The Baby Chase - Part II

One of my best friends called me last night to tell me that she's pregnant. (Congrats, M! Love you!) We spent almost 2 hours on the phone catching up and talking about babies and motherhood. Hopefully, I didn't overwhelm poor M, but these flood gates opened and I just couldn't stop talking. I really try hard not to bore my childless friends to death with kid and baby talk. So all this stuff we'd never talked about was suddenly fair game!

After we'd been on the phone about an hour, M and I started discussing how each of us had decided it was time to have children. M and her husband J had been adamant for a long time that they weren't going to have kids. T and I had been nearly as adamant. In fact, last night M reminded me of the list T and I once started - 101 reasons not to have kids. Every time we saw a toddler in the throws of a tantrum in Target, we'd turn to one another and say "231," or whatever number we were up to. What had started out as 101 reasons, ballooned up to almost 600 before we stopped keeping track.

It's not as if T and I had never discussed children before. We had. Many times. We weren't really adamant that we didn't want children either. We just knew that we didn't want them now.

When we got married, T was pretty clear that he wanted children eventually. I was on the fence, but told him I could be convinced eventually. As long as he didn't immediately expect me to warp into Susie homemaker and begin darning his socks. We decided we'd discuss it when he hit 30. When T did hit 30, it was the Summer before my last year of law school. We put off the discussion. But that fall, something unexpected happened.

I got pregnant. Equally unexpected was my reaction when I saw those 2 lines on the pregnancy test. I expected to cry, feel overwhelmed and basically freaked out. But as I told T the news, I realized I was smiling through my tears.

The pregnancy did not end well. But T and I weren't ready yet anyway, we told ourselves. If anything, that unexpected and ill timed pregnancy made something very clear for both of us. We did want children. Despite our protestations to family and friends, T and I both very much wanted children.

Still, I can't remember exactly when my biological clock started ticking. I think it was a gradual progression. When my college roommate had a baby and I saw the pictures of her infant I thought I heard a soft "tick tock." I immediately clamped my mind shut and went on with the business of living and making money.

Then I heard that my sister-in-law and brother-in-law were expecting a baby. This time the "tick tock" was unmistakable. But whenever I found myself day dreaming about babies, I began singing to myself, humming, or doing anything I could to redirect my thoughts. It's a great way to stave off the inevitable cognitive dissonance.

My best friend from high school announced she was pregnant.

"Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock."

It was too loud to ignore this time.

So I brought up the subject with T.

T and I have very different decision making processes. I make decisions pretty quickly and once I've settled on a solution, it's hard to change my mind. T, on the other hand, likes to mull things over. I call it procrastination, but he calls it "weighing his options."

I told T I wanted a baby.

T said, "Let me think about it for a few months."

Pre-Hollis me, with my first baby, Sir Hillary

To be continued....

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I've decided to keep harassing Wil Wheaton until he comments on my blog. If you have a Typepad account, feel free to go over to Wil's blog and pimp me out tell him how nice I am and how he should acknowledge my existence and make my year. I'm not subtle, am I?