Payback

I don't like babies. I did not get pregnant because I liked or wanted a baby, but rather because I wanted to someday have a teenage kid in my life, who would continue to grow up from there and become, hopefully, more and more interesting. When we were contemplating having a baby, I really just wanted another puppy, but I knew I'd have to invest in that future teenager and there appears to be no other way than to start small…literally.

So, getting pregnant became a goal and I am a goal-oriented person. In the first month that we didn't succeed, I was ticked off. Not because that put me one month further away from a baby, but because I had failed to achieve the goal.  In the second month that we didn't succeed, I was psychological: What if I'm too old? What if I can't? As soon as I imagined being told that I was incapable of reproducing, I of course wanted to even more…again, not because of a desire for a baby, but rather because I absolutely bristle at being told what I cannot do and then I go forth Braveheart style on a mission to do that very thing.  The third month was November and Sam was away so instead of worrying about the goal I hosted the annual Scorpio Party for all of my sassy Scorpio and Honorary Scorpio girlfriends. (I'm guessing you're not surprised to learn that I'm a Scorpio).

It was December when the goal was finally reached and I thought, "Oh shit! Now I'm pregnant!" 

It was on the night of the 30^th when I was waitressing at Egan's and I first started to sense it. I was serving chicken fingers to a bunch of obnoxious kids who were being ignored by their obnoxious parents who were busy sending me back and forth from the kitchen for one friggin' thing at a time. For years, waitressing had been great birth control. Why would I ever want to have kids after seeing kids who were allowed to behave badly in restaurants? My Scorpio and Honorary Scorpio girlfriends and I would sit around at Table 8 after hours drinking wine, talking about all those condescending people from New York and New Jersey and think, "Ha! Joke's on you, people! You and your obnoxious kids, schlepping all the way up here for a brief respite from your insane life, and we live here, in the mountains, without kids, playing every day instead of once a year!"  But that night, as I walked back and forth to the kitchen from the stupid booth that's built out of a car, that all those friggin' kids want to sit in, to fetch another fork, or a bit of ketchup, or some other thing that the kid or the parent was screaming for, I walked back and forth gripped by the growing realization that I was suddenly in danger of living that very same insane life…not to mention getting very fat, very soon.

Sam and I had friends visiting for New Year's Eve, so I waited until New Year's Day when everyone cleared out to go upstairs and take the test. The damned thing confirmed my worst fears: I had just cashed in my free & independent, healthy & fun life for fatness and chaos and servitude. I called my sister Amy before I told Sam. I was in a full-blown panic. And, as she had done when I wet my pants playing Hide & Seek in the fourth grade, she laughed at me, though admittedly with a bit of empathy this time. But she did laugh, and she laughed because she suspected that my panic would subside and I would eventually come around to the fact that I did, after all, enter into this project willingly.

This same issue of my own culpability came up when I went to my first doctor's appointment: "Congratulations," said the doctor. "How do you feel?"

"Horrified!" I told her, thinking this was a normal response. She looked puzzled.

"Is this a planned pregnancy?" she asked. When I said yes, she was really confused. And when I saw the little peanut-shaped creature on the ultrasound screen, and heard the heartbeat for the first time, so was I. My doctor sent me home with a handful of business cards for therapists she recommended.

I never called them because I had Amy. My sister gets me. And she knows how to help. She listens, she validates, she comforts. She doesn't judge, she doesn't get impatient, and she inherited from our mother the ability to give a very good pep talk. 

Someday I'll forgive her for making me stand up next to her
as her Maid when I was 4.5 months pregnant wearing a
moo-moo and she looked like this!

I'm pretty sure Amy knew all along that I would eventually fall completely in love with whatever offspring I managed to produce.  So, when I started leaving her voicemail messages to the effect of "Now, when I sneeze, I pee myself! Call me back," well, she called back, every time, and she helped me to laugh and to exhale and to get through my pregnancy one very long day at a time. Don't get me wrong; I had an easy pregnancy. The only thing that wasn't easy was me. I worry a lot, and have a hard time anticipating big changes. And, I don't like to share…at all. I don't like to share my chocolate, or the blanket, never mind my blood supply! 

Frankly, I probably never deserved to even have Quinn given this melodramatic explanation of her arrival. But, I did have her and of course I now understand what all my crazy mom-friends were trying to tell me all those years…it really is different when the baby is your own. But this entry isn't meant to be about Quinn; it's about Amy.

Amy is different than me in many ways, but she too is a Scorpio (albeit a kindler, gentler one), and she is also goal oriented. And even though she actually loves babies, all of them—babies in all shapes, sizes, colors and constitutions...

...she too gets worked up about simply achieving the goal. So, while she's trying to do that, I'm trying to remember all of the things she did for me to help me through the process. The trouble is that I'm not always a good listener. My way of "comforting" is often to offer unsolicited advice, and when my advice is not embraced, I tend to get impatient. (Yesterday, driving home from my dad's house in Massachusetts, Sam and I listened to an old cd of Men Are From Mars. Women Are From Venus. If that guy's information is accurate, I'm embarrassed to say that my outer Tom Boy isn't just on the outside and I'm not always a very good Venusian.) But here again, I know I have to rise to the challenge.

We are motherless women, Amy and I, and we have to stick together. Sure, our mother shows up in dreams now and then, but believe me—it's not the same as having her show up on the other end of the phone! So, I owe Amy, and I need to show up on the other end of the phone a bit more often.  And for the days that I don't, I hope she'll come back to this entry and know that I'm trying to be half the friend to her that she has been to me. 

And if no one else comes back to this blog ever again, now that I've revealed rather plainly some of my more abhorrent shortcomings, well, I won't blame you.  But if you do come back, I promise I'll reward you with some glass-is-half-full stuff, and a long entry about the broad Society of Women that I am deeply grateful for…it includes my sister, and my Scorpio and Honorary Scorpio friends, and my crazy and not-so-crazy mom friends who are all light years ahead of me in their maturity and their wisdom.