Invasion of the Body Snatchers

I don't remember when I became obsessed with having a child. I know that I always always pictured myself having kids. I always said "When I have kids...." For years, I loved reading parenting books with titles like "How to Raise an Empathic Child" or "Games to Teach Your Child Creativity." I might have read every baby name description from A to Z. Those things were always fun for me. But I don't remember when the desire to have a baby started to take over my mental energy. I don't remember when it started to feel (as a commentor put it) like I didn't have a choice in the matter. Of course I have choices about what I DO. But I don't feel like I have a choice about how badly I want to do this. And I don't remember when not having a child started to cause me pain.

When I went to see the therapist about the miscarriage, Lovely Partner had a great insight. She said it was a good idea for me to get help with grief about the miscarriage and the stress of TTC. However, she also thought that I needed support because I was experiencing a radical shift in my identity due to the intensity of my desire to mother. She wasn't saying it was a bad thing, just that psychologically its a big switch to wake up and feel very incomplete about something you didn't feel incomplete about before.

The other day, I was trying to place the time it started to feel so intense. I remembered when Lovely Partner and I went to a ceremony that included children singing Christmas music. I remembered that I was crying because I was so sad not to have a kid singing up there. When I first thought of this memory, I was thinking that I was so sad at the time because of the miscarriage. But then I remembered that it was last December (Christmas music should've been my clue!) That means it was before we even started TRYING.

So yeah I can't explain it, but I want to have a baby real bad.