8 Weeks

I wasn’t exactly excited to be pregnant. It’s an incredibly complicated feeling, being pregnant and not happy about it. There is an entire industry surrounding pregnancy and childbirth, that basically sells the idea that all women want kids, and all babies are just little bundles of joy. When you don’t fit into that demographic, you feel really lonely and misunderstood. I felt like there was something wrong with me because I wasn’t happy, like am I broken?

I called my best friend on my husbands advice at around 8 weeks pregnant. He’s such a good man, I know he thinks something is wrong when he says things like “Have you called Maren lately?” or “You should maybe call Maren this week.” Wise, wise man.

Maren was the first person I told, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t even fully get the words out before I burst into tears. We’ve been friends since our first day of 1st grade Sunday school, and she gets me in a way not many people do. A friendship forged in the play of childhood, and the angst of adolescence and now even more in the intensity of new motherhood. I don’t know how I would have gotten through my pregnancy without her. She was my de facto pregnancy doula from 1,800 miles away.

With utmost grace and kindness she congratulated me, in a way that didn’t annoy me (which is hard to do — I’m very easily annoyed by well wishes), and listened to all my fears and struggles and frankly, my rebellion towards being pregnant. This wasn’t what I wanted, this wasn’t my plan for my life, I didn’t want to be a mother. She told me I was going to be okay, and that pregnancy sucks, but that babies are kind of cool sometimes, and she preached the gospel to me, and told me I could text her anytime if I needed to bitch.

I text her a lot.