The Rather Rotund Lady Singeth

What is one of the hardest ways you can hear the news you don't want to hear? Well, I'll tell you. Go to a good friend's house who is due in two weeks. She has a 21 month old too. You made plans to get together to see another old friend who just had a baby last week. And that baby is adorable. Only five little pounds. The friend who just gave birth had a very hard time-- and the conditions surrounding this little baby were very scary. When you hold her new son, you just laugh and laugh because you can't imagine the scare she's had and that he's out and safe and so is she is really a miracle. So what you're dealing with shitty infertility-- here is something really good in the world and it's amazing. Incredibly, you really feel this way. For real.

So, imagine you are holding this baby and you hear your phone ring, so you hand the baby back to your friend's father. You answer the phone and right away you know the nurse is not going to give you your number. In fact, the number she gives you is 36. So you think about that horrific cramping from yesterday. The cramping that made you grab the lecturn while you were in front of your whole class trying to talk about Iranian history. And so when the nurse is talking to you, you sit on a couch in a room next to where everyone is talking about pregnancies and babies and when you put your hand up to your mouth to cover your cry, you can smell that little baby smell you want to know so intimately, but you don't want to cry at this moment because the day is about your friend and her own little miracle and if you start crying you'll never stop. That's what you think. You talk to the nurse for a long time who wonders if you've started bleeding yet. You look down in horror at the pale yellow couch you are sitting on. But no. Not yet. And you talk about how you have to go back to the RE office where they will verify your blood type as positive, because now that you've been pregnant-- now that you've been pregnant-- now that you've been pregnant--oh God-- there are things they have to be sure about with Rh and you listen to half it because you just realized you are miscarrying the rice. Miscarriage is an ugly word. You try to convince the nurse you don't need that blood test because you are definitely A+, but you don't have any piece of paper that is verified on. Not even your old Red Cross card because they banned you years ago since they thought you might be a mad cow. You hear the baby make baby noises from the other room. And the nurse tells you how your miscarriage will probably happen. And you schedule all your follow up appointments and the nurse tells you not only do you need to come back in tomorrow but next week as well to make sure the beta number goes negative. In the middle of this phone call, your friend's toddler will come into the room and look at you with the boldest blue eyes you have ever seen on a child. You will him away from you so hard, you start to feel like a cruel person. For hours after this, you will listen to pregnancy complaints and you will want to scream out in aggravation. You want to cry to some of your oldest friends, but you won't. You don't. You call your partner, who can't cry either, and you call your mother who is in the middle of an art class, but cries a little anyway and you finally leave the room you are in after pacing back and forth a few times drawing in shaking breaths. You come back to your own house where you want to pour that huge drink at that very moment, but your old friend and her parents are still with you, and since her parents are Adventists, you want to respect that they won't appreciate you guzzling down a hearty drink, you compromise with yourself and just drink the caffienated tea and you still ask to hold the baby, because this is one of your oldest friends, and the baby is really very amazing. At some point in the afternoon you realize they are going to leave and you start dreading it because then you will be alone and you know it's going to pour out any minute after that. And when they leave, your favorite cat will come to you and sit on you as if he knows that know you can take your allergy medicine again and he will look at you so intently, you know he knows. And then you finally make that drink and curse that there's only enough CC for one and you go upstairs and watch the sun set beyond some dark and heavy clouds and know that the night has come for sure and you wait. You wait for the horrible bright spot to mark the end.