Is this for real?

I just do not feel pregnant. This is too weird. All I want to do is eat food with a lot of flavor. That's it. My breasts are a little tender, a little fuller, with slightly darker nipples. My temp is up every morning. My organs have all moved up and my belly looks big at only 7 weeks. Occasionally when I stand up I can feel some pulling, some tightness. And I felt it a little while shoveling snow.

But seriously, that's it. No nausea. No smell sensitivity. No real fatigue to speak of that can't be explained by other factors. So weird.

On Thursday we will visit with family for the holidays. I expect to tell them then. Not because I have weird eating behaviors like I did the first time at this exact gestational age -- like when I ate an entire steak dinner and then had to order room service after leaving a wedding early. That time we told my father-in-law and brother-in-law that night before I left for the room, and everyone else the next morning.

This time I think it will be too visible. Even though it's winter, I think it won't take long for someone to notice. And, more than anything, we're in person, something that rarely happens. It would seem silly not to tell them now. It might seem silly that we'll arrive without having told them already.

I'm still not sure what we'll say or how we'll say it. I feel so damn casual about the whole thing. How will that sound?

Not telling in public

Friday I hosted playgroup with my groovy mama friends. No one asked; I didn't tell.

I'm sure there were a few questions about my life lobbed my way, but mostly we were all busy keeping our kids from pissing each other off and trying to share whatever insights/thoughts/ideas came into our brain. And questions about known pregnancies and new babies are more interesting than general catch up.

I did note that my friend who once said it would have to be me or another mom to get pregnant before L had her baby said to the other L, "So you'll have to be pregnant before then" without referencing the other mom or me. The first time I'd kind of felt pressure, sort of a "don't put that on me; what if I miscarry tomorrow?" feeling. This time I felt left out like no one believes I will conceive.

I'm sure no one really gives a shit whether I do or not.

But then I went to a party of a former neighbor -- the people we bought our house from who were showing off their beautiful brand-new home with a fancy catered affair and two-year-old sent away to the grandparents. A bunch of our still/current neighbors came. One was talking about the sadness of giving away clothes now that her second child is a year old and her husband says that's all they can afford.

Then she asked me about our plans. I repeated what I've said before, that we would have tried this summer if it hadn't been for the move. I added that it was only recently that I started to feel like we could give it a shot. But I added something like, "I don't know what my body is up for, though."

There I stood, in a draping pink sweater drinking water at a party where it was the only non-alcoholic drink and I actually had to open up the fridge to find the Brita (there was no water out among the catered food or on the porch will all the non-punch drinks). Her eye almost made a twinkle sound as she said, "But it could happen right away. You never know."

"You never know," I agree. I think she knows.

First friend disclosure continued

Here is what I wrote in an email to my friend today, in response to her question about how I'd been feeling so far.

"...So other than being tired at the moment, I feel eerily normal. I never got sick with #1, but I certainly felt queasy by this point, had to pee a million times a night, etc. I'm feeling a bit in disbelief, still taking my temp every morning, have taken 4 tests (well, two were old/expired in 2006, but I did them anyway. No, wait, that would make it 6 tests in two weeks. Can that be right? What a kook!) I'm feeling really cautious about believing...

So... physically I'm fine, emotionally, it's surreal. I have one friend who has now an 18-lb, 3- month old son but I watched her go through 3 losses in the past year & a half. I have another friend who is 17 weeks along after two miscarriages (and had started but didn't need to go through with fertility treatments). My one sister had one miscarriage between kids #2 and #2, and my other sister had several after having three kids. I've been in writing groups and workshopped/given feedback on at least 5 or 6 pieces on miscarriage in the past few years. And as I think I told you I didn't even get my period back after #1 until almost 2.5 yrs. So I am one skeptical little bunny!"

You're cycling, I'm not

My friend just told me with glee that she got her period back. Her baby is 14 months old. The whole family was sick for a long time, and she just had to stop and do nothing but nurse and nurture, including herself.

And she said she could tell she was ovulating. Seriously ovulating.

She's excited because she wants a houseful of children.

Even if I had wanted to tell her, I'm no stealer of thunder.

40th birthday, 1st ovulation. Will I ever find a quiet moment that actually feels right?

