Now there are some, like my dear naive sweetie Chris, who want to shout it from the rooftops before the winning sperm has even finished gnawing its way through the zona pellucida. Then there are others (like me) who are afraid that if they even think about the baby during the first trimester, it will dart madly from the womb like a frightened horse. We don’t take prenatals for the baby, whose existence we are afraid to acknowledge. We’re taking them “just in case.” We don’t quit drinking for the baby. We’re just not in the mood for alcoholic refreshments, thank you.
And we definitely, never EVER commit the ultimate pregnancy jinx — telling everyone we’re pregnant before we’re safely out of the first trimester (which isn’t likely to happen, because there are so many other reasons that stick might have turned pink. Like perhaps someone stuck me with a needle full of Profasi when I was asleep. Or maybe it’s just a really, really dark evaporation line).
Now, when one has just had one’s very first positive pregnancy test that didn’t immediately result in the aforementioned flight of the poor, frightened zygote, it is difficult not to tell everyone the good news, even if you are, like me, in a state of combined giddy disbelief and paranoid denial. So imagine the difficulty of keeping such a huge secret and magnify it x10 by putting me in a situation in which I am crammed in a cabin with a bunch of women and surrounded by alcoholic beverages and snacks of dubious nutritional quantity, and must slyly take my prenatals twice a day and avoid said beverages and snacks.
Such was the Wild Women’s Weekend, which I attended with Chris’ mom (and longtime Wild Woman) Jan. It was exceedingly difficult not to tell anyone, especially when I moved my chair and my newly ginormous and extremely painful boobs bounced so hard that I cried out in bitter agony.
But more powerful than the horrible pain radiating from my new Dolly Parton decolettage, more tempting than the lure of an easy explanation for not drinking wine spritzers or snarfing Doritos, more overwhelming than my hatred for keeping secrets, was my crippling fear of jinxing the pregnancy.
Heather: 1, Wild Women’s Weekend: 0.
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