"The Babies"

4-20-09

I open the can of worms. “I think I might be, you know,” I say to Mr. Crud.

Despite my assurances to myself that I would be cool about this whole “pregnancy bullshit”—as I’ve taken to calling it whenever I talk about going another round—andnot obsess over cervical fluid, pangs in the lower lady regions, and random appearances and disappearances of suspected preg-symptoms, I am about as far as one can get from cool. I’m hot. Burning. Hellfire hot.

“Really? How do you know? Really?” Mr. Crud asks, eyes wide.

“I’ve been feeling action in the lady parts. Cramps mainly. But it could just be gas,” I say.

“Don’t cramps mean--?”

“Not necessarily.” I decline to explain mittlelschmerz, the term for the slight, one-sided cramping that ladies can feel when ovulation begins, which I felt. At least I think I did.

After checking numerous fertility calculators, I compiled my data and found the fertile days. I tried not to talk up the days too much lest I scare Mr. Crud and lead to, ahem, other issues that may impede the making of a Peabody 3. Then I got to scrutinizing my fluids. We both decided that we wouldn’t put too much pressure on ourselves this month. No carpet-bombing, just leisurely good times with the one you love. Nonetheless a week ago as I lay in viparita karani in yoga class, I felt the slight cramping commence. We had some leisurely good times that morning so I wondered. Could it?

And for the last week, I did a pretty good job of letting it go. I told myself that I was quitting smoking (a-fucking-gain, I know) because smoking is dumb, all my friends are doing it, and I was tired of the extra phlegm in the morning. The quitting has nothing to do with Peabody.

Friday I almost surrendered my post-work week cocktail, but relented at the last moment. This could be the last cocktail I sip for a long, long time. Better to seize the day by the salt plum vodka martini than to lament what could have been the following Friday. I remembered my mantra: All or nothing. If this martini has any negative effect, it would be to hamper fertilization and/or implantation. I remind myself of all the times multiple doctors have assured me that nothing I ate, drank, or smoked during the first 4 weeks of pregnancy could have caused a miscarriage.

“So, when can you find out for sure?” Mr. Crud asks.

“Next weekend. Actually next Monday.”

“Oh. That’ll make for a long week.”

It already has for the both of us. Time drags. Each twinge I feel in my lower abdomen sets me spinning. I have dipped my toe back into the pregnancy and miscarriage website-a-palooza and swing between feeling comforted and totally freaked out. I allow myself to ponder the trajectory of my theoretical pregnancy, both the good outcomes (With a potential due date in early January there will be no hell trip through snowstorms for Christmas on the east coast!) and bad (If we get another ultrasound of doom, I’ll at least be evacuated of another dead baby by the 4th of July. Just in time to get shit-faced and take up smoking again!).

See what I mean? So not cool.

Last night Mr. Crud flops into bed and rolls over for a hug. “I got the super Sundays,” he says. “The Sundays” refers to the unsavory salad roll of mega dread of the week ahead and regret of the weekend promise left unfulfilled.

“Is it the Sundays plus the pregnancy bullshit?” I ask, pulling him in tight.

“Yeah.”

I thank G-d that when Mr. Crud is nervous and down, I feel okay, a shaky confidence that I will need to bolster in the coming months with large doses of Sylvia Boorstein and Buddhist philosophy.

“We need to come up with a word for this,” he says. “Like the Sundays.”

“How about ‘The Babies’?” I ask.

He considers. “Eh, it’ll do for now.”

I’m at work and going over the same Yoga Journal articles that I’ve read before, assuring myself that I don’t need to immediately halt my yoga practice on suspicion of pregnancy. I re-read an old miscarriage website that I can practically recite by heart. My eyes fall on a new (un-sourced) statistic: after 2 miscarriages, a person has a 40% chance of miscarrying again. Shit. I don’t remember that one. I feel whatever shaky confidence I had evaporate as I stare at the screen, scrolling and scrolling for source material. I try to remember all the stories of women who had multiple miscarriages and eventual successful pregnancies. I picture my yoga friend Jan who is so pregnant now that she looks on the verge of tipping over.

The phone rings. Mr. Crud. Good, I was just about to actually do some work to get my mind off of 40%. Wouldn’t want to do too much work at work.

“Hey hon, how you doing?” He asks.

“Oh okay,” I say in a tone that is clearly not okay. “I’m feeling a little scared, about, you know.”

“You got ‘the babies’?” He asks.

“Yeah, I do.”

But I can’t really talk now unless I want the collection of theater students sitting in the lobby to hear my tale of preg-scare woe.

He offers words of comfort and says, “We need to come up with a better word.”

“Agreed. It’ll do for now.”

Just like everything else.