What's Up With the Baby Boom??

You know how it is when you haven't been able to have a baby, but it seems like everyone around you is? It's enough to drive you either crazy or to the brink of depression, or both. Up until recently, I took the news of other people's pregnancies a little hard. Sometimes I took it very hard, depending on what time of the month it was. It's gotten better lately, but I still find myself automatically inwardly rolling my eyes when I find out about yet another pregnancy. Sometimes I think sarcastic things to myself, like, "Geez, save some babies for the rest of us." I know this is wrong, but it is borne of envy of others and resentment at my own inability to do what so many other women do with hardly a second thought. And that makes me kind of hate them in a superficial, detached sort of way.

Right now there's some sort of a baby boom going on. At my church, there are at least four women pregnant right now, and probably more that I don't know about yet. My younger unmarried sister recently announced her first pregnancy, which was a total shocker but one that I am excited about (although I laid there numb in bed the night I first found out). I found out last weekend that one of my cousins is pregnant. I was driving through my neighborhood today, and there was another pregnant belly, on a woman who was just had a baby two years ago. (Yeah, I rolled my eyes when I saw her today.) I found out two days ago that my friend's wife is pregnant for the first time. Sarah Palin's daughter is pregnant. Tiger Woods' wife is pregnant. And it just seems to endlessly go on and on. Enough with the pregnancies already! When will it be me? Will it ever be me again? Am I destined to have one child and no more?

Despite my feelings of jealousy, this whole ordeal is giving me a lot more empathy. I remember when I was pregnant with my son, a couple I knew who were having infertility problems saw me for the first time with my preggo belly, and the woman's eyes seemed surprised and sad. At the time I felt almost guilty for being pregnant while she wasn't. Why me and not her? Now the situation is reversed, and I can understand why women feel that way, because I'm one of them now. Although I am fortunate enough to have had a child. I can't imagine enduring this without having one yet. I guess our problems are all relative in the grand scheme of things.