Feeling It

We just got some incredible news from dear friends who, like us, have faced some serious hurdles on the path to parenthood.

My first reaction was overwhelming joy.

These are two of the most wonderful people to grace the planet—kind, wise, gifted, warm, funny, smart, honorable, sensitive, fun people. Amazing friends who are going to be amazing parents.

I started to tear up as I read the ebullient words in the message. I had this overpowering urge to hug them—and Zach—but I couldn't. I was at work, where there is a severe shortage of people whom it would be appropriate to hug.

So I sat there alone for a few minutes, contemplating the enormity of the news and feeling a kind of vicarious gratitude that this longed-for outcome had finally come about.

And then it happened.

I felt this small but certain pang.

Not envy. Not resentment. Not sadness.

But desire.

For the first time in all these years—years when I knew I wanted to be a parent, when I couldn't imagine our lives without children—I had a visceral experience of the desire to have children.

I felt it in my gut.

Maybe because our friends' good news filled me not only with joy for them, but hope for us.

Maybe I hadn't allowed myself to really experience that desire, that hope, until now.

Maybe some kind of innate self-preservation mechanism has been hard at work, protecting me from the very real possibility of disappointment down the line.

I've known for a very long time that I won't ever have that indelible experience of motherhood: feeling our baby kick inside me for the first time.

Maybe this pang is as close as I'll ever come.