OConnell - And now we have everything: on motherhood before I was ready

A baby was the thing we were trying to keep out. A baby was a consequence. A fuckup. Or it had been until recently, when, like a joke that slowly becomes sincere, I started imagining myself pregnant in a nightgown. Strangely, I never imagined the baby. Only me, a mother. How it might change me or wake me up. Make me better.

I had a hunch I was pregnant when we rode our bikes to the book fair on a Sunday in mid-September. We were taking wide turns through backstreetsthe air perfect, the sun just outand suddenly I stopped in the middle of the road, unable to keep pedaling. Hey! I called after Dustin and he looked back from his bike and gestured over his shoulder for me to keep going. When I didnt he looped back to me and stopped, one foot on the ground, one still hooked into a pedal.

Were almost there, he said, come on, and rode off without asking me if I was okay. I was confused by my body, near tears, and now full of little-kid rages at this man I loved and his disregard. I got off my bike, shaking my head, and spite-walked beside it along the side of the road. I hated him. Id just agreed to marry him the week before, which made every interaction between us extra-meaningful. I wasnt just calling after him on my bike today, I was facing a lifetime of it.

And now I had this hunch, a feelingcall it womens intuitioncentered in my tits, which at first simply ached and now were full-on itching, like an allergic reaction to all of this. I was sure, scared of how sure I was.

He came back. Whats up?

I dont know, I lied, really crying then. Its fine. There was so often no way to tell the truth without it sounding like a whine. I wanted to be strong, to shrug it off, shake it off, as ever, wait it out, give him the finger. But I knew. I had no proof, no test, just this body that Id presided over for twenty-nine years, a mystery still. There was no note, no alarm sounded, just the quiet organization of cells while you wait to be let in on the joke.

I still havent gotten my period, I had said to Dustin that morning when we were getting dressed.

You say this every month, though, hed said. He wasnt wrong. I was one of those women who managed to be caught off guard every single month when their periods came. I never had a tampon on me when I needed one. I had the litany of pregnancy symptoms memorized, though. All women do.

Okay, okay, I said, raising my hands in surrender. I didnt mention that the night before I had to look away from The Sopranos on my laptop during a bar scene at the Bada Bing. The strippers breasts, full of silicone, looked like mine felt.

I figured either I was right and would be able to say I told you so or I was wrong and this would go down as just another week spent in suspense, obsessively Googling my symptoms with that jumpy, forbidden feeling, wondering what Id do.

Just one more week spent thinking about what Id read on the internet once: that leftover sperm can live in a mans urethra for a few hours, and if he jerks off right before he has sex with you? Even if he pulls out, youre doomed. Or blessed, depending on how you look at it, although who wanted a baby from that piss sperm anyway? It was quite a mental image, blown up in the microscope of my minds eye, sperm like pinworms crawling around that mysterious hole at the tip.

When I was in the eighth grade, my teacher kept me after class because shed found a torn-out article in my desk from Cosmopolitan magazine wherein the author assured an inquiring naf that no, you couldnt get pregnant from making out in the hot tub. Im concerned, my teacher said. I had been too, until I read the article. My best friend had brought it to school for me after Id spent her birthday party rubbing against my boyfriends public erection in the swimming pool.

We were just that week deep into Googling wedding places. Or I was. We were talking about doing it in Montauk in early spring. On a sand dune or in a state park or somewhere cheap enough that we wouldnt have to go to our parents for money. When Dustin got down on one knee and asked me if Id think about marrying him, we were on a mountain, had just stopped to pee in the woods. He said it like thatWill you think about marrying me?and I laughed, because, well, hadnt I been thinking about it pretty much nonstop since Id met him?

Before it was official wed broached the subject over dinner every few months. The marriage question. There was no definitive position, or if there was, it was always shifting. Once I overheard him tell someone at a work party (mine) that he would be happy to stay with someone forever, have babies together, and never get married. He didnt see the point of a wedding. I suspected he just really hated to dance.

Some days I couldnt tell whether I wanted marriage or not. Were the parts of me that resisted just trained to construct elaborate rationalizations for why I didnt want this thing I might not get anyway? And werent the hesitations all some version of It might not work out? Sometimes it felt like I spent my whole life trying to tell the difference between fear and circumspection. I was always trying not to want things.

I knew I could convince Dustin to get married; he had told me as much: You wanting it makes me want it too. But did I want it enough for both of us? Did I want to be married enough to campaign for it and risk taking the blame if things went south?

Then I would go for long runs around the neighborhood and cry, imagining us dancing on our wedding day to Sufjan songs or some shit.

On one particular night in a restaurant, he raised his glass, nodded in this sexy, decisive way, and said, Lets do it, lets get married! When should we get married? I shrugged and laughed in his face.