Wanted: Baby Daddy
My quest to get pregnant without getting a boyfriend.
by Nan Mooney
March 18, 2009
Zachary's questions turned out to be good ones, the kind you'd want any responsible father to ask: What kind of responsibility would he have toward the child? (None, I'm moving across the country with it.) Would I expect money from him? (No. I didn't have any, but I knew he didn't either.) How exactly does the timing of all this work? (Short lecture on fertility charting.) They're probably some of the easiest questions I'll have to face as I embark on life as a single mom.
We began trying a few weeks later, when the line on the ovulation kit came up a hazy blue. I cracked a bottle of champagne, but just wore jeans and a T-shirt. Foreplay consisted of some awkward "So, how was your day?" chitchat. I didn't want to seem like I was just using him -- even though I was just using him.
How long did it ultimately take before I got pregnant? Five months, and we met up three to five times each cycle. It wasn't romantic, but for the most part it was relaxed and occasionally even silly. The magic moment of conception took place in a window of time between work and a doctor's appointment while we listened to the Pulp Fiction soundtrack.
The longer it went on, the deeper our emotional attachment grew. We got into the habit of long discussions in bed. I talked him through a career crisis and we navigated the etiquette of his starting to date another woman.
As with any couple, bringing a child into the mix has shaken up everything. When I left New York, five months pregnant, he sent me off with a yellow onesie printed with the words "Righteous Baby" and told me that he loved me. I sent him a photo of Leo the day after he was born. When he called to check in on us I could hear the emotion in his voice as he confessed he had no idea what to feel.
Sometimes I fantasize that he'll want to come join the family.
I got what I wanted and a thousand times more. Life with Leo is every gushy, Hallmark-card cliché of parenthood. I've never, not even for one second, regretted my decision to become a single mom. Zachary and I still talk a few times a month and he's met his son three times.
Now that Leo is nine months old, I'm not sure what role Zachary will play in our lives. He's had a couple of relationships since I got pregnant. Sometimes I fantasize that he'll be so taken with Leo's existence he'll want to come join the family. We could move to a new town together, start fresh, and have more babies.
More realistically, I imagine conceiving a second child with him to raise on my own. Ours hasn't been a particularly close relationship in the sense of swapping life stories and spending lazy afternoons with a stack of DVDs. But such details seem to pale next to the fact that we've created a child together.
I love him. It's not the kind of connection I'd searched for in the past, the romantic whirlwind that would end in registering at Target or eloping to France. It's the kind that stems from being on the receiving end of a single act of tremendous generosity. When, a couple of months in, I finally worked up the courage to ask Zachary why he agreed to do this, his answer left me no doubt that I'd made the right choice: "I just thought you'd make a really good mom." In the course of those twenty-something nights and afternoons we spent together, Zachary didn't just give me a son. He helped me to redefine the meaning of love.
©2009 Babble
About the Author
|
|
Related Articles
|
 |
Nan Mooney's third book, (Not) Keeping Up With Our Parents: The Decline of the Professional Middle Class, comes out in May. She lives in Seattle with her son Leo and lots of rain. |
|
|
-
by Jean Railla
Why today's women are choosing to have babies alone.
-
by Ondine Galsworth
To stay pregnant, my friend travels to Mexico — on foot.
-
by Ondine Galsworth
What it means to have a baby at an "advanced maternal age."
|
