Expecting, but Not What I Expected

Everyone says if you wait until you're ready you'll never do it. That you're never ready. When it happened before, I wasn't ready because I didn't think I had to be. "It's not like all of the sudden we'll have a kid," I had told The Boy then. "We'll have nine months to prepare." This reasoning seemed to work on him, even if it wasn't completely sound. So, expecting what everyone says to expect, we didn't sweat it. I had heard it could take at least a year to get pregnant coming off the pill. I planned for it to take 6-8 months. It took two weeks. But I'm still convinced that one was over before it actually began. That doesn't doesn't mean it hurt any less, but it's something.

So many things about losing that baby surprised me. I used to think, were I to lose a baby, that I would be too terrified to try again. I thought I'd embrace drinking cocktails and work out until I was finally happy with my body before it happened for real. Instead, I wanted to try immediately. But of course, you can't do that. So instead, embarrassed, married, and longing for a baby, I hid Trojans in the bottom of my cart, face down, at Wal-Mart. I couldn't stand the irony.

Once everything was normal, we tried not to think about it, but I counted days and marked possibilities in cryptic initials in my Day Planner. And then I started taking tests 5 days early. I fought with The Boy because I was afraid he wouldn't be engaged like he was last time-- that he wouldn't allow himself to be attached until . . . I wasn't sure how long. I didn't believe I could be pregnant again, not already. Mostly I was scared. But this time, I got my first positive test two days early. Another one, with a darker line, came the next day, and one more, for good measure, the next. I don't think the blue line on an EPT test can get any darker. But we weren't excited yet.

The first person we told was a work associate of The Boy's we had taken to an O's game. She was 8 months pregnant at the time, and I drank $4 waters in rapid succession. We didn't have to tell, but he was dying to. A week later in Savannah with my girls, I begged off when everyone else ordered draft beer to go with their floppy pizza and finally asked for an O'Doul's. "Yeah, so I'm pregnant." I said. But it was so early. I felt like I might jinx it.

We told our families at 7 weeks, and I feared it would all be over then because that's what happened last time. But it was getting hard to fake that I didn't feel terrible, and news like that doesn't seem real when you keep it to yourself. Once the families knew, it was only a matter of time. News of the long-awaited first grandchild, first great grandchild does not stay quiet or local for long.

I am a little over ten weeks pregnant. At my first sonogram last week, The Boy had tears in his eyes. I strained to see the screen. "So is that the head?" I asked, pointing at the kid's feet. The sonographer was patient and explained everything.

"That black space in his head is where his brain will go!" She said, helpfully. Which is great, except that it means my kid doesn't have a brain.

So I've been waiting to talk about it, but I keep telling myself that waiting wouldn't make it hurt any less if something were to go wrong. We get calmer as days and weeks past. And as I eat fewer Saltines from day to day. I'm pretty sure the sound of crunching crackers on the other side of the bed is not an aphrodisiac.