I don’t think it has anything to do with the biological clock. I think it’s more along the lines of baby envy or peer pressure.

A couple of months ago, one of my co-workers became a father. Over the next few weeks he changed his desktop wallpaper almost daily, updating it with new pictures of his adorable newborn daughter. He was exhausted from the sleepless nights, but he was proud. So proud!

His pride renewed the pride of the other two fathers in my department, and they rediscovered their love of photographing their kids and showing the pictures off to everyone in the building. I oohed and ahhed with the rest of them, but it thankfully didn’t bother me much that I didn’t have one of my own, as it would most women, or so I thought…

…until one day, one of my cousins invited me to his baby daughter’s christianing in San Jose. I was floored. He was younger than me, this boy who, along with his older brothers, had always made me laugh. He was already a father? When did this happen?

He sent me a link to his home page full of pictures and pictures of his baby, one of the cutest things I ever saw, born around the same time that my co-worker’s daughter was born. She was the newest addition to my growing list of nephews and nieces, and suddenly I didn’t want any future kids of mine to be left far behind. My cousins and I… all our kids were supposed to grow up together, in the same way that I grew up with them. I had this incredible urge to shout, “Wait for me!”

It didn’t help that the topic of large families had recently come up in conversations with other co-workers. Apparently, one of my co-workers has a family even larger than mine, and mine is pretty big. Tons of cousins and aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces and in-laws galore. That’s quite a network to have, to help support you in your time of need, and in life there is always a need.

Nearly all of my babysitters and playmates were related to me, and I was piano teacher, babysitter, and nanny to many of my younger relations as well. We have all lived in each other’s houses at one point or another, when some of us were in the midst of moving from one house to another, and we have all given each other a hand when some of us were down on our luck, by lending money, time or transportation.

We’ve even had family newsletters, which I would edit, design, print and send out after everyone submitted their stories and pictures for publication.

Somehow I’ve lost track of that. Somehow I’ve lost touch with the goings on in my family. And now this. I’m an aunt again, and my kids are being left behind.

My kids? Hold the phone. I don’t have kids yet. If I did, I would have had a very pampered breakfast in bed this morning for mother’s day, with lopsided cards written in crayon, hand-picked dandelions in a vase, burnt toast, freshly mutilated orange juice, and omelettes made with eggshells and cheese.

*Sigh*

Okay, that’s it. I know what it is now. It isn’t the biological clock or baby envy at all. It isn’t even the feeling of being left behind in my family network. I don’t really want to be a mother yet.

All I really want is breakfast in bed.

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