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February 7, 2003 - Irish Twins
The sickness had made me muzzy and so I stared at the smooth white back of the test strip for the better part of a minute, waiting for something to happen, until I realized my mistake and flipped it over. Ê You have a rosebush. You rooted it in the soil, kept it lush and watered and free from insects and disease, watched each leaf unfold and waited breathlessly for each perfect rose to bloom. This rosebush occupied all of your attention, and each new flower it put forth was all the more remarkable because it stood there all alone, as if it were the only rosebush that had ever existed. Now see that same rosebush in a garden filled with a thousand others. Or even with a single companion by its side. Two or a thousand to prune and tend and all too soon the tending overtakes the pleasure and even if you had time to stop and smell that one perfect rose it would be as nothing because two or a thousand would surround it and it would cease to be precious and rare. Ê Before, I was always a little creeped out by the women who went around smugly swooning that they had "loved being pregnant". Look back and you'll see I never used the word where it could be avoided - I was with child, I was expecting, but I sure as hell wasn't "pregnant". Now that it's over and done, now that I'm ringingly, hollowly empty in a body that heretofore was always more than full with just me, it is becoming apparent that, indeed, I loved being pregnant. I cannot describe to you how empty I feel inside. Strangely, at the same time, it is almost impossible for me to believe that I was ever pregnant in the first place. And how can I feel empty when the child who tenanted that space now lives so sweetly in my arms? It is a mystery. Ê So last week a strange buzzing inside me there. And then the queerest bouts of emotion. And then this cold - right at the beginning, last time, I had a cold, too. Early pregnancy comes with mild immunosuppression, so that the forming child is not attacked and rejected like a bad baboon heart. So things like colds are more easily caught. Sickness and Queen Asha herself keep me from sleep and these are the thoughts that form in the small hours and the dark. The sad truth is I'm probably not even capable of conceiving right now, even if I wanted to. First of all, the breastfeeding/nursing (pick the term that is least offensive to you; while the act is not at all repellent - is, in fact, quite lovely for the parties involved - all discussion of it is) should keep me safely barren for quite a while longer. Second of all, my unmedicated, unexercised body is most likely in such a state of confusion that it's going to take the better part of a year of careful care to convince it to spit out an egg again. Ê Irish twins, the woman who ran the baby care class called it. For such cases there are two explanations: the overbearing selfishness of one partner (I will cruelly generalize here and say that it's usually The Man who is to blame in these cases), or (and this is the instance here) two incredibly frazzled, sleep-deprived, on-the-verge-of-coming-down-with-nasty-colds people who are nevertheless still madly in love with, and mad for, one another. (Two people who with two children in two years can kiss each other, and their marriage, goodbye.) It would be so unfair to her. Yes, her growing and her bearing went well with me, but the growing and the bearing of the next would tear my attention from her when she needs it most desperately. Each new discovery, each new day with her is so joyous and wonderful, but odds on she'd have gotten a sibling for her first birthday gift and after that no day would ever completely belong to just her and just me ever again. Toby was surprisingly sanguine about the whole thing (they'd play together in the backyard, chase each other around the tree like a pair of squirrels, he said), but I'd be robbed of my beautiful Asha just as the roses began to bloom in earnest. Ê There's a voice inside me that calls out for my little boy. But it will remain unanswered, for now and for a long time to come. One red line only. This time, no companion.
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