I really hated being pregnant.

I can say this four years after the fact, with a twinge of embarassment, knowing that there are so many women that struggle to conceive, that want nothing more than to brew a new life inside of them.  But I’d be dishonest if I said that I was a glowing, radiant pregnant lady.  The fact is: I was a cantankerous, beligerent, swollen and crotchety preggo, counting down the days until I could just. Get. The. Baby. Out of me.

Part of it was vanity: I’d been slim almost my whole life and my ballooning body parts simultaneously horrified and astonished me.  I didn’t expect the back fat, the swollen feet, the giant hips.  Superficially again, I was disgruntled that men no longer even glanced my way: I felt asexual and totally unsexy.  And finally: I was uncomfortable: gaseous, nauseous, and perpetually headachy.

But.  The moment of my son’s entrance into the world has etched itself into my brain and soul and there has never been a more profound, beautiful, perfect moment in my life.  Suddenly, my heart was outside my body and I felt a love so perfect, sharp and exquisite that it made me gasp, crumpled me, reduced me to overflow capacity with joy.  And in the almost-four years since, I’ve realized that there is nothing more important to my being, than my daily joy, than the fact that I am my son’s Mom.  I’m now forgetting the drudgery of pregnancy.  I’m thinking more about whether I want to have more kids.

***

I am hurtling toward my mid thirties, and realizing with uncomfortable clarity that each day, my fertility declines.  I’m in a fresh relationship, one that is bursting with promise.  If I’m honest, and if you read me elsewhere, you’ll know that I am pretty sure that the man I am with now might be man I end up with.  I’ve fallen pretty hard.

We talk a lot, about everything, and even though we’re only a month and a half into our relationship, the subject of kids has come up, randomly.

People tell us we look alike, my new man and I, and so we were talking lightly one night about whether our potential offspring would look like us, too.  My tone, I think, was blase, but my heart was racing.  Crap: this is no longer an obscure “maybe one day…”   It’s now a real possibility.

And the other day, when my monthly cycle arrived with its prompt efficacy, he jokingly made a remark: “No little munchkins, then.”

“No,”I laughed, and though the chances of that physically were very remote, and though I want nothing less than to be pregnant right now, I sighed a little inwardly.  I only have a few years left of fertility: if I am going to have another baby, I’d better do it in the next three years or so.

My boyfriend has been married and divorced, but he doesn’t have kids, and I can’t imagine denying him that, if it’s what he wants.  But if I do ever have another child, my own son will be at least 6 or 7 years old - and his sibling would be a half-one, and the rammifications of both of those make me sweat a little.

Plus - there’s my career in corporate digital ad sales -  I love it, and I don’t want to pause it when I feel like I’m on my way up, immersed in a career I love.  And really - my cut off is age 37.  I don’t want to try and have babies after that.  I was tired with a newborn at the age of 30 - how much harder would it be seven years later, with a seven year old used to seven years of exclusive attention?

I wonder - do you have a “cutoff” age for additional children? Do you agonize about this as much as I have been?

My phone vibrates on my desk, and a picture of my son on a mossy tree stump lights up the display.  It’s my ex, my son’s Father, calling.

“Hello?” I say warily, bringing the receiver to my ear.  My friends all tell me they know immediately when Nolan’s father calls, they say a wary tiredness overtakes my voice.  I’m working on that. “Hi!” I try again.

“I’m going away next weekend,”he informs me,”Friday, back Sunday night.”

“Oh,”I say,”Well, OK.”

But it’s not like he was asking my permission.  He was informing me: he’s going away for the weekend so I’d better swap out any plans I may have had: I’ll now have our son for the weekend.

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I sat at the desk near the front entrance to my small, mildly dilapidated little home. The late winter sun was harsh and unrelenting and hurt my eyeballs from the outside in.  I remember: the dust on my computer monitor, the piles of tear-stained kleenexes littering the top of my desk.  Paper in disarray and files scattered, a two-day old plate of untouched toast near the monitor.

“You’re not coming home, ever, are you?”

I’d whispered it into the phone but I already knew the answer and though I had asked him to leave, though I needed time, I wasn’t sure that I was ready for the consequences of the inevitable permanent divide.

“I don’t know.  No, I don’t think so.”

I thought about our son: not even 2 years old.  I thought about the past four years: Amsterdam, concerts, beer nights and snowboarding.  I thought about the shrill fighting, alcohol, money, responsibility, pettiness.  I thought about myself: at 30 years old, a single Mom, disengaged, struggling.  A statistic.

Two years ago I’d been engaged to a beautiful man, a baby growing inside me.  Outwardly we were so happy: young, employed, laughing.  The fragility of that glass castle amazed me, and I remember putting my head down on the paper, the tissue, the hardness of the desk, to cry.

