Baby Fever

It's a thing, guys. And it is dangerous. Insidious, even. Baby Fever sneaks up on you and takes hold of your every desire, cropping up in all the most un-looked-for spaces. At least, it did me.

But I am fighting back. I am wrestling my will back from unbearably pudgy cheeks, drool-bubbles, plooshy lips, and adorable laughter; from shockingly bright and focused eyes, puffball feet, and surprisingly strong, tee-tiny, itty-bitty fingers.

I will not be ensnared by The Cuteness.

My husband and I have been married for just over a year. We've always said we didn't want to try for children until at least two years into this marriage thing. We wanted time to just learn to be together, to learn how to be married and alone now instead of trying to figure out, once we have an empty nest, how to be married to this near-stranger sitting across the living room.

Funny how easy that is to forget when one gets caught up in the thrill (agony?) of competition.

I have always known that I wanted to have children one day. If there is one thing about my identity that I have never questioned, that has never wavered, it is the desire to be a mother at some point in life. But just as strong as that desire was the need to get to know my husband – to get to know marriage – before introducing those much-longed-for children into the mix.

I lost sight of that for a bit in the midst of my Facebook news feed being riddled with baby announcements and births. I lost sight of that in the realization that a lot of friends who have been married just as long as I have are pregnant or having babies already. I lost sight of it in wondering about my stage in life when friends my age, who have been married longer than I, are already on their second child. I lost sight of what I really wanted – of the purposeful decisions I and my husband have made for our family – in comparing my life to others’.

But I have seen the light in the form of coming home from work before my husband and experiencing blissful quiet; of having an impromptu squirt gun fight in our backyard; in the realization that we are, together, two unattached individuals who can go for a boys’ weekend or a girls’ night without much more than a cursory glance at our calendars. We can plan trips to go visit friends for a weekend, or take off work and bum the day away at a fair.

And in the weeks that I allowed Baby Fever to take me over, I was missing all those things, glossing over the now in favor of daydreaming about a future. 

Well, I’m just about done with that. 

I will go to the fair with my husband. I will revel in the peace of a quiet house. I will appreciate that everything I own is not covered in sticky. I will embrace spontaneity.

And when God sees fit to fulfill this lifelong dream of motherhood for me, I will relish the loud, unkempt, sticky life my little family will lead.

But until then, I’m just going to sit around with my hubby, watching Netflix and having water/Nerf gun fights, getting to know who we are together. Everything else can wait.

(Besides, I just accidentally watched a video {Dang Facebook and its auto-play!} that showed a time lapse of a woman’s egg from fertilization to birth and it was absolutely terrifying. I threw up in my mouth a little. #bestbirthcontrolever)