Babies

I imagine finding out I was pregnant was similar to how Dorothy felt when she first woke up in Oz. Overnight, I had been magically transported from the familiar territory of “Just Me, Myself and I,” to a new, unknown land called “Us,” where something was living inside my abdomen. This realization froze me to the toilet, pee-stick in hand. The moment had no Hallmark warm and fuzzy. There were no tears, or squeals of joy. Silently something shifted, and it was immediately understood I was now the keeper of a tiny ball o’ cells, for which I was responsible. In the seconds following the discovery of two pink lines, my brain actually completed about 3,587 different thoughts about what this meant, all culminating in “And somehow the baby has to come out...”

But before I could really get ahead of myself, I needed to tell my lovely husband. While I was taking the only test that would actually change my life, he was busy putting the finishing touches on a lecture he was giving to 300 undergrads in a few short hours. This was a first for him, and to say he was nervous would be an understatement. Knowing this, I thought about not telling him until after he finished, but fun fact about me, I am incapable of keeping secrets. Undecided if I would spare him the extra stress or spill the beans, I washed my hands and headed upstairs. I (we?) walked into the kitchen with what I thought was a neutral look on my face, but in actuality was probably a wide-eyed look of panic and excitement, similar to what a raccoon looks like in a live-trap: “Yay! Achieved peanut butter! But now stuck?!...” He looked up at me, dropped his shoulders in disbelief, and said four words I’ll never forget: “Shut the fuck up.” While it wasn’t exactly the reaction I was looking for, it was also totally acceptable, even though I had actually not said anything. It was shocking news, and people say funny things under duress. He stood up, gave me a hug, and I suggested we pretend this didn’t happen. He then went to work, and I went to get a hair cut. It was as if nothing had changed, but everything had changed all at the same time.

That night we processed it a little more, and were both over the moon thinking about all the possibilities. What would it look like? When could we take it for casual walks around the neighborhood? Could it hear my thoughts? It was more exciting than I could have possibly imagined, and I forced my excitement on people who I felt should be equally as exuberant. Like my sister, who was going through the final stages of an unexpected illness with their beloved family dog. I called her, and she was crying telling me about the grim prognosis they had just received. In what may have been my most dismal show of humanity yet, I hit her with a one-two punch that went a little like: “That totally sucks. You should put him to sleep. But guess what?! I’m pregnant!” If saying rude, horrible, untimely things to people you love was an Olympic sport, I had just completed a 4 minute mile. She tearfully said “Congrats,” but probably thought “You will ruin that child if you can’t learn to control your impulses, you insensitive little Twit.”

Breaking the news to other family members was also somewhat of a mixed bag. Some were decidedly more enthusiastic from the get-go, while others said things like, “Is this really the way you are telling me you are pregnant?” But eventually, everybody caught baby fever and shared in our joy. And by “joy” I mean frequent, unexplainable, bouts of crying and ragehate directed at things like the toaster oven, and the latch on the screen door. Other than my new-found abhorrence of inanimate objects around the house, in the days following the positive test, nothing really felt that different. “See!” I thought to myself, “This is a cake walk! Oooh cake… I should get some cake. I deserve a cake. Wait, why don’t we have any cake? Oh my God, why hasn’t somebody baked me a freaking cake? Hello?! I’m BUILDING A BABY OVER HERE!! I’m going to freak out if I don’t get a cake in 3…2…OOOH! We have CHEESE! I will eat all the cheese.”

I would be lying if I said I always wanted a baby. I was pretty on the fence about it, and felt I could honestly be happy long-term with, or without one. What I wanted was a dog. Badly. I had names picked out, and dreams of my dog and I becoming a talented and sought after search and rescue team. One where we always found the victim before it was too late, and people chanted our names like in the end of that movie “Rudy.” But alas, I already had three unruly cats and a husband who was decidedly less enthusiastic about converting our small apartment into an animal shelter, so a dog was out of the question. What he wanted, eventually, was a baby. Because why commit to 12-15 years of care to something that will worship you, when you can commit your whole life to raising something that will eventually, without question, tell you they hate you? I begged him, I pleaded with him, I pouted, but he wouldn’t budge on the dog. “One day we will have a baby” was his line of thinking. “One day I will have a marvelous dog” was mine.

So there we were. Years passed, and we plugged along happily married with our three cats and our respective future mammal plans on the shelf. We slept! We drank beer! We ate out! It was wonderful. Then one day, my best friend moved far away, and I had what WebMD would call a “quarter-life crisis.” This culminated in me drinking a full bottle of wine, and half a bottle of champagne with a neighbor friend who had a new baby. While crying about how much I missed my buddy, my neighbor said “You should have a baby!” to which I responded “It’s not the right time.” And then the skies parted, time slowed down and she said: “It’s never the right time.” For some reason this struck me as especially profound, and her words echoed around the room. I could see them, dramatically floating above her head like in a comic strip. All of the sudden, I needed a baby, like right-now-this-very-second-I-can’t-possibly-wait-any-longer-I-must-have-a-baby! What she said just seemed so true, except in my head it got a little jumbled and quickly became “Now is the best and only time to have a baby.” I glided gracefully home (or stumbled, I don’t remember that part as clearly as I do the rest), and pranced (bounced) downstairs to where my husband lay sleeping and declared: “We should have a BABY!” He sat up, wide-eyed and suspicious the house had been broken into, and watched me crawl into bed and pass out.

The next day brought a rip-roaring hangover, and a new feeling: I need a baby. I NEEDED the baby. Baby, baby, babybabybabybabybaabbby. It was all I could think about. This was strange, as prior to this day, I had never had these kinds of feelings before- and feelings they were. I felt the need for this baby in my bones, and in my stomach and in my heart. It was as if my neighbor had pulled some sort of black magic voodoo trick, and jump-started my biological clock while I was innocently drinking heavily on her couch. It was all I could think about (baby), and all I wanted to talk about (baaabbbyyy) with my husband who (BABY!) handled it like a champ. We talked, he said “It’s not the best time” (he was a year away from finishing his PhD), so I said in my most confident and knowing voice, “It’s never the right time.” But because I am not a voodoo witch, the skies didn’t part, time did not slow down, and the words did not dance above my head in dramatic fashion. Not having the same effect on him, I sweetened the deal with: “Honey, it takes the average couple 6 months to conceive!” which gave him the illusion of time. “Even if we get pregnant right away, which is like, super unlikely, 9 months is basically a year,” I said. As if during those 9 months you have nothing to do to prepare for the birth of the child, and life continues on as normal with zero interruptions.

After our big chat, two very surprising things happened: 1). My very rational, patient husband agreed to my irrational, and impatient plan to reproduce post-haste, and 2). We got pregnant, post-haste. With the appearance of two pink lines, all of a sudden the gravity of the situation hit me. Sitting on the toilet, pee-covered stick in hand I thought “I’m going to be a Mommy.” Then, in the back of my head a tiny voice chuckled: “Gottcha, Sucker” said my Ovaries to my Brain. “Ruh-roh,” my Brain replied. “Ruh-roh.”