, whom we used to hang out with a lot, but who totally cut us out after we had Matthew. They didn't come see Tessa till she was over a month old, and the SIL got all uncomfortable and declined when I asked if she wanted to hold her. We honestly didn't think they'd ever have kids. And then Ross' brother tells him about their pregnancy in an email with the subject line "College funds needed." Anyway.)

Bottom line, I love babies. I was a good baby mom. I was really good at it. Perhaps I am at this weird crossroads now, looking 40 in the face, and I know I have to start reinventing myself. Well hell, that sounds like a lot of work, so wouldn't having a baby be a great way to put that off another six years? But that's just not a good reason to have another baby. In fact it's a pretty shitty reason.

Um, were there pros? It's all so hypothetical anyway, since I can't be pregnant and couldn't get pregnant unless Ross had his vasectomy reversed and he's not going to want to do that. Plus with my fertility history, getting pregnant at 40 would be questionable at best.

I guess the pro would be that despite all the reasons we shouldn't have another baby, I am insanely happy at the thought that I *might* (with some .0000000000000001% chance) be pregnant now. It's genuine, that feeling. I believe in it. And though I'm ambivalent, I can't deny it. I would love another baby in my arms. I can see Matthew and Tessa with a new baby sibling to love, and they would be thrilled, and I would be thrilled to see their happiness.

Negative feelings? They sometimes reverse themselves, just like vasectomies.