Baby On The Way

On February 20, we learned that we were going to be parents. And it didn't feel real.

All the evidence we had was an ambiguous pregnancy test. I have always wondered what was wrong with people who took multiple pregnancy tests. I went to school, I know a couple of things about chemistry, how hard can it be to read one of these things? It took four to convince us, and it didn't feel real.

We called the hospital to get some kind of professional involved. Shouldn't someone more qualified make a pronouncement on this? It doesn't feel real! The receptionist at the OB/GYN was the first person we broke the news to.

"Hi, I took a pregnancy test and I think I'm pregnant."

"Okay, can you come to a group appointment on Monday for new parents-to-be?" The receptionist was not particularly surprised. For her, it did feel real--and not especially impressive.

The appointment with the midwife was professional and very straightforward. Don't eat this or this, eat a lot of these things, here's some ways to handle nausea, and talk to Amy about scheduling an ultrasound. In a month. The test was almost a formality, and was probably pretty similar to the ones from the drugstore. Also positive. Still didn't make me feel much like a parent.

Our announcement to our parents.

But it did make me start feeling like the arc of our lives is changing. There has been a plan, and a trend, but this has really clarified it. These future needs that you've been musing about how to meet? Now they're pressing needs, and there's no more time for musing. The process of finding a way to have a stable, predictable life within a reasonable radius of family has become the absolute priority. Where I once thought in terms of "finding enough to get by and not accumulating debt, and if weird things happen then that's an adventure," that way of thinking has been completely replaced by "what are the needs of someone who's brand new to the entire world, and what am I going to do to make it work out for them?" There's really no other path. In that way, it did start to feel real after that appointment, and I spent some time acting more stressed out than was necessary.^[1]

Darnell, in the meantime, felt no symptoms, no nausea, as early days rolled by and all the guidelines said she should be. "I don't feel any different at all. I would be reassured if I could only be nauseous. I wish I had some morning sickness or something. It just doesn't feel real." She would come to regret that wish; we're thirteen weeks in and she's been continually nauseous and tired since about week six. At least it served to reassure her (and, to some extent, me) that yes, there truly was something going on in there. On that front, we've had enough reassurance--we're both ready for Darnell to stop constantly feeling awful. (In a way, this is the first thing the baby has done. Way to lower expectations, baby. Hyper-alertness, effortless muscle gain, or savant math abilities might have been nice.)

We got the first ultrasound on March 22. Pretty impressive to learn what was growing unseen. It didn't really look like a baby, but it did look how it was supposed to. (It doesn't really feel like a baby, either, but I think it does feel how it's supposed to.) Body, head, spine, four limbs. Darnell was suffering through week eight, with her eyes set on the second trimester. At the ultrasound, they pushed the due date back a week, and she had to start week eight all over again.

We told our parents the news shortly after that ultrasound (about a month ago), and aside from the excitement then, things have been pretty quiet. This business of "feeling real" is turning out to be pretty complicated, and it's shifting all over the place. I've seen parenthood as a rigidly binary situation: parents are like this, non-parents are like that. But of course that's wrong. Everything happens gradually, and by and large you're the same person you were yesterday. We'll see where things stand after a whole bunch of tomorrows.

Oh, and here's the announcement again since I think it's so great. All creative credit goes to Darnell.

Oh, and it's moving to get so much support from so many people. I'm humbled whenever I'm reminded of just how many great friends surround us. If you're reading this, I'm probably talking to you. Thanks for being part of our lives.

---

[1]: “Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.”
--Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash 

I read this book when I was about 18, and saw myself in this passage. Nearly a year ago, I turned 26, so I'm right on schedule. I've often wondered just how much change is possible in a person's life from a certain point. Finding a friend and partner who you can't do without is one way for things to be more predictable. Taking on responsibility for a brand new person also changes the game: things will really never be the same.