The Biological Clock!

There's a lot to be said for the biological clock. It does exist, and it does start ticking. One day, seemingly out of nowhere, its alarm starts going off somewhere between the uterus and the heart, and no matter how hard you try, you just can't seem to find the snooze button. The alarm is annoying. It starts out as a low hum that murmurs, "Maybe you should consider have a baby" and builds to a deafening crescendo that screams so hard at you, it makes you break out into a sweat. "GET PREGNANT NOW," it roars, dispensing with the pleasantries. "YOUR EGGS ARE GOING ROTTEN DOWN HERE."

My biological clock seemed non-existent for most of my twenties. I thought that maybe instead of having a clock, I'd been born with a biological blow dryer and one day I'd wake up, look in the mirror at my hair, and say, "THAT'S IT. I'VE HAD IT WITH THIS MESS." In fact, I'm still kind of hoping that I do have a biological blow dryer, because, really, at some point I should probably start caring what my hair looks like.

Sure enough, though, the biological clock started ticking when I turned 28. One day I would have listed having a baby as so low on my to-do list that it fell somewhere after "watch Jeopardy in a hotel room in Eugene, Oregon." Then, the next day, I decided that I wanted to have a baby. Like, for real. In between these two days, I should admit, was a conversation with one of my good friends, who reminded me that a baby takes almost a full year to make and that's assuming you get pregnant right away. So, if you want to have a baby by the time you're 30, you really need to get on that before you turn 29. And if you want more than one, you need to figure that your body should probably rest a little between pregnancies, so that's, at a minimum, almost two years or so between babies, and, hey, how old are you by that point?

Math. Foiled again by math.

But aside from the logical crunching of numbers, something in me did suddenly and abruptly, like appendicitis or a ruptured spleen, start to ache for a baby. They're just so cute! Why wouldn't I want something in my life that was just so cute!?

I had to make a plan, though. That's how I do things, with plans that span entire months, years, and decades. It took me five years after my 1998 Chevy Cavalier started breaking down and literally disintegrating to actually bite the bullet and get another car. I mulled over getting a DVR as part of our cable package for something like eighteen months. When I'm in the mood for baked ziti for dinner, I plan it out a week in advance. I don't usually do things on the spur of the moment. Certainly not things like having a baby. So, I talked to Chris, told him I wanted a baby, and that I wanted to start trying in about eight months, during the summer of 2009, which was the most arbitrary go date I could think of. Chris, agreeable as always, said, "Okay." And then the subject shifted to who sells the best string cheese (the answer is Target).

It was a long eight months. Most of those eight months were spent trying to muffle out the sound of my angry biological clock with bottles of wine and the lengthy list of things I could do now without children. Of course, most of those things involved sleeping, drinking loads of wine while sitting on my sofa, and eating cheese fries for dinner, so I guess the list wasn't THAT lengthy. That being said, I did my best to enjoy my childless nights spent drunk on the couch with cheese stains all over the front of my robe. Those were some great evenings.

And then the summer rolled around, and it was time to start the baby engines. I was ready for the baby. And, by this time, I truly couldn't bear to eat another cheese fry.

Month one. Not pregnant.

Month two. Not pregnant.

Month three. Not pregnant.

Oh crap. This was taking kind of a long time. Even though my trusted friend, the internet, said it could take healthy couples up to a year to conceive, I was starting to panic, big time. What if something was wrong? What if I didn't actually have any eggs? What if I was a robot? What if Chris' little swimmers were all lazy and stupid and couldn't figure out what the heck they were doing? What if HE was a robot? What if I never got pregnant? What if something was seriously wrong with me?

Month four. Not pregnant.

I was reaching my breaking point. I was seeing babies everywhere, one of my best friends had just gotten pregnant on her first try, and my biological clock had grown arms and was bashing cymbals together. I wanted a baby so badly. I wanted a baby more than I ever wanted anything in my life, ever. Ten times more than I had wanted one during the first month of trying. A hundred times more than when I had said casually to Chris, "Let's try to get pregnant next summer." A thousand times more than when I put "watch Jeopardy in a hotel room in Eugene, Oregon" on my to-do list. I wanted a baby so bad that it hurt.

Month five.

OMG.

No freaking way.

Pregnant.

I immediately panicked and thought, "Oh God, what have I done?"

Followed by, "HOORAY!!!!"

Followed by, "Hey. That didn't take so long! Only five months! Wow. I'm pretty lucky."

Because, I was pretty lucky. It can take a year to conceive. It can take longer if there's an actual problem. It can be expensive. It can be physically draining. It can take forever. Or, it might never happen at all.

Me, I've never stopped thanking God that he blessed me with my baby. I am not a religious person, but when it comes to Andy, I totally am. I look at him and I am so grateful that I get tears in my eyes and a pain in my heart.

Then he does something like poop in the bath tub or wake me up every hour during teething spells, and I'm like, "Really, God? You expect me to deal with this? Forget it, I'm making cheese fries."

The biological clock, it does exist. And for my friends trying to have a baby, and struggling, let me just say as lucky as I am, I totally get it. But if you're thinking of having a baby, just remember- they take close to a year to make, and that's only after the seed's been planted.

Get going.