Tuesday
I’m wearing queasy-ease wrist bands but I’m not on a boat. They were a gift from my housemate, after the Holy Shit moment subsided and she saw that my “I’m pregnant” talk was indeed for real. It was the first pregnancy gift, and though they don’t seem to be doing much more than leaving circular indents over the veins of my thin wrists, I feel some sort of strange comfort in putting them on.
15 weeks ago today I bled like I’ve been bleeding every month since I was twelve years old. Nothing out of the ordinary. What became extraordinary was the fact that I conceived during the bleeding. Or maybe just slightly thereafter. So much for a 14 day ovulation cycle.
“Are you sitting down?” I asked Rob, over the phone, about five weeks after he’d left to return to Connecticut. “Thank you for the Christmas present that will last us both a lifetime.”
He responded with an apology. He knew I had plans, dammit, and this wasn’t in them. In fact, as much as I often thought what it would be like to grow a child inside me, I figured it just wouldn’t happen for me. That I’d eventually adopt a toddler, save myself the anxiety of crying infants that could not be cooed into calmness, of poopy diapers and floppy breasts that leaked through tee shirts.
Despite the fact that we hardly knew each other beyond the three week visit and a few months of emails and phone calls, we braced ourselves for a future that included instant family. This, we knew, was a gift.
Tags: babies, nausea, pregnant, surprise, unexpected pregnancy
