The Road Diverged

6-4-09

Mr. Crud and I are watching an installment of the excellent PBS series, “We Shall Remain.” Tecumseh and his posse are fighting valiantly against whitey. Mr. Crud and I root for the Indians even though we know how it all turns out. The announcer intones “The colonists then mutilated Tecumseh’s corpse beyond recognition.”

“Stay classy, America,” I say.

“I know. Really.” Mr. Crud snorts.

As the story continues on to the next chapter of Native American bravery and colonist chicken-shitery, I find my mind drifting. Ultrasound room. Audrey Hepburn. Babies floating in utero with their hearts outside of their bodies. Shit. I’ve been spending too much time on the internet again.

It started innocently enough. I went on Amazon to order a book about pregnancy after miscarriage. As I paged through the comments, trying to decipher if I should spend my hard-earned cash on yet another pregnancy book, I found more heartbreaking tales of miscarriage, multiple miscarriage, and harrowing experiences with birth defects that caused women to have late-term abortions. I’ve also been reading about the tragic murder of George Tiller, a man who has morphed into a saint in my eyes for his bravery and kindness to women stuck in the most miserable of situations. In short, I’m reading way too much about what can go wrong in a pregnancy while trying to keep myself sane.

“I’m thinking bad thoughts again,” I tell Mr. Crud.

“About?”

“The usual. It’s the internet’s fault,” I say.

“Stop doing that.” He squeezes my foot.

(It’s only week 5. Can you believe that? I wait at the traffic light this morning and think ahead to next week. Oh finally, week 7. Hold on a second. Just 6. Dang. Pregnancy time drags more than stoned time. When I was an enthusiastic stoner, I claimed that I was “beating time” when it felt like time passed at molasses speed. I loved beating time, wringing every last drop of nectar, from my glazed eye joy. Now? Not so much.)

I’m walking at lunch and imagining my mother’s visit here in August. Will I show by then? Or just look bloated and like I’ve gained a few? I imagine us shopping for maternity wear even though my plan is to don all the too-large t-shirts from my rocker days past. I plan to use pregnancy as an excuse to revisit my punk rock t-shirt roots. If not now, then when. Then my brain swerves again. Or I could be wearing my fat pants because I’ve been eating and drinking so much to chase away the pain of another miscarriage. I am experiencing two pregnancies simultaneously: best and worst-case scenarios. I want to believe. I want to relax when Dr. Awesome tells me that everything will be okay. I want to know that we have tested what needed to be tested, that it was just bad, bad luck (and my needy, overly hospitable uterus). But it’s so hard to go down the yellow brick road when the one that winds through the menacing woods is so much more familiar.

Symptoms: Almost passed out in yoga class when our teacher had us stand up to chant after I’d moved to floor poses. Guess I may need to tell him sooner rather than later about the bun in the oven.