kerouac says

after the day in which no one has been quite nice enough to me, if there is a nice enough, if i'm not a whirlpool that sucks in nice and cannot be satiated. i need all these dumb labs done, just normal ones, just . . . you know, do i have syphilis (NO) and crap like that, they do this at the beginning of pregnancy, i have read about it on the internet, and like a good soldier willing to schlep in order to save fifty bucks, i bring the lab orders to campus to have the blood drawn there. because there are at least four tests (of the eight) on this list that are freebies at the student clinic, but are $20 at the lab.

except someone just made a policy that they won't do this anymore. because pregnant ladies' lab results kept getting lost, and pregnant ladies who are less on top of it than i am didn't notice, i guess, that their labs weren't getting back, and didn't insist on printing their own copies of the results. no offense, less overachieving pregnant ladies; i know this is not your job. but i am on this kind of shit. i don't prefer to wrestle with the system, but i'll do it to save some money. it's that kind of month. it's that kind of year. it's that kind of baby. they're those kinds of dental bills coming down the pike, and an unemployed summer of breastfeeding coming up, and another person to insure, and i have to stop thinking about this now.

instead of fixing the system so that THE RIGHT FUCKING PERSON GETS EMAILED with the lab results, they just made a rule so that pregnant grad students have to shell out more cash to have the same tests done at the fancy lab. the CBC the midwife ordered? at school: free. if i need it because i'm sick: free. if i need it because i'm pregnant: go back to the expensive hospital. and man, i know it's twenty bucks, but it's like none of these people have ever been in the place where twenty bucks matters. listen, it matters.

i wonder, very briefly, what it would be like to do this without concern for money. and then i think about the pregnant lady at the taco truck on the corner by the bus stop, and how maybe she doesn't have insurance at all (or, what do i know, maybe taco trucks are incredibly lucrative and she drives an alfa-romeo) and how we actually have everything we need. we have everything we need. including an apparently thriving fetus and no syphilis.

Labels: chickpea

i had a dream that the baby was moving. like, MOVING. in the dream, i remembered hearing other people say that once you recognized the flutters of a moving fetus, you realize you've been feeling them for a while--and that freaked me out, because it was way too early to feel the amazing somersault i had just felt, without even thinking about how the moving must have started a while ago. giant overachiever baby.

in the dream, i called her a her. it made me feel all soft after i woke up, but so would calling-him-a-him have done.

meanwhile: i am feeling, sort of often, like i have adrenaline coursing through me. and i'm not even that freaked out. it feels oddly chemical, like maybe one of the baby hormones is PANIC. and i can't take any magic bean slow-downer pills. an anxiety fairy has pitched a tent in my chest. right now it seems to have gone away for a bit, which is good because i don't want the chickpea on a steady diet of acetylcholine, or whatever special cocktail fight-or-flight pours.

i had this sweet fantasy that when i got pregnant, i would save up money so i could have a massage every month. i was prepared to scrimp, too. and then the monkey went to the dentist, and, rootcanalcrowncrownperiodontistcavity, and now we are going to have to get a mortgage for his mouth. and five other things came surprise due all at once, and now . . . all extras are out. sigh. pregnant ladies who have to be off their anxiety meds cannot go to the cheap bathhouse in koreatown to relax because the superhot soaking tub poaches their fetuses. they cannot take their klonopin. they cannot enjoy a martini. they cannot have that nice ganja gelato from the dispensary. they try to breathe and mediate, but when the anxiety pixie is hosting a drum circle in their chests, this doesn't go so well. thank god we still have yoga.

Labels: chickpea

guess what? the whole world is different, except oddly, disappointingly, exactly the same. this week the embryonic disk becomes a tube! this is huge! you have some bumps on you i can't remember the name of that later will become muscles and organs! this is so gigantic, and yet i look, and mostly feel, exactly the same. except i can't have any beer. so far, this is kind of a raw deal.

we're going to see the midwife in a couple weeks, and i don't really know what she's going to say. good job with those vitamins? keep going to yoga? it'll be too early for the heartbeat, and so far as i can tell, there's just not that much to know right now.

every time i wake up and cuddle with the monkey, i think: will we never get to do this again? once there is a baby or a kid or a teenager or whatever, someone with needs? in the future, won't i have to be making banana pancakes right about now, or keeping someone off drugs, or working a third job? it wouldn't be a life change if i wasn't catastrophizing.

my mom makes a beeline for the baby clothes in any store, my dad says. i imagine her knitting a tiny hat, and i lose my shit. we are having a baby who will wear a tiny hat. a hat.

Labels: chickpea

your dad called you an asshole the other day. he didn't mean it; you're just being kind of shy about excreting that one hormone that comes out in pee. so far we've had a negative test, a positive one, a really faintly positive one, and another negative. finally the nice nurse at ucl@ did what the first one should have done, which was leave a standing order for the urine test so i don't have to make an appointment each time. i'm going back in at the end of the week, and that test had better be positive.

because i'm sure i'm pregnant. pretty sure, not having been it before. my basal temperature has stayed high, which is promising, but the first piece of sureness was those weird fluttery twinges in my gut, like my abdomen was excited. and then the waking up early. and the heartburn (really? already?). i will take it. universe, i will take it. one baby, please. right here.

i have been calling you a zygote, for political reasons, but i'm really looking forward to your being a baby. although whenever i visualize it, you seem like a prop baby, like a baby i somehow know, even in this fantasy, that i am going to have to give back. here's the deal: i am never giving you back.

i told the yoga lady about you, even though you are only a chickpea. i didn't want you to fall out during plow pose or anything like that. i told your tante anni that i was pretty sure you were on board. and then i told k-to, in a weird email rush. and then i told the supermarket man as i bought root beer, and the neighbor and my spanish TA (both of whom i was asking for preg doctor recommendations, not just because i am a blabbermouth). i am, though. i am a blabbermouth. the monkey, i mean your father, is a little skittish about telling folks, and even though i told him i need to tell my people, i'm trying to let his moderation guide me. perhaps i should wait until the pee test at student health turns positive (come ON, mofos).

and maybe the grocery man does not need to know.

okay. do good in there. do some cellular stuff. i can't wait to know more about you.

Labels: chickpea