Wednesday, June 22, 2005
It's time
It was a year ago on Father's day that I found out. I had dashed in to Happy Harry's to buy a pregnancy test for the upteenth time and it had lost all of its mystery. A bottom-of-the-line pregnancy test and a diet sprite. I had long stopped paying extra for the ones that promised early or more accurate results. Sometimes, against my intellect, I'd buy multi-packs of the piss sticks and use them one right after another just to be sure. I remember peeing on the stick and seeing the faint line appear. I could imagine myself as an old-time cartoon character with my eyes bulging out of my head at the sight of it. Only it wasn't funny, and I sobbed, head in hands and still on the toilet.
I was never maternal. I've always adored children but I never considered myself mom-material. You'd find me out, taking the long way home on my Harley, dancing in a cage at E.N. in D.C., getting a tattoo, drinking a little too much. That was me. I never wanted to be a mom because I never wanted to wait up for someone at night. I did not know how to change a diaper or what to do about colic. I had myself to worry about, and that was fine with me.
Something changed all of the sudden. Perhaps it was the combined effect of seeing so many of my friends having children of their own. I've never been one to follow the crowd, but kids really did say the darndest things! And how fricking adorable they look in their little dresses and tiny shoes! They actually make green Doc Martens in toddlers sizes! My husband and I did some soul-searching and we thought, let's give it a go. I mean we were thirty for chrisakes!
Didn't take me long that time. I got a kitten the day I took my first pregnancy test. I brought the kitten home in a copier paper box, presented it to Steve, and said, "Well, I guess you'll have to empty the cat boxes from now on." He did not get it at first, then a worried wave of understanding crossed his face and he left the room, right in the middle of petting the new kitten. Of course, I told everyone. People at work presented me with cards and tiny baby gifts. I looked at websites with cool clothes for punk babies and bought a diaper bag at Hot Topic. My family was excited and already planning visits to Disney World. I had never been so nervous in my entire life.
I remember the day we went for the ultrasound. Steve had to call to get directions, because although I had gotten directions (twice) I kept forgetting them as soon as I hung up the phone. I was so nervous I could not stop shaking the entire time in the waiting room and I almost pissed myself. When it was my turn, I got on the table and waited to see the first pictures of my baby. The placenta was there, full and perfect. I heard the tech say to herself, "But where's the baby?", and I lost it. The doctor was on the phone. Something about miscarrage. Blighted ovum. I was numb when I got into the car, Pink Floyd was on the radio and it was raining softly now. For the first time ever, I felt like a mother.
I won't go into all the details after that, like how on the very day I came back to work some well-meaning person asked me to decorate the principal's office for her newborn granddaughter, or how the news was suddenly filled with stories of mothers killing their own children. I will not talk about the other pregnant women at work, who compaired their bellies everyday, or the women I overheard in Walmart yelling at their three kids while they tiredly rubbed their swollen bellies. I can't describe the silent horror that I went through, sometimes waking at night and sitting in the dark hallway outside the bedroom trying to determine if I was just dreaming or not. I'm not going to pretend that my story is unique or uncommon. But my world, my small lingering sense of spirituality, my sanity, all of it was rocked. Changed, gone, transmutated, whatever.
So several months later, when I peed on that little stick on Father's Day, I cried. I didn't tell anyone, even after an ultrasound revealed a perfect tiny heart. I waited a long time to decorate the nursery and avoided baby websites. But when I held him, all blinking eyes and gangly legs and arms against my chest on that wonderful day, I knew I would have had it all happen over and over and over again.
I love him more than life.
And he just woke up from his nap, so I've got to go.
I was never maternal. I've always adored children but I never considered myself mom-material. You'd find me out, taking the long way home on my Harley, dancing in a cage at E.N. in D.C., getting a tattoo, drinking a little too much. That was me. I never wanted to be a mom because I never wanted to wait up for someone at night. I did not know how to change a diaper or what to do about colic. I had myself to worry about, and that was fine with me.
Something changed all of the sudden. Perhaps it was the combined effect of seeing so many of my friends having children of their own. I've never been one to follow the crowd, but kids really did say the darndest things! And how fricking adorable they look in their little dresses and tiny shoes! They actually make green Doc Martens in toddlers sizes! My husband and I did some soul-searching and we thought, let's give it a go. I mean we were thirty for chrisakes!
Didn't take me long that time. I got a kitten the day I took my first pregnancy test. I brought the kitten home in a copier paper box, presented it to Steve, and said, "Well, I guess you'll have to empty the cat boxes from now on." He did not get it at first, then a worried wave of understanding crossed his face and he left the room, right in the middle of petting the new kitten. Of course, I told everyone. People at work presented me with cards and tiny baby gifts. I looked at websites with cool clothes for punk babies and bought a diaper bag at Hot Topic. My family was excited and already planning visits to Disney World. I had never been so nervous in my entire life.
I remember the day we went for the ultrasound. Steve had to call to get directions, because although I had gotten directions (twice) I kept forgetting them as soon as I hung up the phone. I was so nervous I could not stop shaking the entire time in the waiting room and I almost pissed myself. When it was my turn, I got on the table and waited to see the first pictures of my baby. The placenta was there, full and perfect. I heard the tech say to herself, "But where's the baby?", and I lost it. The doctor was on the phone. Something about miscarrage. Blighted ovum. I was numb when I got into the car, Pink Floyd was on the radio and it was raining softly now. For the first time ever, I felt like a mother.
I won't go into all the details after that, like how on the very day I came back to work some well-meaning person asked me to decorate the principal's office for her newborn granddaughter, or how the news was suddenly filled with stories of mothers killing their own children. I will not talk about the other pregnant women at work, who compaired their bellies everyday, or the women I overheard in Walmart yelling at their three kids while they tiredly rubbed their swollen bellies. I can't describe the silent horror that I went through, sometimes waking at night and sitting in the dark hallway outside the bedroom trying to determine if I was just dreaming or not. I'm not going to pretend that my story is unique or uncommon. But my world, my small lingering sense of spirituality, my sanity, all of it was rocked. Changed, gone, transmutated, whatever.
So several months later, when I peed on that little stick on Father's Day, I cried. I didn't tell anyone, even after an ultrasound revealed a perfect tiny heart. I waited a long time to decorate the nursery and avoided baby websites. But when I held him, all blinking eyes and gangly legs and arms against my chest on that wonderful day, I knew I would have had it all happen over and over and over again.
I love him more than life.
And he just woke up from his nap, so I've got to go.
# posted by Christa @ 10:28 AM 
