T A B L E++T A L K

Is it better to have just one child, or two or more? Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of raising siblings in the Mothers area of Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

Ask Dr. Love
By Jenn Shreve
Controversial breast surgeon Susan Love takes on hormones
(06/23/98)

Turning the tables on Terry Gross
By Lori Leibovich
Salon gets personal with NPR's maestro of conversation
(06/22/98)

Don't complain. Don't explain.
By Gina Hyams
The final days of a difficult father
(06/19/98)

Don't call me Mom
By Susan McCarthy
Why I'm Susan to my kids
(06/18/98)

Are we there yet?
By Ann Hood
What had I left in the Florida of my childhood vacations that I wanted my children to find?
(06/17/98)

BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINK FEATURE ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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BY ANNE S. LEWIS | On a Thursday morning, two months before my 40th birthday, the test strip on my ovulation predictor kit registered a bright blue. That meant that the upcoming Saturday would be the likeliest time for conception. Unfortunately, while running a few days earlier, I'd taken a spill. Besides severely scraping both knees, shoulders and arms, I'd somehow managed to break my nose, which I was scheduled to have reset that very afternoon. Ordinarily, the worst would have been over when my nose was audibly snapped back into place. But given the timing, there was a need for further damage control.

I perfunctorily nodded my assent when the doctor informed me that my nose could not be touched for two weeks and that I must sleep in a reclining chair for that period of time. But I adamantly drew the line when he proposed a precautionary round of two medications that I knew were contraindicated for pregnancy.

Relieved at having narrowly averted a derailment of my urgent agenda, I drove home, the throbbing in my nose increasing as the anesthetic wore off. Later, surveying the damage in the bathroom mirror, I snapped at my husband when he suggested that with all my injuries perhaps we'd best just skip this month. It was only when a friend joked that she'd like to be a fly on the wall during the weekend baby-making session -- with the prospective mother mercifully free of zygote-imperiling pharmaceuticals but racked with pain from knee to untouchable nose -- that I realized how obsessed I'd become on the eve of my 40th birthday. That ovulation kit was a dangerous technology in the hands of a woman who had hit the snooze-control button on her biological clock once too often.

Some women use the conventional wisdom that there is no good time to have a baby to justify taking the plunge sooner rather than later. Not me. When my life took a turn for the interesting in my mid-30s, the time I'd penciled in for starting a family, I simply rescheduled it -- indefinitely.

When 39 tapped me on the shoulder -- 40 was the absolute deadline I'd set for myself -- I dutifully cleared my desk and joined the ranks of women whose ambivalence about motherhood magically resolves at the moment that an alternative turns into a last chance. Now we would go after it with a vengeance. And were we systematic -- not only in our attempts to get pregnant but, once that mission was achieved, in flawlessly navigating the perfect gestation.

The last time I had taken the pulse of this group, we were in our early 30s -- many of us between marriages, others fearful of growing old alone -- and consumed with the day-to-day Sturm und Drang of relationships with men whose emotional baggage often exceeded the customary allowance. Curiously, though, upon entering our mid-30s, we either promptly met the perfect man or laid down our swords with our longtime partners in combat. At 35-plus, we were no longer talking on the phone about dating strategies; now we exchanged information about amniocentesis and laparoscopy.

N E X T+P A G E: "It looked pretty blue today, John."