Destination trumps the miserable journey

Photo by Wirallie

A few weeks ago a good friend told me that she was expecting her first child. Her happy news sent me into a tizzy of congratulations and had me radiating the kind of cherub-hued thoughts we women conjure when the talcum powder sweetness of velvety-cheeked newborns beckons.

Have I told you yet that the husband and I have been trying to procreate again? Well we have. It's been about 8 months now of actively recurring disappointment at the obvious discovery that we have not been very successful. No cross on the pee-pee stick means no pregnant rosy glow.

Rosy glow... hmmm... truth of the matter is that I had a sort of puce-y glow during most of my first pregnancy. Just plain wretched it was in terms of the abundance of geriatric-like ailments I became afflicted with. Come to think of it, by the time my baby finally decided to come out, I was 34 going on 80 and reserving the worst of my pregnant and crotchety-self for the one who'd been my partner in crime.

I don't believe for a millisecond those women who claim to love being pregnant. Quite frankly, being pregnant is about the worst physical punishment one can inflict on a body. The only thing that makes it bearable is the promised angel at the end of an excruciatingly painful and long-winded process - that holy grail of longed for maternity - a baby.

Every woman who has ever wanted a child has some archetypal knowledge of what being pregnant is like. That inherited understanding, compounded with the experiences most, as yet childless women, have had a chance to observe by the time they embark on their very own journey towards motherhood, should be enough to scare the beejesus out of the effort to maintain the continuation of our race. Still, what the brain remembers, the memory re-paints in baby tinted blushes. That is the reason we women suffer through the kinds of pain no man will ever conceive of no matter what they witness as loving partners or joke about in unexperienced ignorance.

I want another baby. I too want to phone a friend and communicate my unadultered if terrified joy at finding myself once more in the family way. Unbelievably, I want to go through nine months of body aches and constipation and endless rounds of night-time visits to the bathroom, impossible attempts to find comfort, to sleep! I want to see my ankles swell and my gait once more roll in mimicry of a ship at sea. I want more body hair in places where I can no longer bend to shave and newly exposed gray hairs to peep from my skull. I want the under-eye circles, the comfortable babushka shoes instead of my stilletos, the soft give of elastic instead of the tight belt around my waist. I want the swollen boobs, the bigger bras, the bed sheet dresses, the final pains and everything else I haven't mentioned but that comes with the whole process. Why? Have I told you yet that I want another baby?