Two.

Disclaimer: I'm purging my soul tonight. Giving more than one part today, just because I feel like getting it out.

Part 7

So.

What I wanted more than anything in the world had come true.

I was pregnant. Great with child, even! Finally! My life would be okay. Everything would be alright. I just knew it. I would have a little baby and that baby would love me. Finally, someone would love me. And it would all be okay. I would stay home and raise my little baby and we would have wonderful adventures. I would read her books and we would play outside. I would get her a little plastic pool and fill it with water and we would splash away our days on the deck. I would make my own baby food from the blackberries that grew on the bushes. She and I would be best friends. I just knew it.

Within an hour, the reality hit me. Hard.

I was going to have to tell my husband I was pregnant.

He? Was not going to react the way I wanted him to.

Granted, he knew I was trying to get pregnant. He said, “Okay” or whatever and didn’t really seem very concerned about it. I believe now that he just thought I probably couldn’t get pregnant due to the dreaded “female issues” and that he would just go along with it. He was getting something out of it, after all, never really expecting anything to happen. Never really expecting to become a parent.

So he came home around midnight and I asked him if I could paint the back bedroom.

He said, “Why? Are you pregnant?”

And I said, “Yes”

He looked at me for a moment and then said, “I’m going to bed.”

That was it.


I told myself it didn’t matter.

I was pregnant! With a baby! A real, live, actual human being!

I was so excited!


No one else was excited, which sucked. My husband of course wasn't excited. We didn't talk about it. He didn’t seem to care one way or another. My mom didn’t act excited at all, when I told her. She was very…calm. Later she told me that she was upset because she didn’t feel I was ready to be a mother. She didn’t say it that nicely, though. It was more like, “You had no business becoming a mother”.

I didn’t tell my husband’s mother. Not then.

The morning after I told my husband I was violently ill. I was in the bathroom throwing up and I called to him to please come and help me. All I wanted was for him to get me a washcloth out of the dryer.

He refused. He told me to get it myself. And then he said something that made my blood run absolutely cold.

“You’re the one who wanted it”

He didn’t. He called my baby an “it”. And he didn’t want “it” at all.

I went to my doctor and a blood test confirmed that I was, indeed, pregnant and my body wasn’t doing something really odd and freaky, as it was prone to do. They gave me a bag full of goodies; books and pamphlets on childbirth and what to expect and prenatal vitamins and all kinds of things.

A few days later I got a call from the doctor’s office. One of the nurses was calling to ask me if I had been really sick and vomiting a lot? And I told her, yes, in fact I had been. I threw up all the time. I couldn’t seem to keep anything down. I was losing weight.

She asked me to come in again. She made an appointment for me to have an ultrasound. It was early, for an ultrasound. But given my history it seemed like a wise idea.

My husband refused to go with me to. He wouldn’t get out of bed. He couldn’t be bothered. He said, “You can tell me about it when you get home”.

I went. It was early in the morning. The ultrasound technician was enormously pregnant. Seriously, she was a really small girl and she looked like she was about eleven and a half months pregnant. I have no idea how she was walking around like that.

I was flat on my back on the really cold table. She smeared the goop all over my stomach and was quiet for several minutes. Finally she said, in an extremely bored manner,

“Well, it’s twins”


Just like that.


I half sat up. I looked at her blankly.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re having-“

I didn’t let her finish. I screamed. I SCREAMED. I screamed so loudly that the doctor came down the hall and stuck his head in the door to see if I was okay.

Was I okay? Holy freaking crap.


I was having twins!