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"Motherhood
Redux" (Originally published in Wet Set Gazette, July/August 2004) “The good news is it’s YOUR baby!” Now who wouldn’t be happy to hear that? Even though his wife is pregnant for the third time in a little over four years, there is no concern for my husband about infidelity, no worry about an affair. Okay, no time for an affair. With two sons, a one- and three-year-old, there is hardly time to breathe, to eat, to brush my teeth. Ah, and I used to be so vigilant with those last two things. But now, with space so tight in our Honda Accord that a journey to Legoland requires at least one trip to the chiropractor, I am pregnant again. What was I thinking? I wasn’t. And in case any high school students are reading, you can become pregnant after just one time. One time is all people with two children usually have. Through the wonderful trifocals of retrospect, things were easy when I told my husband I was pregnant with our older son. I took him to a fancy restaurant in Topanga Canyon, brought him a present of cute baby things, and told him we were going to have a baby. We were happy, excited, reflective. I wrote in a journal. Ah, the luxury. Later that day, we stood on the sand off PCH and watched a couple play with a young baby on the beach. Naively, we smiled. We had no idea what maturity a baby so cute could bring to its parents. Our second son was conceived after a doctor told me that some number from some test was too low for me to conceive. A sperm meeting my egg, he assured me, would be like two people trying to shake hands with a wall of fire between them. He offered me a fertility drug. “No, thank you!” I said, looking forward to the freedom of not using birth control. “I’m still breastfeeding.” “Oh, so that’s the problem,” he said. Problem, I thought? I kept nursing my then 16-month-old and two months later, I went back to the doctor. “Congratulations!” he said. “You’re pregnant.” I was amazed at my ability to extinguish flames. And so here we are again. A few days late on my period--what I won’t do to have the fantasy that I’m back in high school again. But giving birth twice makes one’s skills much sharper. This time, I’ve yet to take the pregnancy test, but I know the signs. In addition, I just know. As a childbearing woman of the twenty-first century I certainly waited as long as I could before I gave birth. I was working on my career. That’s what a high school counselor or teacher or magazine article told me I should do. I believed it and now, here my body is, much closer to 40 than 30, trying hard to catch up. Giving birth used to be something that many moms did ten or twelve times in their life, not thinking or planning or controlling. In this new century, I have had many moms of one child gently question me about having two children. Some look at me in awe, as if I survived combat. They’re thinking about two. Planning. Considering. Don’t think too much, I tell them. As I ponder how to tell my husband about our potential bundle, I wonder where we will place this new child, its siblings, and various child seats in our car. We may have indeed passed into minivan land. Eek! And yes, if they all decide to go to college, we may have three in college at once. How will we do all this? Who knows? But as with our two sons, when we look into this baby’s eyes, we will fall deeply in love with yet another of our creations. Those eyes will help us work it out and when we are eighty, we will wonder why we worried so much. All the while, I hope, enjoying our grandchildren. Tricia Shore, stand-up comic and writer, lives in Van Nuys. Her Web site is www.comicmom.com. In addition to performing comedy at the Aztec Hotel, Ice House, Laugh Factory, Lucy’s LaundryMart, Sportsmen’s Lodge, and other Southern California venues, Tricia speaks to groups of moms about the pleasures and pains of pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and exhaustion.
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