***

I worried about my son, of course, about the adjustment to a one-parent home, about a life with a half-time Dad.  But I also stressed about my future.  I foresaw in my bitter glass ball: chinchillas, maybe a few birds, a puffy pink housecoat and a grimy abode.  Maybe, I thought, I’d get lucky and one of my friends would end up solo too, in older age, and we could cook each other feta cheese and pickle sandwiches and lie about the fact that our butts had dissolved into dimpled pancakes.

At the time, I wasn’t thinking about men.  I didn’t want to feel the pain of heartbreak ever again and the thought of it being my son and I for the next 30 years was all right for me.  Painful.  But all right.

But as the years dripped on - one, two - I started to “see” men again.  I started to miss their companionship, humor, and unabashed appreciation for soft clothes and a homemade meal.   But I really believed that I was a pariah - that my son was a breathing indication of the fact that I’d had successful (not to mention unprotected) sex with another man.  What man wants to see that, every time he looks at his woman?  I understood that biologically, and intrinsically.  It made me wistful.

***

I’ve now been juggling work, dating, and my son for over a year and a half.  What I have discovered is this: a child is not necessarily “baggage” to the right man.  In fact: Nolan’s presence in my life has negated the necessity for me to weed out the bad eggs.  Men who are willing to take me on must be willing to take my son on, too - and it serves as an automatic filter, of sorts.

I am attracting a different kind of man these days than I used to - better and kinder and I think my son is the reason.  These men don’t see my son as a manifestation of another man - but rather as a sweeter, more naive extension of me.  The good ones - the awesome one I’m with now - is as eager to be liked by my son as he is by me.

It amazes me that our darkest days often represent the beginning of the pivotal climb to the brightest ones. 

I used to fancy myself as a bit of a world traveller.  I’ve trekked deep into the hills of Northern Thailand to learn about rural tribes.  I’ve negotiated solo train trips from Portugal back up to the Netherlands.  I’ve delighted in the lights of Paris, the unexpected beauty of Budapest, the history of Dublin.  I used to believe firmly that when I became staid, placid in my home - that was the time that I really needed to travel.  From the ages of 22 through 29, I experienced and learned from the people of more than 30 countries.  From the age of 29 to now, I’ve only traveled to the United States.  For work.

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I had a meeting with my boss when I was 9 months pregnant, nearly ripping at the seams of my maternity shirt.  I was uncomfortable and somewhat cantankerous and I was itching from every pore, eager to get this cumbersome pregnancy over with.  I wanted to expel the baby, and...love him a bit, of course - but more than anything, I wanted to get back to work.  I wanted to make phone calls, send emails and get stuff done, without a gigantic protruding belly, niggling worry about my potential skills as a Mother, and constant heartburn.

“Gary, I’ll be back at work in 6 months,”I assured my manager,”I can’t wait to return.”

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I arrived at Nolan’s daycare this morning, late and whirl-winded as always, clutching my son’s bicycle helmet and a Spiderman lunchbag shamefully including Zoodles.  Again.  I took off his boots and put on his horrendous indoor Crocs and signed him in as I watched him run to his playmates out of the corner of my eye.

I put down the lunch bag and watched him hug Helen, the cheery young teacher with the gorgeous Spanish accent.  She hugged him back, warmly, and I thought - man, am I glad we’re done with all the drop off crying.

I exchanged pleasantries with the teachers and turned around to see a handwritten sign on the door.  It was signed by Rosie, one of three providers at my son’s daycare, and his very favorite.

I scanned the note and my heart sunk: Rosie had accepted another job.  Her last day would be Friday.  She wished all her buddies very well, and thanked all the parents for welcoming her with such open arms.

She’d only been at this daycare for 6 months, an Irish transplant with an infectious smile and a warm spirit.  She was always special to my son, who took to her sweet, motherly ways immediately.  Nolan often talked about Rosie and the songs she sings and the books she reads: she’d won his heart and so she’d won mine too.

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I attended the pirate party of a 4-year-old classmate of my son on the weekend, a fete filled with Spiderman face painting, sickly sweet ice cream cake, and pint sized hooligans with eyeballs rolled back in ecstatic delight at the prospect of manic, unbridled carousing with other small humans.

I never know whether to drop my son off or hover at these events, and since I didn’t know the hosting Mom outside of vacant “hello’s!” at daycare drop off, I folded myself awkwardly into a chair on the sidelines of the gym and set to work inspecting my Blackberry, social pariah style.

Another Mom soon plopped down beside me, and I recognized her as the Mother of Oliver, a sweet-natured kid who always has a smile and a hug for my son. She’d been at a previous birthday party with me, and we’d exchanged pleasantries about our careers, lives, hobbies.

