I have a folder for things started and not finished. Some of the essays and articles have been there for months and some of them have been there for years. This is the first paragraph in a handful:

  • It wasn’t exactly my husband’s idea to have a baby. No, I’m afraid to say that I begged and pleaded my way into motherhood. It wasn’t that Brett was against babies in general or in fatherhood in particular, it was just that he always thought that fathering his own baby was something he would do in the future, in the way off future. Me, I had other ideas.
  • Lately I’ve been hankering a bit for a second baby. I notice that this hankering comes up pretty strongly after visits to the park where there are lots of babies to admire and that it tends to ebb away after a particularly chaotic grocery trip with my two-year old son. Still, it’s there and I’m not really sure what to do about it.
  • Consistency is something I have yet to master. I like to call myself creative to excuse my erratic behavior; I even quote Emerson, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” But I’m sure that most people see right through me. What can I do? I’ve tried to be less inconsistent but alas, I am not able to make the effort with any, well, consistency.
  • We were at the park one evening twirling Noah around in the tire swing and chatting with other parents when a four year old boy entered the scene with a toy day-glo orange automatic weapon. His father smiled proudly while his son annihilated a pine tree.
  • My husband and I started trying for another baby two months before our son turned three. Two and a half years later we were still trying, but now I was being aided by the not-so-loving ministrations of a reproductive endocrinologist and I had attained the medical designation of “habitual aborter.” With four miscarriages now in my history, my doctors were intent not only in getting me pregnant but keeping me pregnant and so far we were having no luck.
  • Before I had my son, I worked at a women’s shelter in the Pacific Northwest. I worked with the families, helping to set up their case plans, offering some limited childcare and leading support groups. I was the stereotypical eager, young, recent college graduate with lots of ideas gleaned from reading and very little real-world experience.
  • For over two years now, my husband and I have been trying to have a second child. We are already inordinately fortunate to have our son, born nearly five years ago, but our joy in his existence reminds us, too, of what we’re missing. His baby pictures send us into fits of longing. His out-grown clothes make us yearn for another to fill them.
  • On sunny wash days, winter or summer, I hang my son’s diapers to dry. Hanging laundry was a chore that bored me when I was a child but now it’s one of my favorite things to do. There is something so wholesome about hanging out wet laundry — mining the sun for it’s energy and using up some of my own. I know that these fresh, wet diapers will be cleaner for hanging out in the sunshine and I am relieved to be able to keep the clothes dryer quiet for another day. While I shake the diapers and clip them up, my son is usually playing around my feet. Occasionally he will busy himself by pulling all of the diapers out onto the grass before handing them to me one by one.

  • There is this certain mom at the shelter where I work. She had a daughter who is 9 months old and she is escaping a violent boyfriend. When she came in, she is run-down. Her face is thin, skin stretched taut across sharp cheekbones. Her daughter is round and lively. We are pleased to hear that she is still breastfeeding.

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