Feelings, You are Difficult.

I am just a mishmosh of elated positivity and nerves / general resentment. Feelings, as I state in my post title, are difficult. Would you agree? Perhaps "complicated" is a better word. I am 11 weeks 3 days which, if you do the math, is startlingly close to 12 weeks. Closing in on the first trimester. I hate the trimester bullies who say that 13 weeks is the trimester end mark or worse, the end of week 13 really meaning 14 interminable weeks. Do they haphazardly lengthen the swimming portion of the Ironman just for good measure? No, they do not. It's long enough and you still have to ride a bike and run a marathon. Peeps need to keep my trimester an even 12 weeks.

So in the feelings news, I am mostly really happy. My nearest and dearest know for the most part and I've been able to quietly celebrate with them, if only by acknowledging that this pregnancy is happening and progressing nicely thus far. My in-laws came into town last weekend. On Friday, they took us to a fancy shmancy dinner.  When ordering, I asked the waiter if a salad dressing was made with raw egg. He said it was. I replied, "Oh, I can't eat that. I'm pregnant." I could have just said "no thank you" but I wanted to see how telling a stranger would feel. Good, uneventful. As though pregnancy were normal. After our entrees, our waiter presented me with a brownie sundae with a candle as "congratulations from the restaurant." What?!?! Who does that? Seriously, have you heard of such a thing? Because I'm me, I nearly cried. Before we left, I wrote a quick note to the waiter telling him how much it meant to me and slipped it in with the bill. Clearly I wildly over-shared and probably frightened him. So we can never go back to that restaurant. Not a big deal since we can't afford it ourselves anyways. I told friends about this incident and they likened it to the happy birthday clapping dance they do at TGI Friday's, Bennigan's and other such establishments on birthdays. Clapping dance for pregnancy! Nothing says first trimester down low like a blazing candle.
 

That's the good. I'm getting more excited, slowly a little less scared. I do, however, have to use my doppler as soon as I get home after telling someone I'm pregnant to see if I've jinxed my fetus. Lunacy. Straight jacket level insanity. A pattern is developing where I tell someone and then the heart continues to beat. I'm working on several graphs and colorful charts to depict the correlation as it emerges.

Now the difficult. I'm getting near the point where a normal prego would start telling those not immediately in her inner circle. Like, for example, boss and coworkers. Honestly, I'm not really concerned about that. My boss is a mother of 3. She gets it. My HR person was very rah-rah when I had to take time off for transfers and such. I figure I'll tell them somewhere around 13-15 weeks. Seems reasonable. What I am positively dreading is telling the rest of my family. My mom, dad, sister and brother-in-law know. That's it. My grandma will be elated. That, I can handle. My benevolent aunt will be too and while I am dreading the actual phone call for no real reason, she'll be wonderful and excited. I am dreading calling my other aunt, who is also benevolent but has been just a bumbling ball of awkward and wrong throughout this ordeal. I realize some people revel in the glorious experience of spilling the beans. Not it. Miscarriage and IF has made me feel very protective of this pregnancy like, if you weren't my biggest fan throughout this ordeal, you don't get to celebrate. I give a pass to people who weren't aware. You, dear readers, get to celebrate with me. You've read some seriously depressing posts and probably need something uplifting after all that doom and gloom.

So, the Other Aunt. Other Aunt's daughter is pregnant and due in November. Whenever Other Aunt would ask my mom how I was doing (she was aware of our rounds of IVF and the m/c), she would wave away whatever my mom would say and reply, "Oh, it'll happen when she least expects it." Madam, we're beyond that. We're now in the realm of what is and is not medically possible. The fact that I was injecting myself in order to ovulate at the optimal time kinda takes out the "when she least expects it" aspect. That's normal, people just don't know what to say. But then the kicker. I wasn't excited to call and tell her and now, I'm really not feeling like sharing MY news. (cray cray) My sister revealed this story to me this past weekend. Thank God she didn't tell me shortly after the fact because I would have gone completely homicidal. When my sister called Other Aunt to tell her that she was pregnant, she was congratulatory and then asked how I had taken the news. My sister responded, "She's ok. It was hard but she's doing fine." (Wildly untrue but acceptable for the sake of the conversation.) Other Aunt's response I-SHIT-YOU-NOT: "Oh well. Amy will have a baby... someday ... somehow ... with someone." With someone? Due to the difficulties, should I have selected another partner? This is neither here nor there and certainly doesn't matter but were it not for me, and were he a different type of guy, J would be knocking random ladies up left and right and our city's most dubious bars. Ugh. So that's where these uncomfortable, difficult feelings rise up. It's my happy news. It's my kid and you didn't help make it with your absurd platitudes and offensive remarks. I want to announce only to "my team" and complete strangers like that kind waiter at the fancy restaurant. I am aware that my conclusion is not the product of a coherent thought process.

And, scene. Enough. I'll deal with that soon enough. My annoyance with her poisons the joy that I am and should be feeling right now. I will close with this: This whole experience has made me so appreciative of my team - J, my parents, my best friends, my blog friends - those who cheered me on no matter how unpleasant the situation. Whether dealing with IF or not, I hope you have a wonderful team like I have. Thanks, Team.