Twinkle in the Eye

If I'm going to blog about Demon Baby and Me, I suppose I better start with how, precisely, I ended up with a Demon Baby. (I'll spare you the . . . ahem . . . biological details. I presume everyone knows how sperm meets egg.)

I had, pre-Demon Baby, three wonderful kids. Oldest Daughter, who was then in the throes of a rather difficult adolescence; Oldest Son, who was, as always, tranquil and quiet and into math; and Baby Girl, an always spunky, freckle-faced girl with a perpetual "sparkle," as one of my good friends calls it. But I wanted one more.

I'd always loved babies and children, and if not for Crohn's disease and the high-risk pregnancies that result, I would have, probably, had six or seven kids. But as age 40 loomed--LARGE--I knew that this perpetual longing, which was with me all the time, never far from my mind, would be a permanent condition unless I acted soon. Or, rather, unless WE acted soon since, as noted in paragraph one, these things don't usually result from one person.

So we tried. One time. And voila. Pregnant. Which my Significant Other, given my "advanced maternal age," ascribed to Mexican Sperm being very Latino-Antonio Banderas-esque "hot."

That baby was due November 12th, and shortly after the EPT kit told me "Yes!" I lost the baby. I was only six or seven weeks along, but I grieved. I remember sobbing in my bed. For days. I dragged myself through my routine. This was MY baby inside of ME, that I lost, and amazingly, I was 40 with three children and had never had a miscarriage before. The grief was palpable and visceral. Doctor visits followed, and I had a "bad" Pap smear afterwards--which meant one of those "female" procedures. Which also meant I couldn't even begin trying for another baby until that June. Months away. My biological clock was sounding a death knell. I assumed the window of opportunity was gone. The baby I so longed for and lost was my last chance for a baby.

June came, and we gave it one half-hearted try. I think I took my temperature, kept an ovulation chart, but knew my chances were slim to none at my age, despite the Latino Factor, as he called it.

One try.

And voila. Pregnant. Maybe there WAS something to this Latino Factor. Demon Baby was conceived. Of course, I had no idea, then, what I was in for. He was a twinkle in my eye. A vision of a baby wrapped up in swaddling clothes. I had no idea he would come out of the womb with an extraodinary propensity for . . . Evil Ways and General Mischief. He was seemingly in the blink of an eye, to be practiced at the Dark Arts of the Terrible Twos. But I didn't know that yet. He was just a twinkle. And given Crohn's disease, I suppose he was also a miracle.