When my baby sister Megan got married, she wanted to put off having kids for as long as possible. Megan talked about not even starting a family until she was in her 30s. She was about to begin a PhD program in anthropology and had years of field work in weird places ahead of her. Her area of study — and the research agenda she had proposed in order to win a highly competitive graduate fellowship — required her to live for long periods of time in far away villages in poor countries around the world, the kinds of places with no electricity and no running water and lots women whose sole purpose in life seemed to be having as many babies as possible. It was those women that Megan had proposed to study.
There was no way Megan could be pregnant or give birth while traveling back and forth to places like that on the other side of the world. In order to keep her fellowship and get her PhD, she had practically speaking committed to be child-free for a very long time.
She had worked hard in school and was always the overachieving "smart one" in our family. Megan thought that a PhD was more important than having babies, but I knew Megan was being foolish. She was barely 22 and hardly old enough to make that kind of major life decision.
Megan's mega-brain may have thought she wasn't ready for mommyhood, but I was sure the parts of Megan that made her a woman had a very different and a very special plan for her future. I decided that it was up to me to give Megan's body a chance to blossom into the full potential of her womanhood.
Megan married her college boyfriend Jack — the first and only guy she had ever had sex with — right after their college graduation. With some help from me, just two months later Megan was on her back and spreading her legs for Jack to breed her the way nature intended, on the same night her fertility monitor said it was the best time for Jack to get her pregnant.
Of course by the next morning Megan's high IQ was in a panic about the seed her husband had planted in her, but by then her ovaries had completed their job, and soon a new life was growing inside her.
They say timing is everything, and it really was perfect timing, because her due date for Wendy, the little baby girl Jack made inside her that night, fell within just a few weeks after Megan was supposed to start three months of field work in a remote village on some island in New Guinea. Since she couldn't travel and couldn't do the field study, she had to give up her graduate fellowship, and with no money for grad school she had to leave after one semester. Instead of studying the native women in New Guinea, she got to learn first-hand all about breast feeding and a crying baby and stretch marks.
And with some more help from me, her little girl Wendy got a very special gift for her first birthday — a baby brother who arrived just two weeks after Wendy turned one. Megan's body really was quite the baby making machine.
Megan had convinced the school to defer her fellowship for one academic term, but her "oops" pregnancy with Wendy's little brother Jimmy put an end to that. She didn't even realize she was pregnant with Jimmy at first because it happened so fast she never got her first post partum period. She found out the good news that Jack had put another baby in her at her six month mommy check up, right after she had gone back to school to start the fall semester.
Timing really is everything, right? Her advisor at school was completely fed up at that point, so she told Megan to "just go home and make more babies" when Megan tried to get a second deferral of her fellowship. I thought that was excellent advice!
Megan really was heartbroken at first. She had worked so hard to get into a top PhD program. If she had picked a less challenging program, having a baby (or two) might not have been such a big deal, but Megan had committed to an extraordinarily tough research agenda that depended on her spending years traveling around the world and living for months at a time surrounded by native women running around half naked, pregnant, and barefoot.
After dropping out to have two babies, she could not get anyone to take her seriously. Try explaining in an interview that you are super committed to school but somehow are so inept at birth control that you had two babies only one year apart.
Megan couldn't even find a job. Who wants to hire a 23 year old with an undergraduate degree in anthropology and no practical skills? There was no way for her to make enough even to cover daycare.
Finally Megan accepted her new life as a barefoot and pregnant stay at home mom. She is now pregnant with their fourth baby and showing the cutest baby bump, and her oldest child Wendy is still not even four years old. My new nickname for Megan — Mommy Bunny — seems perfect, and that is what we all call her now.
Although Wendy and her brother Jimmy took a lot of planning on my part to help bring into this world, I haven't had to lift a finger to help get Megan pregnant with babies 3 and 4. She was so depressed after her "accident" getting pregnant with Jimmy, it was not hard for me to convince her to give up entirely on birth control. She has no plans for the future at all now, and her whole life is defined by what happens when she spreads her legs for her husband Jack to make another baby in her, just the way nature intended for all good little mommy bunnies. Her ovaries — and Jack's cock — are now completely in charge of her life.
Megan admitted to me she has has had a real period only twice in the years since she became pregnant with Wendy. Jack's swimmers are always waiting there to do their thing as soon as she ovulates again, so she just never has a chance for her body take a break from making babies and nursing.
They are as poor as church mice because Jack is still in grad school — he has a year or two left before he gets his PhD in chemistry — but the rest of the family helps out when we can.
Her days of books and research are gone for good, and she really has no need at all for that third digit in her IQ. She doesn't even read anything written for adults any more — she's too busy nursing in tandem babies two and three while pregnant with baby number four. I bet even the native women in New Guinea can't do that!
They are lucky to have married student housing on campus. Megan still runs into her old teachers and classmates sometimes. She says the men usually smirk and ask her when her next baby is due. I am surprised they even recognize her — her appearance is so different now — but that is a different part of the story.
First, I should explain how I helped Megan become the eager little baby breeder that Mother Nature intended her to be. It was not easy and took a lot of planning and a little luck, too.
Before Megan and Jack got married, our oldest sister had a cancer scare and had to have a hysterectomy. Thankfully she had started her family when she was still in her early 20s, and it was a good life lesson for me about how important it was for Megan to start her family right away, too.
Megan took a different lesson from big sis's cancer — a few months before the wedding she decided to go all organic and start an all natural life style. That meant stopping hormonal birth control. She was so neurotic about not getting pregnant that she and Jack had been using both the pill and condoms, so I was really surprised, but of course I thought going off the pill was a wonderful idea for Megan.
I offered to help by buying her an expensive digital fertility monitor, and I bought one, too, so we could "learn how to use it together." I didn't really need one since I had made my own husband get snipped after our first and only child — one and done for me! — but we had never shared the news of his vasectomy with the rest of the family. It was none of their business, right?
Charting together meant I had a good chance to keep track of Megan's fertility. I bought her some ovulation test sticks so she could confirm each month that she was ovulating exactly when her fertility monitor said she would. At 22, fit, and healthy, her body was like clockwork. After getting the hang of it, I knew exactly when Megan was in prime mommy time each month.
Like I said, Megan was really neurotic about birth control. She never let Jack anywhere near her without a condom. She had heard all the jokes about natural family planning and did not want to take any chances with her big trip to New Guinea coming up. Jack had to wear a condom AND pull out. And he got no sex at all on her fertile days. Instead Megan would have him go down on her and then give him a hand job. Poor Jack never got to have real sex with Megan — you know, no condom, no pulling out. And she said giving blow jobs was gross; her mouth never went down there for Jack. He must have been one frustrated guy.
About two months after they were married, I came up with an excuse to stay with them for a few days around the time I knew Megan would be ovulating.
First, I paid a visit to my hippie friend to stock up on some cannibis oil. I knew I would need some help to get Megan in the mood for the horizontal baby dance with Jack, especially since she would know just as well as me that she was ripe to be fertilized. Megan hardly ever had even one glass of wine and I am sure had never gotten drunk much less high. She was going to be in for quite a ride.
Once at sis's place, I had plenty of time alone while they were out. I checked her fertility monitor, and sure enough Megan was all set to ovulate in 48 hours. Perfect! The next day, I went looking for their condoms. You can learn a lot by going through someone's box of condoms, but more about that later.
I put a few of their condoms in my suitcase as a little souvenir, threw the rest in the neighbor's trash can, and put back an empty box in their bathroom. As I dropped the condoms in the trash one by one, I counted out the nine months until Megan's baby would come and her big important field study in New Guinea would have to happen without her.