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At the moment, just at my entrance point to my mid-thirties - I am in the best shape of my life. This is foreign to me, and a little maddening, because I think: why didn’t I love my body when I was 22 and didn’t have to work to have a nice jean bum? How, when I was 18, did I ever think my body wasn’t suitable for a bikini? (hint: I had a diminutive chest that, at the time, shamed me. Now I love it because small things get hassled by gravity a little later than giant water bomb things, and also kind of look better in dresses.)

I was inspired last summer at the BlogHer Conference, when I met Linda for the second time in “real life” and she talked about putting together a fitness site. Wicked, I thought, awesome. If anyone can inspire people that they can look better than ever after babies, it’s Linda - who shredded herself into shape after her second born solely via do-it-yourself methods.

I was in pretty crap shape after my split with my son’s father. I subsisted on black coffee and jittery adrenaline, an occasional handful of Dorito’s. By the time I was ready to do something for myself, get really in shape, it was almost two years post-split. I was skinny, gaunt, with little folds of fat in inopportune places: on my arms and hanging from my legs. My stomach was flat but soft and bloated, I essentially looked like hell.

In January of this year, I wrote down that I needed to get in shape. Since then, 5 days a week, no matter what, I make time to exercise. I’ll run half an hour or two hours - and if I really don’t have time at all and I need to combat the internal protests that, god this proposal is due and prospecting is needed - I’ll just slip in Ye Olde Jillan Michaels Standby - because twenty minutes is the time I would otherwise take for a coffee break.

But I realize I’m a bit of an anomaly. Because I primarily work from home, I can go on a 45 minute run at lunch. I generally do a loop around my neighborhood, past the marina and sometimes up through the forest paths. And I can come back to my office - at home - and sit down in my sweaty yoga pants and get right back to work. No one glares at me because of my ill smell, and I don’t feel self conscious that my hair is in plasticky wet tendrils on my red-flushed face. When I’m swamped, I work straight through to 5 and don’t even bother showering to pick up my son. That’s what deodorant is for. Plus, it’s daycare, not a board meeting.

I realize I couldn’t work out this way if I worked in an office job downtown. I’d have to shower after or at least take the 20 extra minutes to make myself presentable. And the thought of interacting with people face to face after I’ve killed myself on hills outside in the sun - well - I’d rather just deal with people by phone, and via email.

So I’m curious, Single Moms - do you exercise consistently? How do you make time? Is this something you’d be willing to do at all costs, even if it means hiring a babysitter 3 nights a week so you can kickbox? Even though I know I have it good, I’m always looking for time saving tips to magnify these muscles.

I have a recently divorced friend who blames the breakup of his marriage on the demise of the stay-at-home housekeeping Mom.

“I think the model just worked better,”he explained,” Back in the boomer days. When Mom stayed home with the kids and Dad brought home the bacon.”

My pal is not a misogynist in any way, so I just remained silent and looked at him curiously.

“There was no resentment about making the bed and packing the lunches,”he said,”Because it was balanced by the fact that Daddy’s bringing home the bacon.  Now, often, Mom and Dad both bring home the bacon, but Mom’s expected to cook it and then clean the dishes and Dad still kinda wants to hang on the couch after dinner with his socks balled up on the floor and… it’s messed with everything.”

“Hmm.” I said, considering,”Huh.”

And I wondered: is it true that in this Generation, Moms are bringing home as much bacon as Dad?  What impact does that have on divorce, family balance, and career success?

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Here are a few of the gifts the last two years have bestowed:

• A small boy with pudgy hands and an orange Popsicle streaked face, morphing astonishingly fast into a boy.
• Innumerable walks through sloping muddy forest paths, on various quests for slugs and peet moss, the perfect sun slant through the trees.
• Sorbet for dinner, cheese for dessert, imaginary dragons in fortresses made of sheets, my imagination ignited by the power and force of his.
• An endless number of books, stacked in piles on our knees: hours of reading about Andrew’s Loose Tooth or Stinky Socks while we huddle under cool blue sheets, listening to the rain pelt outside and feeling our fingers inter-wrapped, contentedly.

Those are a just a small sampling of the wonder  I’ve experienced in the last two years of my life: my life spent as a single Mother.

I’m accustomed to being the only Mom at the parent/child floor hockey shinnies. I’m content to sit solo at the pool’s edge at 5:30 on Thursdays,  while my son dives for rings and emerges exuberant.  I’ve mastered the craft of cooking dinner for 1.5, and subsisting surprisingly well on wilted salad remains and mildly regurgitated avocado sandwiches.  I love being a Mom, I am astonished by how much I love my boy.  The experiences we’ve had together, me as his solo Mama and he as my affable Sidekick will stay with me forever.  These years will go down in my Life Book as the most probable reason for my life’s meaning.

But.

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