Testing, 1,2,3 (or 4)

I took another test. The fourth one. I don't feel sick. My boobs maybe hurt, but not really. I'm getting fat but if it's not for a baby, I have got to cut down.

The pregnant line showed up before the control line.

I'm pregnant.

I'm getting more used to the idea being for real. My husband and I had some kind of conversation in which we both agreed we were getting girl vibes. I can't even remember what he said. Something like, "you're thinking sister?" with a mild question mark, almost a period. As though of course we'd come to the same conclusion. We did last time. We were right. Go figure.

My friend is having a girl, and she just turned 40 with a great party last night. At least twice our mutual friends referenced, "when you have another" as though there was no doubt it would happen. And as though it weren't already.

I sucked in my gut on the size 00P jeans I could hardly button and tried to deflect attention from the comments.

Even if I had wanted to tell, someone else's party is not the place, and even the same week of her party wasn't the right time.

They might come here to the house for writing group on Wednesday. I moved just a few months ago and they haven't seen the new digs. I think I can only share so much of myself at once.

Silence of omission

My friend came over today with her daughter and new baby. I knew about her pregnancies soon after they happened, and her miscarriages. We talked about her plans for trying to conceive and for waiting while she got acupuncture. Anything less -- if it wasn't just for not having the chance to chat -- wouldn't have felt right.

I didn't tell her.

Maybe it's because we didn't talk much about ourselves. We talked about mothering in general and some of our mutual friends. She shared some about herself via those conversations, and I did a little too, though much less than usual for someone who usually lays it all out there.

You might even say I lied. By saying nothing. "We're going to have to get things together for L's motherblessing this spring," she said. "And before she has her baby, someone else is going to have to get pregnant. So that's you or A."

If I weren't already pregnant -- if I were trying or still in flux about trying -- I don't think I could have taken that comment with the lighthearted tone in which it was intended. I mean, I've been talking for at least a year and a half about my doubts about being able to conceive after so long with no periods, and of course watching so many friends miscarry, it's for sure on my mind that nothing can be taken for granted. It's not as though I live in the land of believing you just oops have sex and wind up pregnant, heehee.

Except that I did. So maybe the reluctance is about making such a big deal over nothing. Isn't that always the case with me? Aren't I always being told by this same friend -- and others -- that I'm too hard on myself? Yes. And does that ever make me feel anything other than bad for being so hard? No.

So maybe I just want to keep the drama close to my chest. I really don't think I could take a round of "See, that wasn't so hard" from my friends. Certainly not during this early period when so much could still change.

And, as I was just writing in a piece I submitted the other day to Hip Mama, I'm not exactly used to feeling like it's safe to tell the truth. I always felt like I had to shield my mom from my sadness, lest I add to hers. My siblings were all so much older, I felt like nothing I experienced really counted. Theirs was the true reality. I was just acting things out, perpetually the preschooler playing grown up. Everything plastic, nothing bearing its real-world weight.

But I did grow up, and this is real. It is a life. And I have more friends - genuine and wonderful women - than I've ever had before, and sisters who are my friends now that nine and twelve years don't mean so much. But I still don't want to let them in. I'm afraid of accepting support, and I can't imagine happily going through a motherblessing like the ones I've helped organize. I don't think I believe I'm worth it.

A lot of people don't tell until later in pregnancy, and I respect that. Some people tell right away, and that makes a lot of sense to me.

I'm noticing that, although I think my physical reality may announce my condition within the next three weeks, I am not looking forward to telling. Anyone. Ever.

On not telling, Part II

I just learned on Facebook that a friend recently had a miscarriage. She wrote a poignant reflection on the culture of not telling until the first trimester is over, concluding that it's pretty dumb not to gather support at the time you need it most.

I agree, and I don't.

Part of me thought it would be silly to keep something so important from the people who are important to me. My friends and I share info about being tired because a child didn't sleep well, about husbands not being what we need on any given day, about our own grumpiness that gets in the way of appreciating our partners, about interactions with family, about sore nipples, the whole nine yards. So why, I thought for a while, would I withhold the truth of what is going on with me?

Because I'm scared. What's not so clear is exactly what I'm scared of. Part of me is, of course, concerned that something will go wrong, and then I'll have to tell everybody. If you never shared the news in the first place, you don't have to share the un-news. You can wait until the pain has passed and then offer some perspective.

