Poppy Seed
I can't tell real people about this, so in a streak of wholly original thinking that has never occurred to anyone before, I am throwing it out anonymously to strangers on the blog.
A few weeks ago we pulled the goalie and started having unprotected sex (or “danger-tang”) for the first time in our lives. After an ill-conceived experiment with spermicide that revealed heretofore unsuspected allergies and is best forgotten, the sex has been kind of amazing, which is an interesting side effect. And somehow I think I turned a corner, from vigorous ambivalence about parenthood to active excitement about the prospect. Maybe some idiot-making brain hormones kicked in or something, but having a baby seems like a really good idea. We settled on a name for either sex, invested in prenatal vitamins, stuff like that.
Yesterday I was having a not-great day. Anxious about a book chapter deadline, struggling under a pile of essay marking, with a kink in my neck that was wrenching my spine. I went Christmas shopping and paid more than I should've for a present, and grumpily picked M up from work. She'd had a great day, apparently, and I didn't begrudge it her. I just wanted to go home, get back to work, and have a glass of wine. But she says "I got you a present, too."
"What?"
"Unwrap it. Take off my sweater."
Suspecting that this might be getting pleasant, I complied, and tied to M's abdomen with ribbon was a piece of oblong pink plastic smelling faintly of pee. With two lines visible through the little window and not one. So my knees got a little wobbly and we went to the store to get more pregnancy tests and booze. I can only imagine what the checkout guy thought our evening was going to look like.
Anyway, M passed (failed?) two more pee tests, so it looks likely that there is an embryo (we missed the blastocyst and morula stages—they grow up so fast!) the size of a poppy seed burrowed somewhere in the nutrient rich goo of M's bits. As she pointed out with fascination this morning, our potential offspring is the size of something that gets caught in one's teeth.
A few weeks ago we pulled the goalie and started having unprotected sex (or “danger-tang”) for the first time in our lives. After an ill-conceived experiment with spermicide that revealed heretofore unsuspected allergies and is best forgotten, the sex has been kind of amazing, which is an interesting side effect. And somehow I think I turned a corner, from vigorous ambivalence about parenthood to active excitement about the prospect. Maybe some idiot-making brain hormones kicked in or something, but having a baby seems like a really good idea. We settled on a name for either sex, invested in prenatal vitamins, stuff like that.
Yesterday I was having a not-great day. Anxious about a book chapter deadline, struggling under a pile of essay marking, with a kink in my neck that was wrenching my spine. I went Christmas shopping and paid more than I should've for a present, and grumpily picked M up from work. She'd had a great day, apparently, and I didn't begrudge it her. I just wanted to go home, get back to work, and have a glass of wine. But she says "I got you a present, too."
"What?"
"Unwrap it. Take off my sweater."
Suspecting that this might be getting pleasant, I complied, and tied to M's abdomen with ribbon was a piece of oblong pink plastic smelling faintly of pee. With two lines visible through the little window and not one. So my knees got a little wobbly and we went to the store to get more pregnancy tests and booze. I can only imagine what the checkout guy thought our evening was going to look like.
Anyway, M passed (failed?) two more pee tests, so it looks likely that there is an embryo (we missed the blastocyst and morula stages—they grow up so fast!) the size of a poppy seed burrowed somewhere in the nutrient rich goo of M's bits. As she pointed out with fascination this morning, our potential offspring is the size of something that gets caught in one's teeth.
Labels: reproduction
posted by James at 6:32 AM
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