It starts out innocently enough.
I have plenty of babies (four in fewer than four years, to be exact) and a full set of teeth. I have a wonderful husband and more miniature sized athletic socks in my dryer than I know what to do with. I want for nothing. Nothing of real value, that is. Everything is peachy keen. Hunky dory. We're living life, I'm wiping bottoms, my business ventures fulfill me, my husband brings me flowers about twice a year and on most nights, I brush our children's teeth before bed. We can pay our bills and the windshield on our van isn't cracked.
Plus, not to mention, my uterus is vacant for once, I'm ever so painstakingly slowly starting to be able to fit into my medium fat jeans instead of my super fat jeans, I don't have heartburn or midnight cravings. No one needs nursing every hour and everyone in our home is now mobile.
I'd like to keep the status quo. I definitely don't want to get pregnant. At all.
But then, it happens. The months tick by and before I know it, a postcard appears in my mailbox. It's from Dr. Dentin, my dentist.
(Okay, so that's not really my dentist's name. I'll keep it under wraps to protect his privacy. And also to prevent people from knowing that he has a patient as crazy as me.)
So anyway, back to the postcard. Smack dab next to the clip art image of a bright, shiny tooth is the following message:
"It's time to schedule your next cleaning!"
And I know I'm done for.
Heading to the dentist is going to make me want to get pregnant. Bear with me. I'll flesh this out for you.
You see, I know from experience that Fluoride is my aphrodisiac. And, as I said, it all starts out innocently enough. I am not pregnant with intentions to begin with. But as I imagine the smell of Fluoride in the air as I read Dr. Dentin's postcard, I know what is about to happen.
I know because each time before I go to the dentist, I take a just in case pregnancy text. Even if my husband and I have been taking extreme precautions, I still take one. Just in case. You know, all that radiation in those dental x-rays can be hard on a tiny developing baby bud. And I know, again from experience, that my dentist is going to make me fill out a questionnaire with the query Are you pregnant? on it. And even when I make it past that hurdle, I'll still be faced with the laminated placard in the exam room, bold blue letters staring back at me: Please let the hygienist know if there is a chance you are pregnant.
So, on the extremely off chance that I might somehow possibly maybe be pregnant, I always take a test before I to visit my dentist. Just in case.
And the scenario is always the same. I take the pregnancy test the day before I go to the dentist. I know it will come back negative, but still. Still, after I take it, I inspect it like I'm neurotic. I shake it like it's a Polaroid or something. I rip it apart and examine the evidence very, very closely to see if maybe, just maybe, I might be pregnant. I look so hard for a second line that I become momentarily cross eyed. I carry it around in my pocket for the next three hours to see if maybe a line appears.
And I do this all even when I didn't want to get pregnant. At least, I didn't until I took that just in case test.
That darn negative sign does it every time. No second line appears, it's guaranteed. It must be my firstborn tendencies, though, that kick in when I finally come to terms with the fact that the test was negative. I'm an overachiever or something. I just apparently cannot stand to fail a test, even if it is was one I wanted to fail! And try as I might, I am unable to control the desire to make two little lines appear next time instead of just the one.
Really, it's pathetic. What kind of reason for wanting to get pregnant is Because I want my just in case test before my dentist visit to show up positive, anyway!? But the pull is there. By the time I sit in the vinyl dentist chair the next day, I am in full blown trying to conceive mode.
Mentally, that is. Because being in any other type of mode while at the dentist's office wouldn't be very, ahem, proper.
I think and rationalize to myself as the hygienist cleans my teeth: I must not fail that test again. I am an A student. I do not fail. I will overcome!
But worry not. Eventually that Fluoride induced aphrodisiacal experience wears off. I hop off the dentist chair, pick my new toothbrush and head home. I go back to mothering my four children with my husband and being satisfied with the wonderful family we have.
Well, mostly satisfied. I won't lie and say that the just in case testing doesn't always plant a seed, however tiny, of wonder and desire in me. Desire and wonder about what it would be like to see those two lines again, and know that there is again a babe bright with tiny life inside of me.
Clearly, I need to stay away from the dentist. Well, either that, or go there a lot more often and just say to heck with societal pressures and social limitations on big families and just keep growing ours.
Time will only tell which way we'll go with that. But I do know that next month, I am scheduled to see the dentist.