Babies, the Epidemic

There is a an epidemic of baby-making among my friends and I'm terrified.
Here's the thing, my friends used to be cool.
We were post neo-feminist-anarchists. Joanie had a green mohawk, Astrid was a lesbian, Lori couldn't fall in love unless she was on ecstasy.
None of us were gonna have babies! We thought: there are enough people on this planet, we're crowding each other out, were killing ourselves off.
It wasn't even like we planed to be independent career women, we were just rebellious and angry and idealistic. The world was fucked and we'd be damned if we were going to buy into all it's backwards fascist systems. We'd read the “Feminist Mystique” and “Backlash”. We'd been date raped, we knew what the world was like.
Now it's all wedding this and baby that. Now its picking colors and matching names.
It's boring and depressing and awful.
Not dangerous, not defiant.
“You guys should totally have kids.” Joanie suggests.
Me and Greg? Kids?
I don't know.
“Well,” she says “decide soon, you'll avoid a lot of tests.”

Soon I'm gonna be the age where it's called a geriatric pregnancy. I'm fine: healthy, strong. My uterus on the other hand is like, “has anyone seen my hearing aide”.
Okay if I get too old we can adopt. Lots of fun: adoption. We can get a cute little baby girl from Cambodia, and when she grows up Greg can run away with her and marry her like Woody Allen did.

“Tell Greg you want to have a baby.” Joanie commands.

When either of us brings up having kids the other pretends to get diarrhea. What if he stays undecided and my now in limbo uterus withers away and dies an old crusty uteral death while his energetic little gents can just go popping around looking for some fresh young ovaries to call home.

I can't have a child, I can't even clean up after myself, I can't even clean myself. I leave the house without deodorant almost everyday! What's that gonna be like for some poor kid, “Oh sorry mommy left without you again today, I know it's hard cause you're still breast-feeding...”
I might be awful after I have a baby, all stretched out and pissed off.
And sex? With a baby in the house?
Brad and Angelina don't even do it anymore, and they're the sexiest people on the planet, how could average sexy people like Greg and me survive that?

And can I really trust him with a baby? He has worse ADD then me, he might leave it on the top of the car and drive off or something. And he can be rude, what if he's rude to the baby? If that mother fucker is rude to my baby I will kick him in the balls.

My career is a pregnancy. I am pregnant with ideas, I am pregnant with opportunities, I am pregnant with hopes and dreams. I am pregnant with a baby elephant, that's what I am. A giant one ton baby elephant that feels ready to come out, but wait, not yet, another month, another year another couple of years...never. I am pregnant with a colossal baby elephant and it never comes out. I just carry this thing around in pain until I die. I keep thinking it's coming, I get contractions, I do the breathing, the water breaks. Oh my god, how am I going to deliver an elephant, I'm a human, a very small human. Contractions, pain, nothing comes out.

What if nothing ever happens, no real baby, no real elephant. I grow old and penniless with my cats who get old and incontinent.
I could be the weird old aunt to all these kids. I could wear funny hats and bake ugly cookies for Christmas presents. People would point at me in the grocery store, “that crazy old lady, she was really going somewhere, but no where came too fast and she lost it.”

It's just more feasible to be a total loser then to have it all. They warned us girls not to want it all. Career, husband and baby; one, two, three. It should be easy. Like a shopping spree, “There's the career aisle, the husband aisle is there and the babies are available at the check out next to the candy and magazines, you have 20 minutes... go!”
Then I can say I've taken care of that! And sit down with a book without feeling like I'm wasting my life away.

I've had glimpses of motherhood. Recently I transported my cat on my lap in the car as I drove (very Brittany). He was so scared he peed all over me. Then he shit on me. I still love him, that's mother-like.
And the tomato seeds I planted are starting to burst through the soil, that's like making babies.
Except you can eat them.

I know one day it's just gonna happen. One day I'm gonna look at a baby and the baby will look at me and it'll cast it's spell on me like Medusa. Suddenly there'll be a dull ache in my fallopian tubes and it'll travel up to my heart which will swell with some sort of mystical mothering type of love and that will spread to my brain and my eyes will blur with a rosy fog and I'll turn to whatever man is around and use him in a way I have never used a man before.
And then I'll have a kid and I'll be someone's mom and someone's baby's mama. And if all goes well everyone will grow-up and I'll grow up too and no one will be an elephant.