Recently reclined while feeling sad and felt a little thump under my navel. Ah…so maybe the yet-to-be-named baby boy can tell I am sad. Maybe he knows that I was moved to alumni status at the theater, simply because when I’m so tired my bones hurt and the baby weighs so heavy the last thing I could ever imagine doing is getting into my car and driving to the city for Theatersports at 10:00pm. And so, with this obvious lack of commitment I must resign myself to second class…and my picture removed from the theater wall.

I am resigned. But I’m also rallying a bit of insight here and there from other theatrical mothers. After all, isn’t there such a thing as maternity leave? Pregnancy leave? Understanding? Maybe not, but I know that there is a fierce strength with women in the theater world who are mothers.

“It’s weird,” I said to Josh, “But my life is changing rapidly and yours isn’t changing AT ALL!” I know this will be the mantra for years ahead. But then I always try and pull back and look at the BIG PICTURE: there are only so many years that one can pull this pregnancy stunt off. So many years before your time is up and you become one of those 50 year olds on Oprah weeping because you thought you had all the time in the world (“Really?” I want to say, incredulously, “Has modern science really made us believe we still have a shot at 50?”). And so, I’m taking the world up on its limited offer and trying out the whole parenting, pro-creating, birth thing. (Because I think I would be good at it…not because I’m an ego maniac and want a kid who looks like me). I’m doing a noble thing! And yet, I’ve really had to talk myself back into it lately…even going as far as reading some of my desperate journal entries from a year ago. How concerned I was! How terrified that I would be childless! How ready I was to sign up and throw away everything else that mattered!

Anyway, I don’t have much energy to fight the good fight…yet. Maybe it will take a few months or a year or two but internally I’m taking a stand: I will shake off my alumni status and return to the goddamn stage eventually. (Or at least when my maternal clock has run out).