Lucky Me

This was going to be a nice, neurotic little post about how I'm freaking out about the idea of having an actual baby in the house, how I still can't wrap my head around the idea, all that sort of thing. With some weepery about newly-discovered stretch marks thrown in, for spice.

But I just got off the phone with the Department of Civil Service -- I have been working for the state -- who told me that, contrary to what I'd been told by my own HR department, my insurance was canceled at the beginning of February. Not March. Close observers will note that it is FUCKING LATE FEBRUARY ALREADY. WAS ANYONE PLANNING ON TELLING ME THIS INFORMATION AT ANY POINT?

I am hopeful it will get resolved quickly and only require me to resubmit all my bills for this month or that, worst case, it will become clear in time for me to retroactively join Sugar's insurance, which was the plan for March (but costs more than mine -- let's not even get into the extra month of imputed income taxes, fuck you, DOMA -- and so would be nice to avoid as long as possible). Of course, that isn't even remotely the worst case.

Also, I am not going to insert the boilerplate here about how grateful I am that I can get on Sugar's insurance, because dammit, we're married, and having that relationship recognized in basic ways shouldn't be something we have to say "thank you" for every time.

Ahem.

Now do you want to hear about my stretch marks? Sure ya do.

They're on the part of my belly below my navel, which I can't even see in our one full-length mirror (which I rarely look in, as it isn't in our bedroom) without the extra effort of hauling my belly up to look. Consequently, I didn't see them until today and was blissfully ignorant of any marks other than the almost-cute dots over by my hips. Apparently, they've been there for several weeks. I am not best-pleased, although I know that's irrational. Partly, I don't like how they look (vertical, purple, angry); partly, it's unnerving to find out that I don't even know what's happening to the front of the outside of my own body.

(You'd think I'd be used to the idea that I don't know what's going on with my body by now, wouldn't you? What with the endometriosis and the cyst-riddled ovaries and the surprise cervix? I guess I don't learn.)

You might also think -- or hope, at any rate -- that I could be classy enough not to complain about stretch marks, sore hips, and exhaustion, given my great luck in being pregnant at all. Even if whatever the Bean is doing to my cervices does make me wonder at times whether we're having a unicorn, whining about it isn't seemly. I realize that.

As long as we're on unseemly topics, might as well go for broke:

I haven't been very interested in narrative in the past few months. I haven't wanted to watch movies and, very odd, I have scarcely been reading. (And I am always, always, always reading.) I couldn't figure out why until the other day, curled up on the couch with Sugar, watching something perfectly innocuous. Without realizing it, I had slipped into that state where you are so immersed in the story that you forget you exist outside of it. I love that feeling. More than anything else, that's what I read for. It is so freeing to forget myself for a while.

And then the Bean started kicking. And I jolted back to myself, immediately into a state of anxiety. It was like that moment when you wake up...and then remember you have an exam or a funeral to go to, that you got bad news yesterday, that the world has weights for your shoulders. Every time this happens, it takes a few minutes to calm myself back down, to remember to not be scared about the approaching unknown -- or at least try not to be scared. The truth is, I am pretty scared. About labor, yes; but even more about what comes next.

I am terrified at the idea of this baby actually being here. What was I thinking? What if it's all a terrible mistake, this parenthood thing? A bit late for cold feet on the subject, I know. And of course it is only part of my brain that's terrified -- much of it is excited and (guardedly) happy -- but boy is the scared part loud all of a sudden. Despite the very deliberate nature of all this, despite having pictures of the Bean as a blastocyst, for heaven's sake, I often feel like I'm having one of those dreams where you are suddenly in labor, never having known you were pregnant, and you're trying to figure out how this happened.

The IF-style kicker to all that, of course, is how damn guilty I feel for ever having thoughts like that, for ever allowing something other than pure gratitude into my heart. The sucker punch is knowing how deliberate all this was. We conscious conceivers -- lesbians, IFers, that sort -- talk a lot about how whatever situation has made us unable to have children easily has the silver lining of making us sure we want them, careful in our decisions, grateful in our parenting. To some extent, that's true, I think. But right now I am a little envious of those people who are surprised by pregnancy, who get to react it and know they are doing the best they can, rather than always knowing the decision was intentional and perhaps sometimes fearing that their choice was not the right one.

But, right or wrong, what is there to do but go forward in faith that it will all work out?

With that in mind, we have ordered a mattress for the crib. The stroller (so expensive and trendy that we won't discuss it, but I love it and am telling myself that it's a lot cheaper than the car we don't have) came in the mail today. Last night, we went to meet the Bean's probable pediatrician, whom we liked a lot. She recently parted ways with her practice partner and opened a new office next door, I assumed over something mundane like money disagreements. But from the way she talked last night about the search for new partners, for "more intellectual doctors...who like to discuss medicine," I wonder if there isn't a more interesting story behind the split. As you might imagine, I prefer intellectual doctors myself, and I'm happy to have found her.

I almost wish, seeing how small her hands are, that she were my doctor. Tomorrow brings my first cervix check, which I hear is a barrel of laughs. To answer the question on everyone's mind: yes, just as with pap smears, I get two. Lucky, lucky me.