The Babymaker
I don’t want to have a baby.
I never believed in the concept of a biological clock. It seemed like a patriarchal construct; a by-product of the narrative about feminine body parts producing hysteria. There is no way that all female-identifying people experience this phenomenon. Hell, no.
I didn’t feel a clock ticking as I approached the age of 30. I did, in the back of my mind, always have the inkling that I’d have a child by the time I was that age. I got pregnant once, on purpose. I miscarried. My 30th year came and went.
Then I got pregnant again, not on purpose. Just because it was meant to happen. And the result was my current family, my life, and my child: a perfect human specimen. Ideal in every way.
And yet, I feel something.
TICK
It didn’t start until long after I had already had a child.
TICK
A small blonde girl with tiny curls toddles into the bathroom while I am in the tub. She’s an angel. She’s aglow. She makes me smile. She’s also an illusion.
TICK
I do want to have another baby.
Her name is Polly. She’s the child I lost when I was 30. She’s the child I felt heartbroken over, for a time, before she floated away. Up into the ether. Down into my darkest recesses.
TICK
For the last few years, every period has felt like a heart palpitation. Not dangerous, but an annoying preview of death. A hiccup of mortality. The blood is that not only of my uterus, but of my youth.
TICK
Polly has only visited me once in the last few years. I cannot help but view her presence as prescient. She must know something I don’t. Maybe she’s trying to tell me something.
Maybe she’s a metaphor.
I’ve been giving birth to a lot of entities lately.
Stories, situations, songs, and visions for the future.
TICK
Maybe she’s real. Maybe she’s the spirit of an actual child that wants to be born.
Patti Smith hid away and had two children while she wrote, and wrote. Her second child was born when she was over 40.
TICK
Kim Gordon had Coco when she was my age.
TICK
I enjoyed being pregnant. I have no complaints. I owned that shit.
Is another human on the way? Despite the epic boner-killer that is The Present Times?
Or is it just that bloody mythical biological clock ticking away?
My mind is young. It always feels fresh, excited, and full of ideas. But my body …I'm mortal (unfortunately). This mortal form requires seemingly endless sustenance.
Am I giving it all that it needs?
The idea of entering into any medicalized situation willingly feels ill-advised. My first pregnancy was in the West end of Toronto, in my early 30's, and culminated in a chilled out home birth with an appropriately cool pair of midwives present. That's hard to top. Impossible to repeat.
Sure, I could have a baby.
But am I going to?
Or am I simply worried that my mind is leaving my body behind?