Baby Animals and Baby People November 1, 2010

Ploop. That’s the sound a baby horse makes as it is being born.

Okay, I wasn’t talking about the cute kind of baby animals and I’m sorry I mislead you.  I can’t tell you why, but I’ve been thinking about animals being born all morning.  When you think about it like that, we have it pretty sweet.  Your baby doesn’t slide out and flop on the floor on its barely developed legs while you’re having a stroll, or have to fight its way out of an egg.  If you can’t pass a baby, there are doctors who will give you a bunch of drugs and cut that thing out of you. If you have AIDS, there are drugs you can take at certain times during your pregnancy so the baby won’t get it too.  No matter what the complications, we have some medical solution.  When it’s time for us to have a baby, there’s no more survival of the fittest.  I can’t really decide how I feel about that.

On a individual level, of course that’s a good thing.  No one wants to lose their wife or baby or both.  

I wouldn’t want my theoretical baby to die, no matter what the complications with its brain or body.  But what does this mean for our species?  Are we weakening the whole to preserve the individual? And is it necessarily a bad thing when we’re preserving more potentially great minds?  We’ve evolved mentally into a complacent society that no longer sees the world as Us and Them, the Real People versus Everyone Else, and that makes it harder for us to think in terms of the Survivors and the weaker, unimportant people who die off for the greater good. 

I guess what I was getting at is that we’d be greatly unprepared for a zombie apocalypse/ full scale alien attack because we’ve all gone soft.

The Great Pregnancy Scare of Oh-Ten September 10, 2010

So I’ve been missing since September 4th because I have been literally terrified about the possibility of being pregnant. SPOILER ALERT: I usually don’t talk about periods, but as they are an intregal part of the story, I will be talking about them. If you don’t like hearing about them, you’d be better off skipping this one. Those of you who are still here, let me tell you a tale.

It all started when I came in to work last week. Well, actually, it sort of all started when I first started working at this new post. My boss is an alpha female and my period therefore immediately synched with hers. I was seriously two weeks early my first month here. Thanks a lot, Denise. So since then (and since I don’t keep very good track of my periods), I’ve had a pretty good indicator of when I’d need to start packing precautionary supplies and wearing my giant, stretchy, stain-annihilating, Lane Bryant underwear by when she’s angry about her period. So back to the fakey beginning, even though you probably know where this is going by now. I walked in to work a little over a week ago and Denise mentioned her period in the midst of an Everyone-Is-Dumb tirade, the kind which I have given often in this job.

I didn’t think much about it at the time, but a few days later, I still hadn’t started my period and the idea of being late wiggled its way into my head. Don’t panic, I thought to myself. Wait a week and then take a pregnancy test. It’s probably nothing. Then my stomach started acting up. I thought about asking someone who’d had a baby before what it was like the first month, but I didn’t want to make anyone freak out before I was sure. I needed a drink desperately…fuck!

What the hell am I going to do with a baby? I couldn’t stop thinking about how we would pay for it. I’ve never liked the idea of carrying a baby with me for nine months and then giving it up, but I don’t think I could kill it either. It wasn’t until I was faced with the idea of actually having a baby that my position on aborting a baby came clear. This will probably piss some people off, but even that young, that is a child and to abort it is definitely killing a child. I don’t care if other people do it. To each her own. I know couldn’t live with myself if I had killed that baby though. Abortion was out of the question then and giving it up after all the time and effort of living with and birthing it would tear me apart, so, for me, prevention and raising a baby are the only options and I may have fucked up the prevention.

A couple days after I had resolved to wait a week and get a test, I still had no period, so I told my boyfriend about my concerns and he gave me hugs and told me we’d figure it out no matter what happened.

Have you ever looked into prices of pregnancy tests? Seriously, if you’re not paying for birth control or condoms, you’re probably not going to pay $20 for a pregnancy test either. I shopped around though and I ended up on EarlyPregnancyTests.com, a site whose main purpose is to help people conceive. Their pregnancy tests were only $2.25 each and they’re supposed to tell you if you’re pregnant before you even miss your first period. I didn’t do much research because I was incredibly worried and in a bit of a fog, but I bought them and they were going to come in about when my “No Panicking Week” was up. After I’d already placed the order, I remembered that this site wanted people to get pregnant. Uh oh… I could just see my gay (as in homosexual) dad going out to get the mail and picking up a baby blue package with “GOOD LUCK ON HAVING YOUR BABY!!!!!! :DDD” emblazoned on it. I hoped they would be more discreet.

So for two more days, I wandered around in various states of panic and righteous zeal about how I would raise my own kid. I was a wreck some hours and completely cool and calm others.

Then Wednesday, while me and Ernie were doin’ it, WHAM. Period.

Stephanie: Hah! This calls for a drink!

Ernie: Finish first, THEN drinks.

Stephanie: I like your style!

So I had an incredibly strong rum and coke at three in the morning and went out the next day to buy a gigantic steak (which is going on three days feeding us) for an incredibly relieved I’m Not Pregnant Celebratory Dinner.

I probably could have raised a kid, but I’m not sure I’m ready to give up spending my money irresponsibly and having sex whenever I feel like it, which is why I’m getting an IUD implanted as soon as humanly possible and not taking it out until me and Ernie can feed ourselves comfortably (giant celebratory steaks aside). And yes, Ernie, you have every right to be just a bit disappointed that there is no baby coming, but you know there’s plenty of time for that later. I’m not going anywhere.