The time has come when offspring have moved from my peripheral awareness into directly touching my life. Yet unexisting children put their tiny fingers on me questioningly, unintrusively but unmistakeably. I suppose it’s inevitable; all those weddings we’d attended the past few years have to yield something, somewhere. The first baby in my close circle is due to arrive in November, borne to my cousin Diana and her husband Doug, who got married only months behind us. Her mother is giddy with anticipation of her first grandchild, and my mother is excited and envious. Mom treads carefully on the baby issue, so as not to annoy me, but she did ask a few weeks ago whether we’d given any more consideration to making some pretty Eurasian kidlets for her to play with. I don’t remember my response, but I’m sure it was something noncommital and uninformative, because no further conversation on the topic followed. Soon after that, Mr. W’s daughter (who’d moved in with us to start her first year in a local college) brought up at the dinner table, “So have you guys talked any more about having a baby?” She looked at the both of us, her eyes hopeful.
I laughed it off. “You really want to babysit.”
She said, not letting me off the hook, “Yeah, I really do! So have you?”
“Well, not really…” I looked to her dad for help.
He said, struggling a bit, “Well, we’ve sort of talked about it…”
“Nothing serious,” I added. She nodded and dropped it.

The first baby among my peer group of friends is due to arrive in about a month. I’m excited for them, and the mother is someone whom I’ve always admired. She’s smart, grounded, practical, kind, and has a strong sense of judgment without being closed-minded or inflexible. I think she’d be a great mom. Her pregnancy so far, described in her own words, has been “uneventful.” The classic symptoms of nausea, pain, and severe weight gain all seem to have evaded her. Aside from feeling big and more sluggish than usual, she’s handling her first pregnancy like a breeze. My cousin’s pregnancy has been uncomplicated, as well, and when I had dinner with her some months ago, she’d said she didn’t feel much different. No crazy mood swings, either. This makes me feel better about being pregnant. Of course, I have yet to hear the labor stories. The only immediate labor commentary I’d ever gotten was from my friend Erin, whom I’d met after she was already pretty far along her pregnancy. She’d called me the afternoon of her first baby’s birth — I was out in Huntington Beach with friends after I’d just gotten through a 5K race — and told me the good news, saying, “Labor’s no joke, Cindy.”

And now, a coworker approximately my age is pregnant. She had been trying with her husband without success for years. They visited a reputable local-ish reproductive clinic, fertilized a bunch of her eggs with his sperm, and selected one for implantation. Her uterus is too small for the usual 3-egg implantation, her doctor said about the very petite coworker. They didn’t want to risk complications if she were to have 3 successful fetuses. So they did the one…and the egg split on its own. She’s having identical twins anyway! How cute is that story? She’s being carefully monitored so she’ll be fine.

My reporter’s sister-in-law also went through the same clinic with her husband, my reporter’s brother. They’re both slightly older for having their first child — she being in her late 30s or early 40s, his being in his mid-to-late 40s. Standard impregnation methods (how clinical am *I*?) have not worked, but after only months of “treatment” with this clinic, she is now pregnant, too.

I’ll get to hear lots of stories of people’s experiences before I make up my mind. It’s the best way to make an educated decision, and to take the best courses of action given my personal rather difficult circumstances. It just seems like it’s not a “convenient” time to be pregnant, though. There’s still some traveling we want to do in the very near future, and I’d like to stay active. But let’s face it — none of us are getting any younger. I suppose a child isn’t a matter of convenience anyway, it’s an act of love. Or carelessness.