Notes From the First Trimester
Jeff spends the evening preparing dinner for us. From the couch I can smell vegetarian etouffée, grilled shrimp rubbed with Cajun seasoning and burning charcoal. I can also smell my own stinking feet, my fresh shower scented deodorant and the new tea tree shampoo. I’m hoping my appetite stays. I’m hoping I don’t fall asleep on the couch. I’m hoping I can make it through dinner without putting my head on the table. I promise Jeff I will do the dishes, but he tells me to relax. He’ll do them. He doesn’t not mind.
Later, Jeff will tuck me into bed. He’ll wrap his arms around me, he’ll squeeze my belly so as to say goodnight to the plum sized baby living in my womb. He’ll squeeze my behind so as to say goodnight to me.
He laughs at the traditional-ness of it. I marvel at the fact that it happened at all.
On the day I find out I am pregnant, I cry a lot. I cry while I walk to work, the tears streaming down my face underneath my large sunglasses. I cry before I call my mom who cries when I tell her she’ll finally be a grandmother. I cry after work when I ask Jeff to lie down on our bed next to me. I cry at a Chinese restaurant over family-sized platters of walnut shrimp and orange chicken. I struggle to keep a stiff upper lip as our waitress takes the picked at plates away.
Jeff looks at me from across the table. He grabs my hand. We leave the restaurant and as he drives me home, I cry even more.
I woke that morning around 6:00 AM, unable to sleep away my suspicions any longer. While I wait for the results, I stare at myself in the mirror. I don’t need to look at the test to confirm that my life is irrevocably changed. It feels irrevocably changed.
Jeff sleeps as the sun shoots beams through the window of a house that will never be our home. I slide in next to him and I tell him the news. He wraps his arms around me and we snuggle ourselves back to sleep for a couple more hours.
Before I knew I was pregnant, I spent a week in Austin watching my favorite aunt die.
My mother calls the baby Janet, after her sister. She believes that the tiny spirit in my womb was sent down to earth just as Aunt Jan passed on from this life. It’s a lovely thought, two souls helping each other pass through to the next stage, one old, one new.
Sometimes I wish I could’ve shared the news with Jan while she laid dying in her hospital bed, but then I wonder if that would’ve made her passing all the more difficult.
Even though I don’t believe it, I prefer my mother’s story.
I need no reminder to remember that I am growing a tiny life inside of me, but every week I receive email newsletters letting me know how large the baby is and what features they’ve developed. I know that right now the baby is the size of a plum and that next week he or she will be a lemon.
I know what I can eat and what I can’t eat. I crave Louisiana hot links smothered in BBQ sauce. I stop out of my way for berry flavored lemonades. I survive mornings on blueberries and peanut butter crackers. I have zero tolerance for beets and the very thought of hummus turns my stomach.
I also know that I can have my blood taken without squirming myself into a panic, if only I hum quietly to myself and look away.
I know that I need to be gentle with myself when I look in the mirror.
I am also certain that the internet is no place for new moms and luckily my appetite depends on not going down certain searchable rabbit holes.
I know that this baby is loved because Jeff can’t stop telling me how much he loves this little baby already.
And yet, even with this little life to keep me company, what I didn’t know is how lonely I would be. We are strangers in a strange land and without friends or family to share our company, I tell the baby that there is some place better where the heat of the sun matches the warmth of its people and when we get there, we’ll know we’re home.
