Blue or Pink States

"It was perfect because she was born September 30th in an off year," he says. "And it was perfect because she was born when Congress was almost out of session."

Laine Kaplowitz, 30, a publicist for Landmark Theatres, is married to Rick Klein, who writes the Note, ABC's political blog. Their wedding was in 2005, an off year, naturally. As for children?

"All my friends are having kids now and they're like, 'Oh, when are you guys going to get on board?' " Kaplowitz says. But "I'm not going into labor and having him not be there because the big story is about to happen."

(Though babies born to political parents around Election Day do yield great hospital room capers. More on this later.)

Michael Udwin, an obstetrician and gynecologist affiliated with Georgetown University Hospital, says timing is a huge topic among his patients, who try to push their pregnancies up or back depending on the political cycle. But their field poses geographic difficulties in addition to temporal ones. Udwin's political patients travel a lot and are not always in the same city as their spouses when they want to start trying. Even in this modern age, proximity to one's partner is still a prerequisite for making babies, at least the natural way.

"I joke about saying, 'If you're in Philly, he's in D.C., you guys can meet in between just so you can go ahead and start to have your family,' " Udwin says.

Rob Autry, a Republican pollster, married his wife, who works for the State Department, in 2002. When they decided to have their first kid, "we made sure that we weren't going to accidentally have the child in November or October of an election year," Autry says. "We looked at the schedule and said, 'We can't get pregnant before this date. . . . This is when we can do it and be in the clear.' "

The 2000 presidential recount taught our nation -- and its would-be parents -- that elections may not end when they're supposed to. Therefore, Autry says, November of an election year can no longer be considered a safe month in which to have a child. He and his wife aimed for December 2004 or later, and through what he calls "a little bit of luck and a little bit of planning," they managed to have their first son in January 2005. This gave Autry a grace period after the election to do things he'd put on hold, like help get the baby's room ready and go to a birthing class with his wife.

"Wednesday after the election in 2004, I wake up and my wife is giving me a list of 15 things we have to do now," Autry says.

The election cycle so dominates the lives of political people that it is like the seasons, a way of thinking about the future and ordering the past. Political people vacation in August, when Congress is out, or in the fall, after elections. They marry in odd-numbered years.

A Republican media consultant calls a reporter in a panic to correct something he had said a few days before. He was married in April 2005, not April 2007.

"Everything runs on two-year cycles and they run together," he says, asking that his name not be used in connection with this mistake to preserve marital harmony.