So last night the two friends who were on to me at the skating party cornered me and I had to confess. As much as telling them while standing in a mall with a paper plate of banana cream pie in my hand wasn’t how I pictured it, I have to say their interest and enthusiasm was very sweet and I was touched by how happy they were for me. For sure I’ll admit the “mixed reactions” I expected so far have not been accurate at all – pretty much everyone knows now, and everyone has been (as far as I can tell) 100% happy and excited for me. I guess you don’t know how loved you are until situations like this come up.
Earlier in the day I had had brunch with a friend (managed a whole plate of huevos rancheros! But then had to lie down for several hours after) who has a seven year old boy and has had many subsequent miscarriages. I wasn’t sure how she’d feel about it, but she was happy for me, too, and told me she has tons of baby stuff she can give me – strollers, furniture, toys, clothes, etc etc. I went home with visions in my head of all the awesome free stuff. I seriously don’t think I’m going to have to buy one thing for this kid.
But the funny thing is I kind of do want to buy stuff for the kid. I want the fun of walking into a store and personally selecting neat little things. I can always do this for a registry of course, and that’ll be fun. But the part of me that needs to nest wants to go out and buy stuff myself, not just take gifts and hand-me-downs. One thing I’m determined to get is a vintage baby book. It’s funny because I keep watching them on e-bay and then letting them pass. There’s still a little fear in me that the minute I buy one something is going to go wrong. It kind of reminds me of my favorite book title, “Don’t Get Too Comfortable”. Many of the books have “The Story of Our Baby” on the cover and then pages about the father’s family tree, “Daddy Remembers” and things like that. Not sure how to fill in those pages! I feel like buying one and putting an asterisk next to “our” on the cover and writing “and by “our” I mean “my””.
I keep thinking I am in the clear to start planning and buying…but the reality is I do have one more major hurdle coming up Friday, the NT scan. Now as noted I’m not particularly worried about it – I sort of plan on ignoring the results, actually – BUT it is also another confirmation that the baby is still alive and progressing properly. I haven’t seen him/her since 8 weeks. A lot could have gone wrong since then…but based on how nauseated I continue to feel, I just doubt it. It is odd to be technically three months’ pregnant and have no physical signs, though, even though I know that’s normal – when you don’t show and your body, other than being tired and sick, is the same as it ever was, it’s kind of hard to believe you’re actually pregnant. The word sticks in my throat when I say it – STILL – after having had this plan now for nearly a year, trying for a few months, a miscarriage, and now a particularly gnarly first trimester. Still can’t really say the “p” word without it feeling very strange on my tongue. There’s a big part of me that still feels I’m just playing at all this and none of it is really happening, like how sometimes when I leave for a trip early in the morning I pretend I’m fleeing an abusive relationship and am just escaping before “he” wakes up. Weird, I know, but this is how I entertain myself. Maybe I have lived alone too long.
So I keep telling myself that once I see the baby one more time I know I can relax and start planning, but I know that’s all bullshit. There is so much more still to get through – oh yeah, and that whole “labor” thing which I am still pretending won’t ever actually happen. I have to say I’m pleased that so far there has been minimal anxiety – I read about women completely flipping out before every test or ultrasound. I haven’t had this; I was scared the first couple of weeks, absolutely, of miscarrying again, but then as every day went by with no bleeding I was able to relax. And now at twelve weeks (tomorrow) I have a hard time believing something is going to go horribly wrong; the odds are just against it. If I’m going to worry I’d rather worry about things that are likely (like labor, difficulty breastfeeding, being uncomfortable in the 3rd trimester, etc).
I asked myself the question the other day, “are you disappointed in the way this pregnancy has gone so far?” and I have to say the answer is absolutely not. I knew the possibility of being very sick was there – although my non-reaction to the hcg shot that time fooled me into thinking I might not react badly to pregnancy hormones. I figure there’s a spectrum between the women who sail through with no sickness and those who vomit constantly and have to be hospitalized, and I am somewhere in the middle. So, not good, but not the worst, either. But I accept it as part of the deal, absolutely. I often ask myself if I’d had a picture of how bad the nausea would be would I have gone ahead anyway…and of course the answer is yes. A little nausea vs. never having a child? Screw that. I mean, this will be over one day, and like most women, I’ll forget how hard core it was and just remember it as, “yeah, I was pretty sick the first three months.” Something tells me I may even try for #2 one day, forgetting those on-the-bathroom-floor-with-the-cardboard-thing moments. Although I still worry about having to take care of an infant in this condition. My poor dog hasn’t even been walked in days and last night pooed on the carpet in protest. Still on the fence about #2 (no pun intended).
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