It took three days and the encouragement of some very good friends for me to screw up the courage to schedule my CVS appointment. It just seemed so presumptuous of me to assume I would be pregnant at ten weeks! But the doctor I want to perform the procedure is one of the best and most experienced in NYC, and I know she books up fast. So I gritted my teeth at a mere five weeks, three days and scheduled the appointment. Even though we hadn't officially seen a sac yet. And on some strange burst of intuition, I had them schedule a twin CVS which takes more time than a singleton CVS.
I felt a lot of relief after I booked the appointment. I mean, it's not like I ordered nursery furniture or anything. It's a vital prenatal test for me to have and it has to be scheduled during a small window of time. Booking the appointment was absolutely the right, smart thing to do.
But sometimes I think that I've jinxed myself by booking the test, and by a hundred other tiny moments that should be mine by rights, but have been marred by all my miscarriages. I know how tenuous these early days weeks are (can I say that now? Weeks? I think I can!). A friend with fertility problems once described it as "the tricky first tri," and that phrase is never far from my mind. I'm very ill this time around, and I even worry that experiencing the pregnancy on such a deep physical level will jinx me. Shouldn't I not think about it? Dream about it? Won't it only become real by pretending it doesn't exist?
But then I think: no. After all, Tinkerbell was saved by the applause of children who believed. And the Velveteen Rabbit became real because he was so very loved. Fervent belief and bottomless love are not in short supply around here.
So I continue to embrace my pregnancy and all the potential that each bright day holds. Sometimes there is fear; there is worry; there is the icy edge of anticipated grief gnawing at my heart. But there are also baby names that randomly drift through my mind. There is the package of three new maternity t-shirts that I bought (on clearance), since my usual shirts already fail to cover my belly. There is the peek into the room meant to be the nursery, which was bitterly dubbed the Empty Room for months, and a vision of two cribs! I was bold enough to imagine two cribs!
That's an awful lot of potentially jinxing behavior. Well, at least if things go wrong, I can spread the blame around.
The way I see it, it isn't jinxing, it's an act of faith. Not sure if that makes sense, or if it's logical, but it felt helpful.
xxxooo
Posted by: Georgia | February 23, 2007 at 06:12 PM