Whirring and buzzing

Today was an eventful day, in my head.

My goal for the day was to complete, at least in rough form, my presentation for an upcoming conference. I am happy to say that I accomplished this goal. I can now start practicing the talk and tweaking the slides accordingly. I have never given a conference talk before, let alone a quick 15 minute talk (although I've done 45 minute talks for weekly seminars, lab meetings and job interviews). How do you get your point across in 15 minutes without completely glossing over all the details? I chose to focus on my favorite findings - if time permits I may elaborate on them.

But the really big happenings of today took place primarily in my head, not in my presentation slides. You see, dear reader, there is a very small possibility that I may be pregnant. Or after three months off the pill my cycle might just be whacky like it was in the years before I went on the pill. Some basic probability and logic leads me to think that I am not pregnant - but I was shocked to find that part of me actually hopes that I am!

This feeling took me by complete suprise. I went through a rather long phase where I had decided that I didn't want to have children of my own (adoption some day, perhaps) - but then friends of mine started having children of their own, and darn them, they made it look appealing. And long before that I had enough fear put into me about getting pregnant (having 3 older cousins become teenaged moms will do that to you) that I mostly associated pregnancy with terrifying, unspeakables. The fear did not suddenly disappear upon my newly bestowed marital status either. Children are, after all, a huge responsibility. Not to mention the whole child birth/delivery ordeal. That still terrifies me.

Perhaps part of why I hope to be pregnant has to do with the weight of indecision no longer falling on my shoulders; if I'm pregnant, there's nothing to be indecisive about anymore - the baby will come, and we will make the neccessary adjustments, and do the best we can. But if I'm not pregnant, I have to play this passive-agressive game all over again. Do we actually try to get pregnant, or try to prevent it? If we try to prevent it, will we regret that decision later? If we try to have a baby now, are we ready? Wouldn't waiting a little while longer be safer? We'd be back in our home country in about two years, with paid parental leave rather than here where we'd only be partly able to cash in on that sweet motherland deal. Seems rather sub-optimal to me.

And thinking about all of the nuts and bolts, financial, emotional, immigrational and otherwise just sets my head spinning! I even wish I could take a whole year myself to be with the baby. Maybe I would change my mind before the year was through, but having that choice would be comforting. For a while I've thought that my husband would be the one to leave work for a longer period of time to take care of the baby. It makes financial sense, as my wages earn us more at this point, and if I continue with my career at this rate, I could even hope to land a faculty position after this postdoc. A whole year off could set me back. It makes me have crazy thoughts about bringing the baby to the lab with me (the room which houses my work space is crowded enough as is!) But babies sleep a lot, and I typically only require a computer and internet access to do most of my work. The only reason I wouldn't do it all from home is because I occasionally need to interact with people, and enjoy attending seminars (though I can't imagine the baby enjoying that!).

Babies, babies, babies. How did my parents do it? How are my friends making it seem so enticing?