"I Hate Babies"

I do this every month: I'm convinced I'm pregnant. I check for signs of breast tenderness, bloating, and other "tell-tale" signs of pregnancy, like one day after DTD.

No matter that they are the very same signs as PMS -- nope, I'm convinced that the reason I have to pee is because my hormones are elevated; that the increased gas is not from the garlic bruschetta and hummus dinner the night previous, but yes, those doggone hormones. And for the record, yes, increased gas IS a by-product of pregnancy.

I know these things because, though I have no children, I've been pregnant before. Twice. After my last miscarriage, I was pretty sick of the whole exercise and considered giving up the whole endeavor. I know, I know: you probably know about a million women who have had multiple miscarriages and now have a baby; or maybe you've had fertility issues or multiple miscarriages, and suffered much more than I; or maybe I'm just made up of weaker stuff than the rest of the women out there, who experience this loss over and over again, but who can keep their eye on the prize.

But the truth lies in the fact that while sitting in the hospital and getting a blood transfusion after my most recent miscarriage, my mothers-in-law called (yes, I have more than one, it's a longer story for another time) and asked me how I was doing. And I told them: I hate babies.

I did. If you tried handing me a baby at that point in the hospital, I would have not so much as given that baby a sideways glance. I would have calmly continued drinking that weird, tinny-tasting orange juice that they only serve in hospitals, and maybe changed the channel on my mounted television to see if I could catch an episode of Law & Order.

In fact, I told anyone who would ask, or listen, or even if they didn't ask or want to listen, that I hated babies. I was angry that babies made my body to bleed so profusely on my bathroom floor that my husband had to call an ambulance at six in the morning. I was annoyed that babies made me want them so much that I was willing to endure invasive testing and procedures and pain and weight gain, and yes, a lot of gas, all to have them. Fuck babies, I thought.

They can keep their cute, fat faces and tiny, coordinated outfits, and chunky little Fred Flintstone-feet for all I cared. I wasn't going to put up with their methods any longer: behind those gurgling smiles are diapers filled with pounds of poop. I was on to their game, and I wasn't going to put up with it one moment longer. The jig was up. I was going to throw away the fertility pee-sticks and start life with no more babies on my brain.

Then, something funny happens. Time passes, and then you think about a baby, and for the first time in months, you don't hate them. Then you come across a baby a store, and it looks at you and smiles. You go about your life and you're happy, but then you think, I could, maybe, possibly, be happy with one of those after all. You visit those babies that you know, the ones that belong to your friends or relatives, and you realize, that maybe you were wrong about them all along. You find an unopened box of fertility pee-sticks in the back of the cabinet under the sink. Let the games begin, you find yourself saying.

They have methods, these babies.