If you don’t wish to fall pregnant, my best advice to you is to avoid unprotected sex while you’re ovulating.  This is excellent advice that I, myself, cannot seem to take.  Stupid hormones.  I blame the hormones.  Call them WHORE-mones.

Don’t get all excited.  I’m not pregnant.  I am realizing, however, that if I wish to stay that way (NOT pregnant), then I can’t give in to Odie’s irresistible charms like an impetuous teenager who says, “Aw, screw it” after noticing the expiration date on the birth control has long passed.  For 16 months now, I’ve had infallible birth control.  It’s a combination of having a child around, and not ovulating. 

Ovulation is a funny thing.  Nature designed it so that when women are fertile, they think about sex like men do.  Gimme, gimme, gimme!  The whore-mones flood your brain with stupid thoughts like, “DAMN, he’s a handsome man,” and “Oh, I won’t get pregnant,” and “Even if I do get pregnant, that’ll be fine. I love babies!”  A few hours later when the egg passes, in come flooding the “OH SHIT!” thoughts.

The RATIONAL thoughts.

A few weeks ago, I took Baby V to her first movie.  We saw “Despicable Me” with my sister Beezy and her daughter.  After the film, we went to Borders and played in the kids’ section.  I almost had a heart attack trying to keep an eye on both kids.  I was paranoid about the escalator that seemed way too close (it must’ve been a mere 100 yards away) and what was that man with no kids doing in the kids’ section of the bookstore?  I WATCH THE NEWS!  It’s part of why I have chronic insomnia.  That and the family bed combined with the fact that my daughter won’t take a pacifier and needs to suck on my nipple all night long in order to sleep.  Beezy had her eye on my niece, and Odie was stockpiling hundreds of dollars of toys and books to buy for Baby V (the man has a problem), but I still felt anxious, watching them dart around (my niece is 4 and very quick).  As we left the shopping complex, I walked through the parking lot with Baby V on my hip and Baby Beezy by the hand and I thought, “This SUCKS.  This could be me in three years, with a baby on my hip and Baby V by the hand. It’s TOO HARD!!!”

You’re starting to hate me a little, aren’t you?

It’s just that I’m not a young mom (38) and it’s SO much work taking care of a baby.  I love having a toddler.  From the looks of my two four-year-old nieces born five months apart, I’m going to love motherhood even more as the kids get older.  What I did not dig was “newborn.”  Yes, she was precious and smelled like angel farts and the feeling of her in my arms was like a piggy-back ride from Jesus.  Such hard work, though, for a couch potato like me.

Still, I come from a family of five girls and I cannot imagine my life without them.  One is in San Francisco, one on the East Coast, one in Corfu and one is close by.  We all have girls of our own now, and we’re like a big coven of witches. Sandra Bullock/Nicole Kidman/Elizabeth Montgomery witches.  You know.  Hot witches.  Not the “and your little dog, too” kind.  There’s not a big, warty schnozz in the group.

Don’t I want Baby V to have that?  Is it smug and naive to assume that’s what she’ll get?  My mother hated her sister.  I recently had a conversation with a friend who told me about the three times his sister tried to kill him when he was a child.  Not cute little sibling rivalry stories, either.  Real attempted homicide.  As an adult, he doesn’t speak to her.  One of my teacher friends recently hailed the end of summer because she could stop spending all day, every day, breaking up fights between her kids and go to work.

Ultimately, every decision like this is going to be a crap shoot.  I went into a marriage in a state where statistically it has a 60% chance of failing.  Glad nobody worked that into their toasts.  “To Odie and Mrs. Odie.  May you be in the other 40%.”

I have to admit, for a long time, I’ve been 100% set on having baby #2.  I read my husband the description of a vasectomy from web MD with wicked glee, hoping to freak him out (check).  Odie does not want another child, but was willing to go along with me.  He’s an only child, and thinks that being one is fine.  He also sees the relationships I have with my four sisters, and he wants that for Baby V.  Since I went back to work, though, I’ve been leaning toward the only child agenda.  He beams when I say things like, “Ug, I can’t imagine doing this work thing with TWO.” 

So why the unprotected marital congress, you might ask?  Surely a woman like myself who managed to spend nearly six years in a relationship with this man without getting pregnant knows what she’s doing.  Yep.  Gambling with fate because I don’t want to have another baby and I can’t bear the idea of not having another one.  Stupid love.