I feel I must post-scriptus apologize for this particular chapter of the old book. It is a rant though, written after a very difficult school year. It's funny, now that I look back on it - still true, but I find it really funny that I actually wrote it all down like this.
Enjoy
Chapter Eleven:
The Baby Fairy is Boycotting My Uterus
- a tirade and rant from year six -
At
this moment in my life, everyone who can or who wants to be pregnant is
pregnant. I’m not joking. I work with a bunch of teachers and we fall into the
following categories:
o
Old enough to have grandchildren
o
Too old to have any more children
o
Have plenty of kids and are done with their
family
o
Currently pregnant
o
Married and want no children yet or ever
o
Single and too young to be having children
At the current moment, I do not
fall into any of these categories. I’m the only married woman who has been
married over a year that wants to have children but can’t. At this point, I’m
an outsider. I can’t hang with the single people, because I have a husband. I
can’t talk pregnancy, because at this point, I haven’t been pregnant longer
than a week. I can’t even talk children, because my brother and his wife
haven’t let their girls call me Mom, in a really long while. Okay, they never
let the girls call me Mom, but I can hope, right?
The best part (I’m being facetious) is that
the pregnancies are evenly spread around the departments, with no department
having more than one pregnant parent, so there is perhaps an understanding as
to why I’m not pregnant. It would throw off the whole cosmic balance or
something. However, this pregnancy conspiracy goes even further.
The
Baby Fairy has visited nearly every single person I’ve come in contact with.
Tim’s cousin, Christa, is pregnant with her third child and due in March. Now,
why am I so upset by this you might ask? She’s living in a house that is falling
apart around them, rent-free while her husband finishes his doctoral thesis in
French poetry. They truly can’t afford a third child. In fact, I’m not sure how
they afforded the first two children to begin with. So while this drunken
little fairy has managed to bless every possible person I work with, this
little creature has made sure to make me incredibly miserable. He has one of my
students pregnant (I teach 9th graders) and my little sister (who
had an “oops” one night) expecting a child on Tim’s birthday. I swear the Baby
Fairy is boycotting my uterus. If I ever get my hands on that little . . . frickin’ . . . frackin’ . . . but I digress.
Normally,
I would have no problem with all of this estrogen floating around me. I’d see
it as a good sign. Something must be in the water and I would drink enough
water to catch whatever it was. However, things are different this time. I’m on
hormones and back to having cycles again. Basically, my brain is one neurotic
tangle of short circuiting wires. Plus, I can’t simply avoid the situation like
I normally do. When pregnant women come toward me, I can’t turn and go the
other way. I can’t avoid them in the hallways at school. I can’t even go to the
bathroom without finding at least two of them in line in front of me. Even at
home (with my little sister living next door) I can’t hide out with a book or
bake cookies like crazy. She’s taking classes with my husband, so they talk and
see each other constantly. There are just too many of them. This is where the
trouble began. Too many hormones + too many pregnant people = Infertile Woman’s
Anger Issues.
There
should be a chapter in that book, What to
Expect When You’re Expecting, on proper etiquette for breaking the news to
and dealing with friends or family who won’t be as thrilled about your
pregnancy as you are. Maybe a good title for the chapter would be: How to keep
your friends when you’re pregnant. The first part might go over the basic rules
for how to deal with people (like me) who have been trying to conceive for nine
years. A general idea for some of these words of wisdom might include the
common sense stuff that seems to escape nearly all of the pregnant women that
surround me. For example:
Ø
If you know we have been struggling with this
for nine years, don’t expect us to be able to hold up the fake excitement for
more than three minutes. The best time to tell us is on the phone and quickly.
Don’t drag on the conversation because after you tell us, we just want to pummel
you into little, tiny pieces, smear ketchup on you and feed you to our dogs.
Keep it simple and be quick about it.
Ø
Don’t EVER use phrases like: “Be happy you’re
not pregnant,” “You’ll understand one day,” “It’s a parent (or a pregnant)
thing,” because in minds like ours, this gets translated into “Ha, ha, I’m
pregnant and you’re not.”
Ø
Make any supportive comments sincere and
non-cliché. Don’t tell us it will happen when we least expect it or when we
finally relax and take it easy. Don’t give us your “oh-so-wise” advice like,
“do it with your hips elevated and let gravity take its course.” You have zero
expertise in this kind of situation, no matter what has happened to your sister’s
cousin’s roommate. The only thing you’re allowed to offer in the way of advice
is a doctor’s name and maybe not even that.
Ø
Don’t complain to us about anything related to
your pregnancy. You will get sympathy while we’re talking to you and a voodoo
doll made in your likeness later. No
matter what you’re going through, we would go through ten times as much to be
able to get pregnant.
Ø
Remember that you were a person before you got
pregnant and that you once talked about things that had nothing to do with
mid-wives and breast milk. We get really tired of hearing about it all the
time. Find something new, please. Talk about food – it’s a good topic or
shopping or the zoo – anything that isn’t connected to your pregnancy.
Ø
Don’t blame things on being pregnant. If you
dump cocktail sauce on your blouse, don’t tell us it’s because the baby is
sucking away all your coordination skills. You were sloppy before you got
pregnant. Along the same lines, don’t blame the baby for your moments of
stupidity, your lack of memory (especially when we told you about our
infertility only three months before you got pregnant) or your inability to move
quickly. I weigh more than you and am carrying as much weight (if not more) in
my stomach area as you are. I don’t blame my belly for my inability to move
quickly. I’ve learned to adapt and you will too.
Ø
Don’t get mad at us when we skip out on your baby
shower. We want to be invited, but it is too difficult to even go into the baby
section of Sears, let alone sit with other moms while they discuss the values
of teaching your toddler sign language or the many uses of a snot sucker.
Ø
Most of all, be supportive. When you are
pregnant, we fight jealousy so powerful it could drive a normal person to
violence. On the surface, we are friendly and polite, doing what has always
been asked of us. Underneath, we can’t stand you. We are shallow, hateful,
selfish people that don’t care how happy you are. You were given something so
special and precious, while we sit in a dark corner feeling cheated and
ignored. Remember that you were our friend, the one we went to when things went
all pear-shaped. Remember that we still want you to understand us and listen to
us. Remember that we still need you to help us through this.
With all these
pregnant women around, it’s been extremely difficult keeping my mouth shut. I’m
just exhausted doing the right thing all the time. I’m tired of acting like it
doesn’t bother me. I’m tired of just sitting there pretending that I don’t hate
them for what they are putting me through. I am certain that if I were
pregnant, I wouldn’t feel so much irritation toward them. But I’m not, so I do.
In the end, I know
I should be rejoicing and celebrating this great and wonderful experience. Deep
down, there is a person inside of me that is doing what I’m supposed to be
doing. Somewhere in the pit of my heart and the dark, silent recesses of my
mind, there is someone who is happy for them. However, there is another part of
me that is just hoping they get gas from hell, the kind that causes them to
fart every time they takes a deep breath in front of anyone important. Knowing them,
they’d just blame it on being pregnant and the other people would nod their
head in understanding and laugh sympathetically.
Picking on all of
the pregnant women, offering advice about everything and wishing hell-fire
farts on pregnant people will hopefully anger the Baby Fairy enough to wish all
of these things on me. Maybe if I piss him off enough, he’ll end his boycott of
my uterus and let me be miserably pregnant for nine months. Ahhh . . . that
would be a dream come true.
Monday afternoon, Jenny and I ventured off to the eye doctor to pick up her new glasses. In my mind, I saw my little girl so appreciative of her new ability of see that she would gladly and constantly want to wear her new glasses. As nearly all things in my mind, it didn't go that way.
