A Little Dried Urine Always Brings a Tear to My Eye

I have a confession* to make. I was cleaning out my cabinets in my bathroom when I stumbled across my old pregnancy tests. Not just one. There were 6 old pregnancy tests there, from both the Moose and the Rock. Surely I'm not the only one who saves/collects weird things. There are people out there who save old umbilical cord stumps or bury placentas after they give birth. But seriously, those are bad examples because saving belly button stumps and internal guts is just plain gross and I am nothing like that. Yuck. We are not in the same category. But I sheepishly acknowledge that I am saving sticks that have dried up urine on them.

As I looked at these sticks, I got teary. Not because I was disgusted by my odd collection or the amount of money I spent testing and retesting for the same results, but because I remembered the elation and absolute terror with each first pregnancy test. There is nothing like the heart fluttering joy and the stomach dropping fear of finding out you are pregnant. Those (six) little sticks brought back all those memories and tugged at my internal clock that says "Maybe just one more..."

But there are no more babies in our future. And ironically for the first time ever, I have baby lust. I see a baby on a commercial and I go all gooey. I watch family photos of my babies when they were babies and I start crying. Pete looks at me like I am crazy (and not just because I saved six pregnancy tests) and shakes his head no. No way, no how. Since it would be a little odd for me to get pregnant without his help, it looks like the final answer is no more babies.

To make matters worse, it also occurred to me that I am getting TOO OLD to have babies. This month I am rounding 36, which is on the downward slide to 40. A pregnant 36 year-old? Ancient to the medical community! They would hand me a walker when I came in for appointments. It's funny because I've always been young enough to have kids, until now. Sure, I know of lots of 36 year-olds who have babies, but to be honest, being pregnant in my 20's was way easier than it was in my 30's. This ship has sailed.

So my baby days are over. I will still tear up at Johnson and Johnson commercials. I will still call my babies "babies" and snuggle them even when they push me off. And I will still save those pregnancy tests, even if they have dried urine on them. At least they aren't umbilical cords. (Gross.)

*As a Catholic, we always feel guilty about something and are always making confessions. This is what we do. If you aren't guilty, you aren't Catholic. And now I feel guilty for making jokes about being Catholic. See how easy it is?