During puberty, you come to this realisation. It comes out of nowhere, years after the Welcome to Womanhood videos where mothers in aprons make pancakes in the shape of a uterus. It becomes real, this idea that you could make a little person. A little you.

That young, you don't yet understand the complications they package up with a baby. You don't think about having to have a man to help with at least the initial stages, or how years later your own piece of clay will take on attributes you never gave it. No, you want to be a single mommy and work where you live and teach it everything and be its best friend and buy it a toddler-sized leather jacket. You want to need no one else, and have a child who feels the same.

All this before you learn to rebel, and later why you had to do it. Before your first love, the first time, before you can imagine a boy as anything but a creature that at sporadic intervals creates a strange abstract feeling in a place that used to be little more than numb.

You get older and the regularity of these thoughts is flawed, they come fewer and further. Now you think of love. Passionate love, true love, star-crossed love, unrequited love.. Marriage and babies come secondarily, a package deal. Pregnancy is something you start to fear, with pieces missing. You wait, nervous, unable to sleep at night, praying for what is a hassle most months. You play out the scenarios of abortion, adoption, fingering Mr. Daddy.

The romantic notions of single motherhood, idyllic existence with a perfect replica, disappeared. Fetal alcohol syndrome, fatal miscarriage, welfare checks, three quarters time-off, missed promotions, white stretch pants, trailer parks, child abuse.. No, the mommy fantasy is not as much fun as it used to be.