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.

Reflections on not yet knowing

So I knew it was a possibility. Of course I did. I was clear about being fertile when I said, after my mother-in-law left from her weekend visit, "I'm not convinced about this or about our relationship, but if we're going to try, this is the time." So we did. Three times that week (and none since?).

I'd started to feel like someday I would look back at me being grumpy - complaining about the stress of moving, of my volunteer work, of trying to work for pay - and look back and say, "But you were together and relatively mostly happy, and you wanted a sibling for your son. Why didn't you just try before your ovaries got crusty?"

I disagree with my sister-in-law, who once said, "But don't you think there's never a good time to have a baby? Do you seriously think you would have had a kid if you knew then what you know now?" Of course I would. I don't think life sucks that bad. I knew parenthood was a challenge. I've watched my sisters have and start raising six kids. This is not a complete surprise.

I just didn't want to do it depleted of energy, tired, stressed out and seriously questioning my marriage. But I think seriously questioning my marriage was in fact a way to push off this thing I worried I'd fail at -- conceiving, growing a healthy baby, and, dun-dun-duhn... being able to have a VBAC (preferably at home - an HBAC).

So I figured we should give it a shot. Maybe it will take a long time. We'd waited until we were past a busy October, which meant not having an on-time baby in the middle of the summer (something I kind of wanted to avoid - push it closer to fall so we can still go on trips). I'd done a decent bit of detox. I was eating pretty healthy and not facing a major big deadline of any kind. My son was in school three days a week -- still not enough time, but not bad.

It did occur to me that we'd given in a good shot. And when I got an email noting that BlogHer was in early August, I gasped. "What a bummer to miss that by a few weeks," I worried if by some chance we'd gotten pregnant.

Of course I hadn't yet done the math and thought the conference would be after my due date. "Maybe I could go up there and if I went into labor, drive the hour to my sister's house and deliver there like I saw her do 12 years ago. Maybe I'd have a better chance of getting my own head out of the way if I stayed busy until the very end," I thought.

I told my husband last night about the BlogHer date, and he gave a sympathetic, "Aww..." like he actually got why I wanted to go to this thing and how crazy it would be if we'd actually gotten me seriously knocked up for the long haul such that I couldn't go). That reaction is the best thing to come of this yet!

It also did occur to me about 7-9 days after ovulation when someone at a meeting I was leading told me I looked great, that I was glowing. I kinda thought so, to tell the truth. For one thing, I felt warm. But I also felt good about what I was doing. I'd had another event the previous night at my house that was great, too. I felt pretty in the zone, working toward establishing a career & niche I felt proud of.

The next Monday I got surprisingly busy with a writing project and ate chocolate and drank decaf. I'm normally a pretty healthy mama, but I do make my exceptions when the cortisol is already flying.

I still managed to eat a full healthy lunch, but it was hurried and while on the phone. It was a nutty day, and I was almost 10 minutes late to pick up my son at school.

That night, I had monkey mind, but I wanted to sleep. So I imagined tucking in all my thoughts -- emails to reply to, work to edit, work to write, cleaning to do for Thanksgiving guests, food to purchase. They each got a pillow and blanket, and I told them to take a rest.

And then we all did.

Until the next morning, when I ushered my manic son out of the bedroom so my husband could sleep a while longer and I could pee on a stick without an adult audience.

And the rest is history.