A Girl...

Baby Dangling

Okay, so one day I noticed something "unusual"..."down there." Dr. Google assured me I was either 100% dying or 100% pregnant, so it was pretty much Choose Your Freakout Day at Chez Leah but with the added excitement of not being able to mix myself a drinky to calm the heck down.

So instead of sitting down at the writing desk with a nice whiskey sour to compose my own eulogy, I decided to look behind Curtain Number Two, which led to my sitting down at the computer with a nice cup of tea to type in a catalogue of gross-out search strings guaranteed to give a serious case of the willies to anyone who happens to browse through the history logs on my work computer from early November.

After the wise old internets confirmed that I was pregnant/dead, voila!, all of a sudden I was off balance and clumsy and hungry--nay, ravenous--and every hour that passed brought with it another headsmack of "so that's why I can't concentrate" and "so that's why I'm so weepy" and "so that's why everything has a smell and that smell is the rotting of a thousand skunks in summer" (see also: the sushi that smelled and tasted of poo, in the restaurant that reeked of backed-up sewer). All signs seemed to be arrow-shaped, neon, and pointing to my uterus and enlarged breasts. Even the math made sense--five days before X, ten days after Y, the perfect number of days since Tab A went into Slot B. (Ack! Hi, Dad!)

Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, let's paint the nursery yellow, right? Well, not so much. Because this was not how it was supposed to happen. Where were my prenatal vitamins, my central heating, my husband? Where was the exaltation in being able to tell the father--husband or not--that this might be It? In talking to myself over the days that followed, I actually used the word "hijacked" to describe my position. All I felt was consuming dread and nausea (which, of course, right?).

What's worse was that I didn't want to tell Simon. I was afraid he-who-does-not-get-mad would be mad. At me. Because it was clearly my fault. And I was afraid that everything would be ruined because (a) this is not According to The Plan and (b) in addition to being somewhat terrified about the prospect of BABY, NOW, NOT ACCORDING TO THE PLAN, PANIC, I was also kind of explosively giddy because, hey, isn't this what I've been pining over for what seems like forever? Yet, at the same time, I thought that my being even a little bit happy would make Simon even madder. I teetered between giddiness and dread for days before I said anything to him, and it was the worst thing ever because it's the first time I've kept something from him and boy, what a doozy of a secret to keep.

I told him in the parking lot of Safeway before we went in to shop, and even though I insisted that it was too early to test and that we should just wait a couple of days because it's entirely possible that I'm not pregnant, just dying, he nevertheless picked up a home test and all but squeezed my bladder with his own two hands to make me pee on the damn stick as soon as we got home, despite it being three days too soon and the entirely wrong time of day.

It was negative.

But an inconclusive negative because, like I told him, it was three days too soon and the entirely wrong time of day, which means more sticks would be peed upon in the coming hours. And of course he wasn't mad. Freaked out, sure, but not angry, and especially not at me.

Between tests (negative, negative), something strange started to happen. Simon kept the peesticks on his bedside table (in Ziploc bags) and looked at them several times a day, like he expected something to happen. When I asked him about it, he said he was honestly surprised they were negative and continued to be negative. And then he admitted that when he sat back and pictured the process of having a baby, with me, now, he realized that it was a wonderful thing to look forward to and not the end of the world as we knew it.

From that moment on, I moved through the world like I was some kind of walking, talking priceless crystal vase that contained the Elixir of All Existence. I wanted to hang a sign around my neck that read "Miracle of Nature; Out of My Way." (God help us all when I actually do get pregnant because I very well may be intolerable.)

At home when we talked about it we did so with tentative smiles, but smiles they were nonetheless. "I'm actually glad it happened this way," I said, "because if waiting three days to take a test is this hard, I can't imagine having to wait a whole month, like I would if we were actively trying." Those three days were testing my patience. Those three days were stressing me out. At the end of those three days, I was still having symptoms that, if I were actually pregnant, should have stopped by then. Perhaps I was just dying after all. Either way, I ate more vegetables.

I wrote a blog post about what it was like to see that plus sign on the peestick even though I never saw a plus sign on the peestick. As the days passed, I grew increasingly sure I was not. Oddly, Simon grew increasingly sure I was. I couldn't get a doctor to see me for another month (wtf?!) so we resolved to just sit back and wait and not get either happy or sad about either outcome, which was entirely sensible but felt horrible because what if? What if our kid is in there bobbing around while we're outside going "Baby? Meh. Is it time for Access Hollywood yet?"

Two months later, I am neither pregnant nor dead nor devastated or elated with the outcome. It was just...weird. Part of me thinks my body just got all screwed up after the stress of moving house and part of me thinks I was pregnant for a few days because what the what was up with the cravings and frequent urination? It doesn't really matter either way; it is what it is.

One thing I realized in thinking back on that week of not knowing was that I need to stop making such a big deal out of everything. Living my life should not compare to producing a Broadway musical. Everyone does not need to be in step with everyone else and the orchestra does not need to play loud enough for passersby to hear it from the street. Having a baby is serious and important and sometimes complicated, but it also can be simple and private and quiet. For a whole week Simon and I had a secret that no one else knew, and neither the situation nor either of us was subject to any outside scrutiny on the subject, whether in the form of expectations, judgements, or even a chorus of delighted squees from the internet. It was just this tiny little great big thing that was ours to do with as we pleased and it was both scary as hell and wonderful. Even though I was caught off guard and unprepared, as soon as I realized that I was nevertheless involved, I noticed I was able to loosen up about the details--about how we were going to do this and what would people say and when are we going to hit the lottery already. Paradoxically, being somewhat out of control did not make me spaz out to regain control but allowed me to relax.

I wish it were easier for me to avoid making too big a deal out of everything. Like babies and conception and weddings and engagements and houses and cars and how much eyeliner the teenage girls are wearing these days (A LOT). I tend to get tangled in details to the point that I'm completely paralyzed (I've been without a working car for over a year because I can't decide on a color!), and that's not the way to be if I want to avoid ending up five years from now living in the same cold apartment with the same "boyfriend" and no baby besides the one who smells like kibble and licks her butt, which, while not the most unpleasant of fates, is not what I want the rest of my life to look like.

Heck, even my internet boyfriend is getting married, and although it's clearly a big deal, he's proven it doesn't have to be a BIG DEAL. Hell, they've only been dating a month and yet the asking and the accepting and the planning seems to be a walk in the park with ice creams for everyone and not the big firey ball of drama I imagine. Why can't I be more like that? And why can't I pull off magenta hair like the Slackmistress?

Where do I go from here? I post a picture of Simon dangling the Baby Jesus from his nosering. Maybe he's not ready after all.

Posted by Leah at January 5, 2007 05:03 PM