Broody?

I think something weird is happening to me, people. One of my co-workers is pregnant and I’m feeling a bit … weird. This isn’t the first time that a co-worker or friend has been pregnant around me, but I have a habit of upping and leaving halfway through pregnancies. I’ve done it with virtually all of my ‘best’ female friends over the years. Completely by accident, obviously, but still, I’ve never stuck around for a full pregnancy.

I was 18 when I first experienced a friend being pregnant around me. I was there for most of her pregnancy, mostly because we worked together, but it wasn’t long before she gave birth that our friendship kinda separated a bit. Not deliberately; we just had different priorities. I was getting married and preparing to move to another country, and she was … well, you know, popping out a baby.

Then, after I got married and moved to the other country, I knew a few women who’d gotten pregnant. Again, with most of them, it wasn’t long before I flitted off either back home to my own country (when The Hubby and I broke up yet again), or to the War Zone.

And then, after all of that, I moved to The Other Side of the World. My best female friend fell pregnant over there, broke the news to me, and then I left and moved back to my side of the world, a few months after that.

It broke my heart to leave them every time, but that’s just the way my life went. It was transient for such a long time, I just never had to deal with the whole pregnancy debacle. I was there for the beginning of it, or I was there for the end of it.

This time though, with my co-worker, I’ve been there for everything so far … and I’m going to be around for the rest of it. I’m so excited about it. I was the first person she told, I covered her at work when she went through dreadful bouts of morning sickness, and I experienced every kick or bulge of her growing bump, both in person and via video calls.

I think I’m broody. In fact, after watching that episode of Friends where Phoebe has her brother’s babies and then hands them over to him, with tears streaming down my face, I KNOW I’m broody. It’s a very strange feeling. Very strange. I’ve had bouts of broodiness before, but they’ve never lasted for long. I think I just kinda resigned myself to be in that category of ‘women who don’t want to have children’, and I was perfectly okay with it. I’ve learned how to deflect questions when I’m asked about my child-free status and I’m not weird about the idea of never having kids.

Or, at least, I wasn’t.

Turn back the clocks a few weeks, right back to when Jock and I started dating and I was talking about him non-stop to all of the girls at work, my pregnant co-worker said something to me:

And she said it with real certainty, too. She told me that she felt the same way about me+Jock=babies as she did about marrying her husband and baby-daddy: she told her mother that she’d marry ‘that man’ the very first day she met him, and four or five years later, she did marry him. I’m not sure I believe in visions or feelings or any of that, but I think I believe in her visions/feelings a little bit. She always seems to be right about the weirdest shit.

Add all of that to the weird dream I had the other day, where I was eating a bowl of cereal with it resting on my pregnant belly, watching TV with Jock by my side … yep, I think I’m definitely broody. My biological clock has started ticking, apparently. It’s pissing me off, whatever’s happening. I had my mind a certain way about children for such a long time, I’m not sure I’m prepared with this weird ‘longing’ that’s going on somewhere inside of me.

I guess we’ll see whether or not it shakes itself away, like so many of those other broody bouts have.