Baby Mine

I was pregnant once.  I knew it almost the moment it happened, well before it was detectable.  And I also knew in that moment that I did not want a baby, and certainly not a baby with this immature man.  I don't regret not having that baby.  A child who is not truly wanted starts life with a huge disadvantage.
I have never really wanted to be a mother.  Perhaps if I had met Sweet Hubby during my fertile years, I might have yearned to have children with him.  Except for the fact that SH doesn't really like kids. 
But even though I didn't want to be a mother, I know for certain that if I had ever become pregnant and decided to bear that child, even with the intent to give it to a better home, I know that I would have fallen in love with it as I felt it grow in my body, and probably wouldn't have been able to part with it.
I think this is why maternal connection so often seems stronger and more at ease than paternal.  Mothers are always nine months ahead of fathers in learning to truly bond with this new being, nine months ahead in starting this precious relationship.  I wonder if maybe pregnancy is too abstract for men, so when baby is born, it probably seems abstract, too.
Maybe not.  For eons men have been evolving as the protectors of their families, just as women have, and maybe the instinct has been bred into men to decide very quickly (in best cases) that this is their future, their flesh, their helpless child, themselves made new.
I'll never know what it's like to be any kind of parent, and I don't regret that.  But I sure would like to have known what it's like.