Confessional

I cannot keep a secret from my adoring public, apparently. After a flurry of DMs and @'s at me on twitter from people making sure I was ok because i hadn't been tweeting as much, and a number of people asking me why I was not able to continue losing weight, and still more people asking me if I was going to a conference next weekend that I'm on the fence about attending because of certain medical things going on with me, I finally told my Twitter readers I'm expecting in November. It took all of ten days for me to come clean with my secret--that's how long I've known. This is a complete surprise to us and throws all our plans into chaos. I wasn't going to say anything until I was past the major risk of miscarriage, but I'm wayyyyyy too much of an extravert to not blurt out something stupid, and when people were trying to reassure me that I would get past my weight loss plateau (ha!), I finally gave up. It's a good thing I'm not in charge of national security. I had my first son in 1992, and he's taking the news like a champ; much better than my husband or I did, honestly. We'll get there. I had a nice cry with my priest on Wednesday--lots of emotional clutter around having a kid at this point in my life when I'd let the idea of doing so go, and congratulations (now pouring in on twitter) actually wear me down. So hold on to them for now, just keep us in your prayers and congratulate us once we're a little more in tune with what's going on. We're planning to tell our parents (who don't get on the internet much, thank goodness) over Mother's Day weekend, and hopefully we'll be better prepared to look a little less horror-struck by then. I'm so frustrated with the absolute lack of resources for a 35+ woman with an unplanned pregnancy. I'm not a teenager, and I'm not real keen on the envy I know I'm going to get from women my age who are struggling to get pregnant and having difficulty. And I absolutely loathe the "gee aren't you ecstatic" tone that comes from every single person who thinks this is awesome news. The thing is, I know it's a blessing, but I don't want my face rubbed in it. I have to give up graduate school, I have no idea how I'm going to afford day care, and in many respects I'm more lost and confused right now than I was when I had my first son, when I was 22.

I mean, let's face it, I am _happy,_ but it changes so much about how I envisioned the next 20 years. I had come to a place where I had cried and screamed and mourned for the children I would not have. So what do you do when you've reached that place of closure, only to have all those feelings pouring out again but... in reverse? Once we had decided not to have more children, we had set a series of decisions in motion. And we had made most of those decisions already, but there was one messy bit of business we hadn't taken care of: the gonadal one.  My husband had met with his doctor to have a conversation about a vasectomy the very morning I had to break the news to him that we had put it off too long.

So I'm completely not prepared for this. But I'm taking this week off from work to regroup, meditate, clean up, and try to connect with the inner joy that I know is in there somewhere. Let's face it: I'm scared to death, and this smile is made of glass.