By Narcissa Lyons

We’ve many of us been there.  Taken a test, rejoiced or cried at the results, decided to just carry on and see what God meant to happen.  The pregnancy test.  And all this means, with or without child, is that our life will veer one way for a while.  That if we’re seventeen and it is negative we breathe a little easier, a little forlornly at wondering how we could have been stupid enough to have gotten so close to those kind of chains.  Or at seventeen it is positive and we are immediately dread-soaked – first, to keep or not to keep it and the many ways to recover from either decision—then once decided to weigh everything, to trade teen-age angst with way-too-early-motherhood angst.

That is one picture.  There are many others.  Others of mothers that are precisely where they need to be and want to be, get seeded exactly as planned so as to have their first child on that best day of that best year.  Goes to shit after that but at least the birthday is perfect. Continue reading →