Timing

Originally I thought we'd go for three years apart. But that would have meant getting pregnant when I hadn't even gotten my period back yet. Not ready!

For a while I was stuck on spring as the only legitimate time to have a baby. I was born in March, my mom was born in March, my son was born in March. Babies are supposed to come in the springtime. Renewal and all that.

But there are a lot of people walking around this earth who came out of their mother's wombs at other times of the year, hot and cold instead of just on the border the way I like it. There are, after all, 11 other months and (since I considered April and May as runners-up), three other seasons.

Shooting for an even four years apart was not an option because we were in the middle of a move. The anniversary of my first conception fell on the 50th anniversary party of my parents. We started tearing down walls and picking paint the next day. I was in no position to take care of myself, let alone my son and a zygote, to boot.

Then the hot summer with no preschool dragged on. I signed the boy up for two weeks of tot camp and thought to myself (and myself only): it would suck to have a baby in the middle of the summer.

One day I took a walk with a friend who was thinking about the possibility of #3. She'd done the math, too, and she wasn't shy. "No, we're not trying yet. That would ruin the whole summer. You could never go to the pool. I'd go crazy."

I agreed, but less because of a fondness for chlorine and more about the travel we'd miss. After the fast party weekend in Michigan, we did only a short trip to Maine late this summer because of the move. I want to spend a week there in 2010, dammit.

Vacation notwithstanding, I shuddered at the idea of having a would-be-four-year-old out of school and it possibly being so thick with steam outside that we'd crank up the A/C and run around the couch all afternoon. Seriously, tot camp only goes until noon. The sun is up until 9. Those are some awfully long days even without a baby trying to figure out how to nurse against your sweaty skin.

So, I was not going to try in October to yield a July offspring (even if that might be better later for school cutoff age considerations). I waited to give myself a month of summer before a due date, but I also figured it was more likely that we would have to shoot a few rounds of blanks before seeing my uterus to a Presto!

So November was the first shot. As I've already written, I did not calculate correctly to figure out that a last menstrual period of October 27 would put me due at the very beginning of August. Damn that acupuncturist for successfully making my cycles shorter!

Today I asked a woman at my son's school if she her daughter was her only child. "I'm pregnant right now!" she chirped. Due in June. Already telling and out there. Really a blip in time, this two months between the possible births of our potential babies. Summer babies, one and all.

But right now, when nothing is certain and I wake every morning wondering if my temperature will still be raised (and I will probably take my fourth pregnancy test in another three days if I don't start to feel any queasiness), that two months is like a gulf.