I’ll be honest, when the spotting started I thought “oh, maybe this is normal, maybe it’s just spotting, that happens sometimes, right?” But when it turned into a full blown heavy period, confirmed with the fatty NOT PREGNANT sign reading on a pregnancy test (yes, I wasted $6 to confirm that I was having my fucking period and not just spotting-enough-to-need-5-super-plus-tampons-today), I started second-guessing everything. Was it because I bought books last week that explain where babies come from and how to explain a sibling to a toddler? Was it because I told Boof that I thought I might be and what it might mean either way? Was it because I spent my precious 50-therapy-minutes talking about all the what-ifs of a yes-test or a no-test and how it’d impact the next school year. Was it because I had hoped too much? Was it because I told someone that I actually wanted a girl? Was it because I have stopped identifying as a Christian and God is punishing me? Was it because I drank 3 glasses of wine last week at a dinner party? Was it because I’m secretly not ready to make my lonely-only an older brother? Was it because I dared to believe my intuition was telling me that I was pregnant, and that’s why I was feeling nauseous and really hungry and fatigued? Was it because I was arrogant enough to believe that everything would go ‘according to plan’ and we’d get knocked up the first go-round again?
So many fucking questions.
So many fucking superstitious thoughts.
So many fucking conflicting emotions.
Because, with the failure to conceive this go around, it means we enter a six month period of waiting. Because the next good time to give birth would be end of November/beginning of December 2014. Puts us trying again in like February, maybe March. A long time from now it feels. And my desire to just ‘get it over with’ and be pregnant now is squashed, laid to rest, flushed down the bloody toilet.
But then, if I take a step back and stop focusing on the what-if/loss of the ideal of being pregnant, it leaves this hole open for a whole rush of emotions and experiences to come flooding in. It means I can safely practice Bikram yoga for SIX MONTHS, which is the exact amount mandatory time on my monthly contract. It gives me time to wean and have a few moments of body-as-my-own. Or it gives me time to keep nursing because, why-the-heck-not. It gives me time to lose the last 20lbs of pregnancy weight through healthy eating and exercise so that my next go-round won’t tip me even further up the scale. It gives me time to envision a SOLID SCHOOL YEAR without the fear of going into labor halfway through a quarter. Even just that thought, alone, is so exciting that I can barely contain my brain-thoughts as I begin to think about ALL-THE-THINGS I can try with my class because I’ll be thinking about work instead of thinking about how to manage work while being X months pregnant. But the best part? The BEST PART? More time with my sweet boy PLUS more time getting to be ME. Not pregnant-me. Not new-mom me. Me Me.
That sounds so self-absorbed. But I have been so inspired and excited lately about poetry. About English literature. And I know that being a mom of a toddler is hard, but I have been taking time for myself that I didn’t feel I could (or was too exhausted) when Potamus was still so new and tiny. This Fall I’m going to take a free online class and I can’t decide if I want to do a poetry one or a teachery education one. I’ve been writing, doing yoga, making time for friends. I get to have an only child for a little while longer. And while it freaks me out thinking that he’ll be just that much older when/if I ever have another baby, I get to embrace what is right now.
Right now I’m not pregnant. And I’m fleetingly wistfully nostalgically sad about that. But I’m also pretty darn excited for the next half year.
boof & monk-monk 