Baby on board

SHAWNA SWEENEY

The universe has been playing a strange trick on me lately. Everywhere I go I see babies; babies at breakfast, babies at the bank, babies in the grocery store. At the gas station the other day I even ended up in line behind a very pregnant woman with an invisible baby hidden inside. I am not sure why the universe is showing me all these babies. I do not have one of my own, nor do I have any plans to have one soon. But after seeing so many I tried to think back and remember the last time I even held a baby.

I realized that it has been years. I don’t operate in any child-bearing circles and while more and more of my friends are getting married, none have taken the paralyzing leap into parenthood yet.

I started polling my infertile friends to see when they had last held babies. I wanted to know if I was alone in this baby-free world. And it turned out I wasn’t. Out of a dozen people, only one had recently held a baby and that was months ago at a family picnic with family friends. One of those other families had suddenly become bigger and my friend got to hold their first child.

He said the whole thing made him nervous. He was afraid to drop her or hurt her or scar her for life, so he rushed to pass her on to the next salivating cousin. I couldn’t blame him, though; I feel the same way.

A lot of women have this fetish for infants. They just can’t get enough. They want to hold and cuddle and speak in small nonsensical words. They ask endless questions about feeding and clothing and waste disposal. They are possessed by a subconscious craving and overwhelming instinct that replaces normal personality and makes them all crazy-like. But for some reason I don’t have it, not even a little bit.

I am not even sure that I ever want kids. I look at those little babies and feel baffled. Why would you want something around that poops and screams and sucks up all your free time? Something that can’t even talk and tell you what’s wrong? It seems like looking after kids your entire life is one long gauntlet of exhaustion and blind pacification.

I don’t deny that babies are cute. Anything miniature is always adorable. Small things have a way of pulling at your heartstrings and bringing out the “Aww” in anyone. But my biological clock must be on permanent snooze because I never want to bring them home.

I have been told that this changes, that one day you wake up and desperately want kids. It is an unavoidable instinct built into our blood and bones that drives us to mate and spread our seed wide in this world.

But I’m not a farmer. I’m way too lazy to feed and water anything but myself. I do worry that I will miss out on some of the important functions of children, like tax-breaks and care in my elderly years, but even that doesn’t alarm me too much. Retirement’s a long way off and it seems like a reasonable price to pay to spend my better years out of diapers.

When I ran into the pregnant woman at the gas station I started some small-talk and found out it was her first child. I asked if she felt ready and she said “No, but it is still exciting.” She couldn’t wait to see the prize inside and meet the person who was causing all the fuss. The line was pretty long, so we talked for a while. As we approached the counter she winced and said the baby was bending it like Beckham. I laughed and asked the standard creepy stranger question: “can I feel it?”

She smiled and turned toward me. I reached out to her bulging belly and waited. I didn’t feel anything at first but then the line shifted and we inched forward and something moved. Then it moved again and again like muffled tap dancing under my palm.

I pulled my hand back and smiled. I told the woman that the person inside her had a good shot at a football career. She grinned and thanked me and then reached the front of line.

She emptied her basket and pulled out a small jar of dill pickles, a bottle of fruit-flavoured V8, a box of chocolate donuts, and some ice cream. The clerk rang her through and I waved as she walked out.

I put down my case of beer and waited for the clerk to turn around. I thought about the woman and her pickles and the professional athlete growing inside of her. Then I asked for a pack of cigarettes and lighter so I could go home and take full advantage of my baby-free lifestyle.