One Is the Loneliest Number

In the last couple of weeks, I have learned that not one, not two, but THREE of my closest girlfriends are pregnant and due at basically the exact same time. Likewise, another dear friend and my sister-in-law are due early this summer. It's safe to say that there's an epidemic of baby fever going around these parts.

All of them are pregnant with their second or third children, which is a concept I seriously cannot get my head around. In theory, I've always wanted more than just one kid. My husband hated growing up as an only child, and we both want Benjamin to have a sister or a brother someday.

Someday.

The fact is, I don't know when that "someday" is going to come. I have barely made it through this first year as a working mom with all of my faculties intact, and I think I have managed to not lose myself entirely in the process. Seeing how quickly my interests could be swallowed up or abandoned simply because I no longer have enough hours in the day to do everything has made me cling to them more tightly than I ever have.

My motherhood mantra has, since Day 1, been, "It's not always going to be like this. Sometimes it will be better, sometimes it will be worse, but it's not always going to be like this."

I am not all Pollyanna about being a mom: Sometimes it's amazing and fulfilling and The Best Thing Ever. And sometimes, it really sucks. Sometimes it can be tedious and thankless and frustrating. Throw a full-time job into the mix, and the battle for your time and energy ensues.

I know I haven't been able to give 100 percent as a teacher and a writer all the time, just like I haven't been able to give 100 percent as a mother or a wife or a friend or a sister or what have you, either. I think I've finally reached a point where I'm OK with that.

My kind of pie chartI was reading the new issue of Real Simple last night. It included an excerpt from a new book by the managing editor, Kristin van Ogtrop. In the essay, she laments letting her friendships take a backseat to parenthood and work. I'm paraphrasing a lot, but she wrote about doing an exercise in which you segment your life into a pie chart to figure out how you spend your time. She realized that her pie had just three big slices: work, kids and sleep. She wasn't happy about her pie. I think it's a good lesson.

I've always admired my mother for many things, but one was her desire to do her own thing, despite having three children. She got together with her good friends as much as she could over coffee or breakfast. She volunteered a lot. When we got older, she took a part-time job as a children's librarian. She and my dad took a trip usually once a year, even for just a weekend. She still reads a book a week. And she made dinner every night, cleaned the house, washed our clothes and came to all of our soccer games, plays, art shows and parent-teacher conferences.

So as my husband and I discuss having another baby, I am trying to figure out what I want and if it makes sense to wait or to just jump in. I've given myself until July to decide. Getting pregnant was a lot of work. First, it involved fertility drugs that gave me raging headaches and did not work. I spent hundreds of dollars in the months before I conceived on ovulation strips, a fertility monitor, herbs, books, you name it. I charted my temperature every morning for months.

I spent an entire spring and summer obsessed with getting pregnant. It was not fun, and I do not want to do that again. I'm scared that it will take that level of effort—maybe more—to get pregnant again. I'm not sure there's enough room in my pie chart—or in my head—right now for this.

But if I wait until I'm 35 instead of 34 to conceive again, will I be setting myself up for a rougher time? What about Scott and what he wants? And then there's my job … tenure around the corner, freelancing, teaching. And what about me? What about my interests? Will I ever be able to write the stories I want to or travel to the places I want to go? (And what about my cupcake truck/mobile coffeehouse/bookmobile I've been dreaming about?!) How much does that stuff really matter to me?

So many questions, but I suppose it's always a leap of faith, no matter what.

Readers, what would your pie chart look like? How do you spend most of your time? And are you happy about that? If you could design your perfect pie chart, what would you include?

Eggs

Today I made a poached egg for the very first time. Two eggs, actually, and they turned out perfectly (if I do say so myself). I didn't have time to do anything fancy to them --- they were prepared DNP (During Nap Time) --- so I ate them over toast with a sprinkling of salt and pepper. Sometimes the most simple things can be the most divine, especially when you make them yourself.

The trick --- and the challenge --- of poached eggs is to slide the raw egg into barely boiling water very carefully, so as not to disperse the white all over the place or disturb the yolk. I cooked the eggs for exactly four minutes, which was enough to cook them but to still have a velvety, runny yolk that oozed over the toasted bread when I cut into it. I was instantly obsessed and wanted to make more --- until I reminded myself that two eggs in one day is just plenty.

So many of my thoughts this weekend have been about dear friends of mine who just found out that they have miscarried. I am so sad for them, for the loss of this baby and the future that they had hoped and expected to have with him or her. I've said many times that when you have a baby, you're suddenly a member of a club that's doors had once been closed to you. There's a language there that you suddenly know how to speak, a code, a conversation that had once been conducted around you but not with you. I'm also sad because my friends must now join another club that had previously been closed to them. It's one that no one should have to be a part of but that too many are.

Pregnancy is an experience that is so fraught with potential problems, so delicate, so rife with worry, especially in the beginning. During the first trimester of my pregnancy, I thought the anxiety would swallow me whole. I was prepared to be tired, to be constantly hungry, to gain weight and have my ankles and feet swell beyond recognition, but I was not prepared to be worried every single minute of every single day for months until my son was born.

I can't speak for every woman, but, in my case, perhaps I should have been better prepared. My brother and sister-in-law miscarried early in their first pregnancy. Their second pregnancy resulted in my first niece, who died when she was a little more than 2 weeks old. Their third pregnancy brought us my second niece, who is a perfectly healthy, happy, fiesty 7-month-old. I have friends who've miscarried. I have another friend whose son died because of a rare heart condition soon after he was born. I have friends who've tried to get pregnant for months or years and can't conceive. I have friends who've tried in vitro fertilization and friends who have adopted. And I have polycystic ovarian syndrome, which led to a few months of nasty drugs and "scheduled coitus" but that ultimately resulted in our son.

I never fully understood the idea of the birth of a baby being referred to as a "miracle" until I was told by a doctor that it might be a long road to conception for us. Thankfully, it wasn't very long, but then once I got pregnant, it felt like an eternity of waiting and wondering if this little person growing inside of me would turn out to be OK --- or turn out at all.

This afternoon, as I gently slid the cold eggs into the hot water, I thought that about the similarities between making a poached egg and making a baby. Sure, the symbolism of the egg is obvious, but when so many things can go wrong, it's almost a surprise when it turns out the way it was supposed to be all along.