You feel unusually bloated. You almost barfed at the mere whiff of your co-worker's seemingly potent death breath. You're cranky beyond the typical Monday blues. And, weren't you supposed to have gotten your period a few days ago? All signs are pointing to bun in the oven....until you remember that you opted for the pizza instead of salad at lunch, your co-worker apologizes because she was in a garlic eating contest over the weekend, it's finally Tuesday and you get your period. Not preggers after all.
Pregnancy fake outs happen. For some women, the first couple (or more) decades of their life are spent avoiding pregnancy at all cost. Through these years, a pregnancy fake out is an anxiety-filled, heart-attack-inducing, fear fest. It's a time in a woman's life when, for any number of reasons, she's simply not ready to be pregnant.
When a woman steps from the pregnancy-avoidance phase to the pregnancy-please phase, a pregnancy fake produces the exact same feelings of anxiety and fear...but in a completely different way. What was once anxiety over the prospect of having a child in an unprepared life becomes anxiety over not having a child in a fully prepared life. The fear of having becomes the fear of not having.
I'm not sure which is worse. But, I think that as bad as it is on either side of the line, pregnancy fake outs are a good (and important) reminder of the significance of pregnancy. Because it's not just pregnancy, it's a baby and it's not just significant, it's fucking huge.
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