So I Think I Want to be a Mommy?

Do you find yourself:

Making googly faces at any baby within your 50-foot proximity?

Rationalizing that your recent weight gain is undoubtedly because you’re pregnant (even though that little pill case in your purse says otherwise)?

Thinking every baby is ridiculously cute although deep down you KNOW that he/she won’t be winning any baby beauty contests?

Convincing yourself that dumpy diapers don’t sound that putrid after all?

If so, you may be suffering from the ‘Baby Jones’.

The ‘Baby Jones’ is the uncontrollable urge to want to have a baby. In my (limited) experience, the ‘jones’ creeps in slowly. In your younger years, it was easy to keep at bay. You had sports to play. Places to visit. New people to meet. Adventures to have. Education to finish. For some, a partner to meet. But then, when most of those things have been checked off your bucket list, you feel it again. That nagging sensation that there is something (more?) you want in your life.

When fully manifested, the ‘jones’ may make you feel as though you’ve been brainwashed. Baby vomit is now thought of as spit-up (has a much less negative tone, no?). The sound of a baby crying activates your Mommy Sonar and you can find the needy child through rain, snow, sleet or hail. You nod empathetically when your mommy friends tell you about cracked nipples/sleepless nights/teething tears/leaky breasts/green poop/and… gulp… hemorrhoids. You even look longingly at mothers whose children are throwing violent, full-body temper tantrums in the grocery store checkout, wishing you could be the one to cradle them in your arms afterward.

And when you find yourself making goober faces at someone else’s kids in the local Target… it hits you. You want a baby. You have a full-blown, irrepressible case of the ‘Baby Jones.’ And the only thing that will treat it is 9 months of the happiest and scariest time in your life.

So what do you do?

I. Have. No. Idea.