I mentioned in my first post that I had been waiting for 12 years to have a baby, which is both true and not true.

Twelve years ago I was 20 years old, a sophomore in college, and nowhere near ready to have a kid. I had way too many things I wanted to do first. However, ever since I can remember, having kids has been part of my "life plan," as the life coaches might say. In my junior year of college, as part of a psychology class I took, we were asked to write down our personal goals, both short term and long term. I can't remember what my short term goals were (probably something along the lines of: pass all classes this semester; graduate on time; save enough money to buy car so do not have to rely on public transportation to go to grocery store--I once tried to save the light rail fare by walking with 7 bags of groceries the mile back to my apartment. Halfway there, after transferring bags from hand to hand multiple times in an effort to maintain some semblance of feeling in my arms, one of the bags ripped and a jar of mustard broke in the fall. Mustard which, I should point out, cost more than the train fare. I am nothing if not a miser. But sometimes an inept one.)

Anyhow. I do remember my "long term goals," which we were supposed to accomplish within the next 5 to ten years:

--Live in another country (check)
--Get Ph.D. (check)
--Get married (check)
--Start career and settle into a community (check)
--Have kids (????)

I really started feeling the urge to have a baby in my middle twenties. When I was around people with babies, I would always ask to hold them, feed them, whatever. There was something that felt completely right to care for a baby, even if it wasn't mine. And I loved interacting with little kids. I loved the questions they would ask that showed how much they were aware of the world and yet how much of the journey they still had left in front of them.

I was halfway through graduate school in my mid-twenties and was living with someone that I thought I was going to marry. We had talked about it, and it always appeared to have a place in our future plans.

Well. The years rolled by, (4.5 of them), and eventually, my partner decided that he did not want to marry. Me. At least not at that time. Shit.

To make a long story short, I did meet someone else, and after a whirlwind courtship (we dated for slightly less than 4 months), we got engaged, and married exactly one year after our first date. Since we had not been together very long, my husband asked that we wait for a year before having kids. Although I was eager to get the show on the road, I felt it was a reasonable request, and agreed. One year later, we commenced trying. You know the rest of the story.

Today we were in Home Depot, and there were several parent-child pairs wandering around. I am starting to have trouble looking at pregnant women (am I jealous? You bet), but somehow, watching kids interact with the world still makes me smile. I really hope to have one someday...