E-Mail This Article to a Friend Mother lode I’ve been through the wedding wave before, but this time is different. Very different. BY KRIS FRIESWICK

Have you ever seen a stampede of wildebeests? I haven’t either, but I’ve seen the closest thing: women in their 40s planning their weddings. Like stampeding wildebeests, they are gripped by the same sort of mysterious imperative that compels animals to rush madly in a single direction, mowing down any and all obstacles. For these women, that imperative is a baby.

Manic brides are a cliché, but these women — and I know my share — are under an entirely different kind of spell. They’re all over 40, and their bio-clocks are ticking so loudly that sometimes I can’t hear what they’re saying. As such, their engagements have been a bit truncated (two months, in one case). They’ve made it quite clear that the reason they’re sprinting down the aisle is so they can start a family as soon as possible (sometime between the photos and the reception, one imagines). I understand the rush. I just never thought I’d be watching it quite so late in the game.

I’ve been through the wedding wave before, of course, but this time is different. Very different. These new brides and I had made it through four decades of life without much interest in procreating. Okay, no interest. We bonded through our confusion about why so many talented, brilliant women were willing to exchange their hard-won careers for the opportunity to be spit-up on regularly. Maternal instinct had marched past our doors without knocking.

These women and their great menfolk were supposed to follow my husband and me into a peaceful, rich, well-traveled, child-free middle age and retirement. They were supposed to be the couples with whom we would travel for weekends in Paris, on languorous fall breaks in wine country, and for two-week stints in a Cape Cod beach house, cooking gourmet, reading Proust, and drinking highballs. I thought we had an agreement about this. But it looks like maternal instinct doubled back. Our ranks are growing thin. And I’m not sure how long those remaining on this side of the great divide can hold out as they watch their comrades fall to the lure of cute, hand-knit booties.

The bitch of it is, I thought I was through with this stuff. I thought I’d finally lost my last cool couple-friends to diapers. The first exodus stampeded off during my early 30s, decimating a social world just finding its feet and fueled, finally, by a regular salary. That group of friends, overwhelmed with their new families, dropped completely out of our lives, as though they’d left the planet.

But there were other childless friends, and we bonded over how we would never, ever lose touch, no matter how many babies came between us. Smugly, we thought we were better than that.

Then we reached our late 30s, and another round of weddings and pregnancies hit. This group, I thought, surely would be the last. We were, after all, in our late 30s, the very definition of late bloomers. These were the women who had put off childbearing until it was more like a science experiment than a natural human function. When they finally gave birth, it really was a modern miracle, and you can’t expect people raising miracle babies to spend much time with their friends. They, too, dropped off the social radar screen, appearing only come December, when holiday cards would show up featuring that year’s adorable photo of " Miracle Child in Santa Hat " or " Miracle Child in Front of Menorah. " I mounted them all dutifully on what became known as the Great Baby Wall.

This wall — plastered with photos of other people’s kids — is the view as one’s friends begin, inexorably, to drift away into the next phase of their lives. If you want kids, it’s like a big poster advertising the world waiting for you on the other side. If you’ve chosen not to bring kids into the world, you learn fast that it is the wall that effectively separates you from them and their new world of play dates, minivans, and peanut allergies. You might not want to admit it at first, and you make a great effort to keep up the relationships, but more often than not, the wall becomes too great an obstacle. It is a sad but inevitable turn in that great cycle of life, you reason, as you delete yet another couple from the list of potential summer-house-rental partners.

But all the Zen psychobabble in the world could not have prepared me for this recent stampede. I thought we had safely passed the age at which a man with good genes, high-income potential, good taste in suits, and an affinity for puppies could change our minds about procreating. I thought that these dear friends would be the few stalwarts who would hold out against the societal pressure to fulfill what we have long been taught is our only true destiny as females. I thought time and age had finally settled the issue.

I thought we were in the clear.

The clear, as you may have noticed, is much farther away than it used to be. Three decades ago, very few women had the physical capacity or interest to have their firstborn at 42 or later. But careers and modern medicine have made childbearing both a desire and a medical possibility for a population of women who 40 years ago would have been grandmas — or spinsters.

The upcoming weddings will most likely be the last time these friends will share a cocktail with me for the next 10 months to five years, depending on how long it takes them to conceive. This is something that they want very, very much, for reasons that are still not entirely clear to me and may never be. Of course I’m glad their dreams are coming true. I’m amazed they are willing to begin this arduous, joyful journey so far into their lives. I wish them easy pregnancies, healthy babies, happy marriages, and fulfillment. I still have a few holdouts on this side of the wall. We will all wave happily and genuinely as the limo pulls away, with an undeniable touch of sadness in our hearts.

And I will make some more space on the Great Baby Wall, and make peace with the fact that I won’t see these great women for a while. It’s a routine I’ve come to know well. I just never thought it would last so long.

Send birth announcements to Kris Frieswick at k.frieswick@verizon.net