Chicken Soup Stories：  I’m Ready

meiju

I’m Ready

By Kristen Cook

I stared at the stick in disbelief. Two straight, pink lines. No doubt about it - pregnant.

Oh my God!

A mix of excitement and sheer terror washed over me. Sure, my husband and I had talked about having a baby. I just didn’t think it would happen so fast. It seemed like one minute we were talking and the next, I was standing in front of the drugstore’s home pregnancy section debating whether I should buy the single- or the two-test pack.

I had a feeling - early mother’s intuition maybe? - and bought just a single test. That was all I needed. We were having a baby. And I’d never even changed a diaper.

What were we thinking?

My husband, Joe, developed the baby pangs a year ago. I, on the other hand, was seized by fear. I wasn’t ready. I’d look at a baby and mentally count the bottles of Pepto-Bismol the parents would consume once that bundle of joy hit those turbulent teens, or I’d calculate how much four years of college would cost. Then the baby bug bit me - and not a second too soon.

Now my body’s on this wild, hormonal ride, and I have to say, sometimes I want to get off.

I’m close to thirty years old, but my complexion is sixteen. Nausea is my constant companion. My friends even ask for upchuck updates. I never drive anywhere without an air-sickness bag by my side, and I’ve thrown up in so many restaurant parking lots that I’ve thought about asking if I could just rent my dinners instead of buying them. My bladder has shrunk to the size of a lima bean, requiring me to pee exactly every thirteen minutes.

And I’m so acutely tuned in to pain - yeah, that bodes well for an easy labor and delivery - that I swear, early on, I could feel each and every cell dividing. Hypochondriacs are not good pregnant women.

More proof. When two barf-free weeks passed, I panicked. I felt so normal I figured something had to be wrong. Maybe I wasn’t having a baby after all. Maybe it was a hysterical pregnancy. My husband assured me the only thing hysterical about this pregnancy is me.

And my maternity underwear.

I’m not sure which is scarier - having my body feel so out of control or those enormous, one-size-fits-all panties. At four months, my belly’s still at that awkward is-she-pregnant-or-is-that-a-beer-gut stage. My little Buddha belly is enough to keep me out of my stylish silk undies, but it’s still too small for the maternity briefs. I can pull those things up over my chest.

I think I just invented combination bra and underwear. I’ll call it the brunder. If I can sell that idea to Victoria’s Secret, no more worries about our kiddo’ s college tuition. But I have to say, the most amazing transformation of all - even more than filling out that maternity underwear some day - is how neurotic I’ve become about this little person who isn’t even born yet. It all hit when I saw the first sonogram of our baby on the monitor. That’s when I really and truly realized this was our baby. Our baby. The nausea and frequent urination, all the inconveniences, well, they just melted away. They didn’t matter anymore as I looked at this amazing person. Our baby.

At just eleven weeks old, our little miracle was already so perfectly formed, yet so small - just four centimeters - that Joe nicknamed the baby “Speck.”

It was much too early to tell the gender, but I saw a little girl taking her first steps, walking to school, getting her driver’s license, going to college, getting married, having babies of her own. Her whole life flashed before my eyes right on that screen. I thought about what a big, ugly world is waiting out there for Speck. One filled with cancer and war and junior high dances. How could I possibly protect her from all the bad, while letting her experience all the good?

Yes, in that instant I realized there are much scarier things than that shapeless maternity underwear. But you know what else I realized? I’m ready.