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After a week, I decide to try it out and see what it’s like to share my news. We have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon and it’s feeling so real that I whisper to Carrie, sitting next to me in Early British Literature, “Guess what! I’m pregnant.”
“Wow!” she whispers back, “Are you dropping out of school?”
“What? Of course not!”
“What about grad school?”
“What about it?” I wonder whatever happened to “Congratulations” or “I’m so happy for you!” I decide not to tell anyone else for a while.
Scott comes with me to the doctor and we wait together, me reading Jane Eyre and Scott reading a Minnesota Outdoors magazine. Finally, they call my name and we walk into a small room, sit in plastic chairs, and answer a long list of questions: birth date? any medications? are you a smoker? do you have a cat? and about a hundred more. Scott’s eyes are glazing over by the time the nurse hands me a copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting and tells us to go back to the waiting room until the doctor’s ready for me.
We sit and wait for another hour before we’re called into the exam room, and then we wait for another twenty minutes for the doctor to arrive. She knocks and steps in, walking straight to the computer to read my information. She doesn’t smile or make eye contact. She runs through a list of questions and directives, then tells me to go schedule my next appointment at the nurse’s station. That’s it. She walks out, having spent less than ten minutes with us, and she didn’t even ask us if we have any questions. It’s all routine for her, I suppose. The questions, the procedure: she probably runs through it a hundred times a week.
But still, I'm struck by her lack of enthusiasm. She wasn’t mean, exactly; she didn’t do anything wrong, per se. I guess I had just expected more, some sort of excitement. I remember when my mom was pregnant with my little brother. I was seven and I clearly remember walking in stores with her, her big belly sticking out and people stopping to congratulate her and ask when the baby was due. It was as though she brought happiness to others just by being pregnant. That was twenty years ago, though, and it was in Canada, where the population is much smaller than in the U.S. Maybe that’s the difference. There are four million babies born in this country every year, so each individual case might not seem very special, I suppose.
“Don’t let it get to you,” Scott says as we drive home. “We can’t expect her to be excited about it. It’s not her baby.”
He’s right. We can only control our own attitudes. It’s up to us to make sure this baby is appreciated and loved, taken care of, and given every opportunity. We can’t count on anyone else to do it.
I examine my profile in the bathroom mirror when we get home, trying to imagine my flat stomach bulging out. I look up and catch my eyes in the reflection, shining and sparkling. My skin is glowing and I have a radiant smile on my face. I look happy and content, and I guess I am. We’re doing everything right. When this child is born, I know we’re going to have a wonderful life together, the three of us.
Baby
I didn’t count on was how tired I was going to be. No amount of sleep is ever enough and it’s all I can do, it seems, just to make it through my day. When there’s any sort of substantial break in between classes, I sneak home for a nap. I put off writing my papers in order to get a long night’s sleep, but I’m still tired in the morning.
Soon it’s time to pick which graduate schools I’m going to apply to. I drive to the University of Minnesota-Duluth, the only university in the area that offers a master’s in English, and I tour the department. But I’m so exhausted, not to mention nauseous, that it’s pure torture to walk around with the department head for forty-five minutes. I thank him and leave at the first opportunity, drive myself home, and fall asleep for two hours. I barely remember the visit, I’m in such a daze.
The thought of visiting any other schools exhausts me. The University of Minnesota-Duluth is fine. I’ll just go there.
As I’m putting together my application packet, I receive a letter in the mail that the article I submitted to Feminisimos is going to be published. If I wasn’t pregnant, we’d go out to celebrate or, at the very least, share a bottle of champagne. But instead, I just mention it to Scott in passing and include the information in my grad school application packet.
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