But that doesn't fly if what you really want is support. I understand that. So why don't I want support?

Because I don't know what I want support for. I'm ambivalent. That's not very inspiring. No one signs up to be a cheerleader for a team that's not sure whether or not it wants to win.

Yes, of course I want to have a baby in my arms in, gulp, eight months. I wouldn't have had sex three times and waited until the middle of the night to pee if I didn't want it.

But I'm tepid. Timid. Unsure. It happened faster than I expected, and I am not ready to share any kind of excitement until I feel it's relatively safe to have some.

It seems to me that by this time in my first pregnancy, my son had already told me he was here to stay. (And that he was a boy, which freaked the hell out of me). I know it was in the 5th week (which starts today or tomorrow), because I was at a writing conference, and I can picture that Sarah Lawrence College dorm room where I felt like I heard the message (but still took my temperature every morning just in case. And by the way, I was peeing a thousand times a night already. I had to go across a linoleum tiled floor to a flourescent-lit bathroom).

Since I was a writing conference -- about writing the medical experience -- I wrote about my new experience as it was happening. We were tasked to produce a poem the morning after we got there, so I wrote something I'd been composing in my head on the train ride about shoots taking root or being washed away, like the tomatoes in my soggy yard. My pregnancy (and the fact that I wrote long poems) was the first thing people in my workshop learned about me. Other people -- the prose writers -- had no clue, of course. But I was thinking it, living it, feeling it.

I'd also told my mom by this time, because she was to have surgery while I was gone, and I wanted her to know, just in case. I might have told my sister right before I left, but I think I told her shortly after I got back. I couldn't ask my mom to keep it a secret for too long.

After all my health issues, we were all excited that I'd even gotten pregnant. "Oh, (name)," my sister said. "I hope this ends up with a baby in your arms" (hence the language used above), "but even if it doesn't, this is really exciting."

She miscarried at least once, my other sister more times than she cares to count, the last one ectopic and leading her to call for a tubal ligation. My mom, though, doesn't think she had any pregnancy losses, and she had five kids.

Which brings me to the next fear, one I don't even feel like addressing yet: the ability to have natural birth, at home, after having had a c-section.

I've been living with such doubt for so long: can I safely have a baby vaginally? Or nevermind that, can I even get my period back and ever get pregnant again? How about, Can my marriage take another child? Can I take it?

I've done some work on these questions with a therapist trained in Emotional Freedom Technique, and it got me away from gripping tears and toward a kind of distance.

I'm embracing that distance now. Like a parent unsure of a child's new boyfriend, I'm not going to get my panties in a bunch until I know he's sticking around. Why bother getting attached to something that might be gone tomorrow?

But I'm also not drinking even decaf coffee or eating any non-nutritious food, (except some coconut milk ice cream, which has good fat). I might be staying up late, but I'm generally trying to be a good maybe-mama.

I'm just doing it quietly for now.

On not telling

I spoke on the phone to a friend today who told me she was pregnant at about the same place I am right now -- probably about 5-6 days further along. She was surprised because she was planning to do some pre-IVF fertility treatment. And then what she thought was a period -- even blogged about it -- was, in fact, just a sign that something was nuzzling into her flesh good and deep. She's now 17 weeks along, a trimester ahead of me.

I didn't say anything.

So far the only people who know are my acupuncturist, an Emotional Freedom Technique practitioner I was supposed to meet with tomorrow but allowed me to reschedule, and the receptionist at the acupuncturist's office who ordered a prenatal vitamin for me. When she called today to tell me it was in, I asked about seeing the doctor on staff for some baseline bloodwork. She wasn't sure, so she put the doctor on the phone. Non-spouse person #4 who knows!

She asked if I was going to do a homebirth and if so, with whom. Uh, I don't know yet. It's, like I said, really, really early. I just wanted to make sure my thyroid is okay and buy myself some time while we interviewed people. That's something I thought would wait for a while, like until we were a little less stunned and more certain this was for real.

She didn't want to draw my blood, said the midwife would do all the labs. Well, okay. I won't come see you, then!

And I don't want to let my friends in just yet. I've been so wishy-washy for so long, not believing it would happen or should happen. I'd like to be a little more clear on the prognosis before I make any pronouncements.

We'll see if my already changing waistline will let that happen.