I Hate Being Pregnant, But My Maternal Clock Won’t STFU

My daughter is almost 2-year-old and it feels like she’s really starting to grow up. She’s weaned herself from breastfeeding. She goes to preschool three days a week. She’s learning so much. She’s even started potty training. Well, sort of. She uses the potty sometimes and I give her a chocolate chip for it. I’m procrastinating, okay? We have a road trip planned after Christmas. I’m not trying to deal with poo poo all over the car seat on the side of the road in the middle of Texas.

My point is, as magical as it is to watch her develop into a big girl, I miss my baby. I miss being able to just hold her virtually 24 hours a day. Sure, my house was a mess and I didn’t shower for like three days at a time but there were so many snuggles and feelings. Who cares if I occasionally forgot to eat?

Have I mentioned yet that I don’t want another child? I mean, on paper I don’t. First of all, I hated being pregnant. I was sick and miserable the entire time. Second, I’m not prepared. I’m still living with my parents which is wonderful and great and works perfectly with my one child, but there is not enough room in this house for two, there’s just not. My goal right now is moving out, not permanently sealing my fate by adding the responsibility and expense of ANOTHER baby to the mix. I’m looking for more full-time work now that my daughter’s in preschool and I cannot afford childcare for two.

Have I mentioned that I’m single? Where would the sperm to make this imaginary baby come from anyway? I just broke off another relationship with a guy because I felt like it was taking too much time away from my kid. She will always be my number one priority. Dating will always come after, and I don’t even really like men right now anyway. I think it’s the Donald Trump effect. They all just kind of gross me out.

This whole maternal instinct, ticking body clock thing though? It’s REAL. Every time I see a baby I want to smell its head and tickle its feet.

But the reality is, I just don’t see how it’s going to happen. To start with, I’m 33.  I’m not suggesting I’m too old to have a baby or anything, but that’s if I got pregnant tomorrow and I’m not even ovulating right now, okay? I mean, let’s look at the timeline realistically.  Let’s say I download Tinder tonight. I live in a smallish town, work from home, don’t drink much, and spend most of my time with married people and my middle-aged and elderly relatives, so Tinder is pretty much my only hope.

A week goes by and I find a nice man who doesn’t seem like he’ll murder me and hopefully didn’t vote Trump. I mean, I’ll take a Gary Johnson voter if I have to. I live in the deep south. You have to make compromises. So we hit it off and we date for about three months. Maybe on Valentine’s day he says, “I love you.”  For my birthday in June, we do a sexy weekend away (with contraception obviously). Then we wrap around to Christmas 2017, he proposes, but maybe because I have a kid and he’s still trying to get a promotion, we wait, so now it’s Christmas 2018. I’m 34. It takes us a year or two to save up for the wedding so by the time we get married in the fall of 2020, my daughter has started kindergarten. I’m 36, but we don’t want to rush into a pregnancy because we’d like a little time to just be newlyweds, so we wait another year until I’m 37. Then it’s a 9-month pregnancy and by the time I give birth, I’m 38.

I already have a fairly low fertility probability at 37, not just because of my age and past issues with PCOS, but now maybe there are complications from the contraception I’ll have been using for all these years. Not to mention my mother went through early menopause in her forties. It could happen to me, too.

This is if I meet the man of my dreams next week, and he’s the one, and everything goes perfectly, and I don’t break up with him after two months like the last three guys I dated.

The thing is, I don’t even really want to get married. I mean, my standards are SO high I really can’t imagine a guy who could live up to them. He needs to have a life, a job, a car, and his own place. He needs to be kind and intelligent and funny and generous. He needs to want to date a radically feminist 33-year-old single mom who lives with her parents and he needs to be an amazing parent to my current daughter and any other future children I have through sheer luck and the Lord’s will. I also need to be attracted to him and we have to fall in love. Oh, and it would be ideal if he’s available next week and currently on Tinder wearing a shirt, with no guns or cats in his photos, and doesn’t message me, “Netflix and Chill?” at any point ever.

So basically what I’m saying is, I need somebody to help me squash this damn uncontrollable urge to tickle baby feet all day every day. Can I just donate my ovaries or something? Is that a thing? They’re kind of used. Is there like, an ovary refurbishing program somewhere? I really don’t want to download Tinder again.

Photo: Getty

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