Socializing and jumping ship

Found out today that Friday’s NT scan will cost $291.  I can handle that.  I was afraid it might be thousands, in which case I would cancel and just take my chances.  It sucks that we have to make a special inquiry just to find out what things will cost – that’s my biggest complaint about Kaiser, that the doctors don’t have access to costs when they order something so you know what you’re getting into.  That stupid glucose nightmare cost me $85.  If anyone had told me one day I’d pay someone $85 to gag me with a bottle of orange glucose drink I would never have stopped laughing.

I have turned some sort of a corner with the illness.  Not that’s it’s gone away – not by a long shot – it just FEELS different.  My half sister described her morning sickness from a decade ago as having a color and a feeling – it felt sweet and sticky and with a pink and green color.  This is amazingly accurate.  For me it feels like someone takes a big paint brush and douses my head with a syrupy substance – sometimes just a light coating leaving me a little sticky; sometimes a huge glop that knocks me down on the floor, struggling to pull my limbs up out of the quick sand.  Today it’s a light coating.  As in it’s always with me, but I can go about my day.  Last night it was a huge glop and I was stuck in bed from about 6 PM.  But it’s different from before in that I no longer feel ill right from the moment I wake up (it usually hits in the evenings now), for the most part I can eat regular meals, and behind it I have *some* measure of energy and “get up and go” which has been completely absent for the last two months.  The idea of spending all day in bed is no longer appealing.  So there has been a slight turnaround, although the day that the sickly feeling leaves entirely will be one of pure jubilation, believe me!

Spent the weekend at friends’ parties, which is the most social I’ve been since my event in July.  As suspected, unfortunately my inability to participate in the physical stuff (roller skating) has tipped a few people off to my condition.  Nobody said anything to me about it, but the rumors are spreading.  Which totally sucks, but I guess I have to get over it – there will be no surprise announcements.  Now I am trying to figure out the appropriate time to sit down the few friends I want to tell privately – but that time never comes, because we’re always in groups in loud situations with lots of distractions.  I still don’t know what to do about this.  I’ll have to think of a solution.

Spent yesterday at a friend’s one-year-old’s birthday party.  And I know this friend reads this blog so please understand that I was happy to be there and had a good time, so what I’m about to say is entirely my own mental problem and has nothing to do with you and your lovely children.  But I get completely freaked out when I’m surrounded by parents and small kids.  I’ve always felt this way just because of the awkwardness factor – it’s never fun to be the one single, childless person surrounded by married couples and their progeny – but I always thought once I was pregnant and “in the game” that my feelings would change.  Nope.  In fact they’ve only escalated.  I see women ripping their child’s diaper off and I think “I don’t want to do that.”  I see mothers yelling after their kid to stop running and the kid doesn’t stop running and I think “I don’t want to do that”.  I see a mother intervening when someone else’s kid takes her kid’s toy and trying to be equitable, “let Bobby play with it for a little while,” and I think “I don’t want to do that”.  In fact, I pretty much don’t want to do anything having to do with having a  baby or a little kid.  Can’t I just give birth to a ten-year-old who can make intelligent conversation and sit quietly and read books?  Do I have to have the screaming toddler first?  Will I feel differently when it’s my own kid who I’m so in love with he could shit on the floor and I’d think it was beautiful?  I sure hope so.  Because right now I don’t want to do any of this.  It just all looks utterly exhausting and not rewarding at all.  Maybe this is the main problem of having kids when you’re older.  You’re just so invested in your own comfort and ease of experience that it’s hard to wrap your mind around being truly unselfish and sacrificing. 

It’s funny though because when I think of myself alone with my kid I have no bad feelings about it.  Feeding, teaching, singing, swimming in the pool.  It all sounds really lovely.  It’s when I think of being in groups that I start to clam up.  And yet I know it’s super important for the kid to be in groups, to be social. So it’ll probably be just an issue of me having to get over my natural shyness and fear of groups for the better good.  Or maybe not – maybe just meeting with small groups of people I really like might be the way to go.  Either way I’m sure I’ll figure it out.

Carpooled with one older lady friend of mine to Ventura Saturday and told her – she was of course completely delighted and happy for me.  She said what I so love to hear (my cousin said this to me, too), that it’ll be the best thing I’ve ever done. 

I was greeted at the kid’s party by the only other childless person there, who said, “hey, other non-baby having person.”  When one more childless person arrived she looked at me in that conspiratorial way, “we’re the only ones not in this club.”  Oh, the betrayal.  That’s what it is.  I’ve betrayed the small handful of childless women I know – I’ve jumped ship.  It’s a very strange, bittersweet feeling.