Tick-tock, tick-tock...

For a while now, I have wanted to blog about my biological clock. Sometimes, it ticks so loud that I can't sleep. Other times, it seems to have been turned off because I am not even thinking about it. Right now is not one of the latter times.

I work in a NICU. I am around babies all the time. However, these babies don't usually affect my desire to be a mom. After all, many of them are seriously ill preemies, and we are working just to keep them alive and help them grow and get them home to their families. However, once in a while, we get one who is just a little premature, who only has to learn to eat or outgrow his tendency to have As and Bs (episodes of apnea and bradycardia that are common in preemies due to their immature nervous systems). And those are the babies that you can hold and cuddle and coo over. And those are the babies that make you think that maybe it would be okay to have one of your own...maybe, if it happens, not that you will actually be trying or anything.

Most of the time, I am happy to come home from work and go to sleep and not worry about having anyone other than my dog to take care of during the day. But sometimes, like now, when I am surrounded by pregnant people and new moms (my two best friends from high school are pregnant, as are four women I work with, and two women I work with recently had babies...and my cousin is pregnant, and my other cousin's wife just had a baby), I do feel the urge.

This is supposed to be the year in which I get my shit together...the year that I live within a budget (a budget that will require quite a bit of overtime if it is to be met) and get my weight loss on track and keep my house cleaner than I have in the past and act like an adult most of the time. Getting my shit together probably doesn't include having a baby this year. Maybe in 2009...if I have succeeded in getting said shit together. But probably not before then.

But then I think about how if I were to conceive this month, my due date would be my husband's 37th birthday. And how much older do I want us to get before we do start having kids? And do I really even want to have kids? And if I don't, will it be enough in ten years to just be a stepmom and not be a mom?

I am pretty sure it won't be.

Therefore, although I won't say we are trying now (especially since we haven't discussed it in anything more than completely nebulous terms), I will say that I would welcome it if it were to happen. Not quite ready to take steps to make it happen...but not unwilling to let it.

I think that's where I am. At least, that's where I am today.

Check with me when I get out of work tomorrow morning and want to sleep all day. I might have changed my mind...