Wrangler Dani

Writer, editor, wife, adoptive mama and cowgirl living in beautiful Central Oregon.

No, Internet, I’m not pregnant, not that you were any help

So I recently decided that I was pregnant. Apparently when you worry as much as I do, you make yourself sick and then assume that you’re procreating instead of just being retarded and unable to CALM THE EFF DOWN.

So I’d been thinking this for awhile, and last night decided that I absolutely had to pee on a stick right then and there, because waiting another day would absolutely not do, as it was, I really wanted a beer and what if I drank one and then hurt my unlikely child with my negligence, like those crazily out-of-touch women on “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant” who carry their babies for nine months while working in bars and abusing their bodies, all so we can watch it on TLC and be terrified.

“Adam!” I hollered, as he peacefully watched Monday Night Football, hoping, I’m sure, for a night that did not involve unplanned heirs. “I’m gonna take the test!”

But when I went in the bathroom, all ready to go (literally) I found that the tests that I’d bought several months ago in a similar fit of panic were gone. This, of course, was reason to haul my poor hard-working husband off of his well-earned couch time and demand that he help me search, which ended in the shelf behind the toilet finally giving up the ghost and officially adding itself to the growing Honey-Do list, and my finding the tests in a drawer after pointless almost-tears, where I had stupidly hid them behind Adam’s shaver so that people wouldn’t see them through the clear plastic drawer and wonder if maybe we’re in love and have scares now and then. I dunno.

I finally took the test. Sat on the couch and fidgeted until three minutes were up, then held Adam’s hand as we walked into the bathroom and saw, all plain and non-chalant, NOT PREGNANT. Good thing it was spelled out, because in that state, I don’t think I could have figured out lines and dots and plus-signs, or however it used to be done.

We hugged and Adam assured me that he would love to be a baby daddy in the future, and I had a beer and calmed down.  But I realized that I’m not really all that scared of the eventual mini-me.  I realize that I worry way too much, and that I’m not nearly grateful enough, until something bad happens which makes me wish that life would go back to the normal place that I’m not normally grateful for.  I don’t know if that made sense to anybody but me, but I guess it comes down to this. When the pregnancy test isn’t hidden and the bathroom shelf doesn’t break and the Cowboys don’t lose and I’m not pregnant, I need to remember and be thankful. Because someday that won’t be the case, and I’ll need to be grateful on that day too.

12 comments found

  1. This is far and away my favorite thing of yours you’ve ever written. I mean, you’re a smartypants, and you have your political convictions, and you write lovely things all the time that make me weepy and giggly, but this? This is one for the ages!!!!!

    So glad you weren’t pregnant.

    Although, if you had been, I would have been so glad that you were. 🙂

    LOVE YOU!

  2. I think every month I am pregnant when I know that there is no way I could be. So I totally understand where you are coming from.

  3. OMG 🙂

    I can’t make fun of you at all after the email i sent you a couple weeks ago freaking out about the same thing 🙂 but i’m happy to report that after talking to you, I’m about 93% over my fear of getting pregnant, mostly because I realized that I’m 25, almost 26 and there are people a LOT younger than me, without husbands or other support, who have babies and are okay.

    So… congrats on being sans fetus! But when you are, you’ll be fine. 🙂

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