Even though I have always known I wanted a family, I was one of those women who secretly rolled her eyes at the endless new-mom stories from my girlfriends. Stories of “I can’t eat the salad with the goat cheese” and “I’m five minutes away from my fourteenth week” morphed into “The baby blinked!” “The baby smiled!” “The baby laughed when I tickled her!” I would always think to myself that women have been giving birth and raising children for millennia—this new obsession with pregnancy and postpartum depression (whatever!) was just another example of our society’s “Look at me!” attitude. Horrible? Yes. I was aware of it. Then something happened: I became pregnant.
We weren’t planning it at all—in fact, my husband and I had literally been back from our honeymoon for a month when I went to the OBGYN for my normal checkup. The doctor walked in and asked if I knew I was pregnant; I stared at him for probably ten minutes without speaking. My husband and I had been living together for almost four years before we were married and I had been using the same birth control the entire time. What are the odds of getting pregnant either during our honeymoon or shortly thereafter? Apparently very good. The doctor happily chalked it up to fate and I, already an emotional wreck, called my husband sobbing while he was away on a business trip. He was considerably calmer and echoed the doctor’s thoughts. Fate. Now I think it was a combination of fate and irony.
From the week, I learned I was pregnant, I decided that my hit-or-miss knowledge of what to expect wasn’t going to work for me. So I bought What to Expect and proceeded to read it cover to cover in a matter of days, which incidentally is a HUGE mistake unless you want to spend hours in abject terror for your unborn child. Still, the month-by-month explanation offered allowed me to put a name to the changes I was already experiencing and I found it (gulp) FASCINATING. So much so that I talked about it all the time. I even insisted that I, and I alone, could make out the tiny little eyes and arms and legs in my first ultrasound (which looked like a gummy bear doing kung fu). I was still fully aware of my pre-baby feelings on baby talk so I mainly focused my growing obsession—no pun intended—on my husband and mom girlfriends. After even my mother tried to change the subject a few times, I finally had to admit to my husband that I understood why pregnant women talk about it all the time—it is with you every minute of every hour of the day and you not only know it, you FEEL it. It is the most awesome experience I’ve ever had.
Don’t get me wrong though.
