Maybe We Should Just Get A Fish

I seriously thought my ovaries were going to explode out of my body.

I was walking out of the OBGYN's office after my annual and all that small-talk during the breast exam. I checked out, paid my co-pay, and then I heard it. A baby crying. It wasn't even a cry, exactly. More like that twisting, cranking yelp that babies make in those first couple of weeks. I knew that sound very well--I had two daughters, Blair, 4, and Drew, 2. And I knew that I never, ever wanted to hear that sound again.

Or so I thought. Because, when I heard that cry, my ovaries immediately started to pulse. Like they were on speed. I pulled out the cell and called my husband, Thad.

"I have to have another baby," I said.

"What?" he said. He was a country away from me, on business in California.

"I HAVE to have another baby," I said again, and I knew exactly what he was thinking: That means some sex when I get home.

The weird thing was, I was carrying a pamphlet on an IUD. I'd asked the doc about it, thinking that it might be a good idea to stop the pill that I'd been on, pretty much, since I was 19, and try something else. Yes, it freaked me out a little that the thing looked like a Mini Pet Shop bow-and-arrow and would be placed somewhere up there in my lala. But it had to be better than hormones. I did NOT need any more hormones.

However, my body didn't seem to want a bow-and-arrow. My body wanted another baby. My brain did not.

I called my friend Lynne. She has two daughters who are 15 and 17. I knew she would say what she said: "Are you freaking kidding me???? You do NOT want another baby. Wait a few minutes and it'll go away."

She was right. It did. Especially when I picked up Blair and Drew at school and neither had napped, and they were covered in what I hoped was chocolate, and they refused to eat any dinner, not even ketchup.

No more, I thought. Noooooooo more.

Until the next morning. When I put their chocolate clothes in the washer. Their skin had been so dry and sensitive all winter, that I decided to buy Dreft, the baby detergent. I started the water, I packed as many kids clothes as I could find into the machine, and then I opened the bottle of Dreft. The scent shot up into my nose like a train.

And there it was again.

That aching. That pulsing. Those ovaries telling me what was not in my master plan: You are not done.