Face It, Baby

Ever since I opened up a Facebook account, I've had dozens of friends give birth. There seem to be babies popping out everywhere. Every other status update serves as a "Your Baby This Week" e-newsletter. I'm confronted with adorable ultrasound pictures, baby name surveys, and pictures of newborns swaddled tight in unstained clothing. In case I didn't remember how little and sweet they are, there are even videos -- Baby's first smiles, first coos, sit-ups (well, spit-ups), crawling, and walking. I'm nodding in sympathy at calls for help for the utter sleeplessness of it all. I'm cringing at pained messages about colic and reflux. But overall, I'm taking in all the luscious babyness that spreads across my home page on a near daily basis.

The problem I have with all of these Facebook babies, is that I'm at an extremely vulnerable point right now. Whenever each of my three children turns two years old, I suddenly find myself suffering from baby fever. With my youngest turning two next month, I'm hitting the height of my sappy, emotional, reminiscing side. I'm cloaked with memories of unbalanced bobbing heads too heavy for the necks they are on, ankles swallowed up by baby fat, and dimpled knuckles. I catch myself looking longingly at babies far younger than my own, despite the fact that I've never even liked small babies. (Give me a toddler or preschooler, any day.)

But this doesn't seem to matter. Because once I no longer have an infant, I suddenly see the appeal of them. I totally forget how much I hate nursing all night long, and not being able to eat a proper meal, and the soreness of childbirth. I gloss over the memories of not having time to myself, living my life in a blur of insomnia, resenting my husband for simply existing, even though he's running around like a fool, trying to make my life easier.

And let's be real: I'm done having children. So done, in fact, that I started donating my third daughter's clothing almost before she outgrew them. I gave away her adorable wooden bassinet a month after she quit using it. (I didn't even tear up.) Aside from a few keepsakes, I've felt no need for souvenirs from the highly intense phase of babyhood. With each month that passes by, I don't think, "Oh, I can't believe my baby's growing up!" I exclaim, "Thank God we've now got a toddler!"

Oh sure, for some time I did want four children. But after a while, my ability to reason (which, granted, has its moments of inadequacy) caught up with my advanced maternal age, and my realization that I did want some sort of a career, outside of changing diapers.

So since I know, without a doubt, that I'm finished having children, I find myself wondering:

Could it be that a social-networking site is at least partially responsible for reigniting my baby fever? Is Facebook purposefully trying to undermine my relatively content, reasonably functioning family of five? Or, are my friends, with their photos of baby showers and pastel-hued nurseries, their sweet sibling stories, their probing questions about vaccinations and car seats--to blame for my sudden, irrational need to procreate again?

Please don't misunderstand--it's not that I don't want to hear about your delicious bundles of joy or click through your photos of a hospital room full of flowers and balloons and a clear-glass bassinet in the corner. It's not that I don't want to know that Baby Carter's middle name is from his great-great uncle, or that Baby Stella has a strawberry birthmark on her chunky little bottom. But until I get out of this phase of vulnerability--this pattern of primal susceptibility? I'd rather wait to get to know your kids when they're a little bit older, and I'm feeling a little less feverish.