Welcome to the Monkey House

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned recently, it’s that most of the things that people assume that they know about pregnancy don’t actually turn out to be true. In my case, it’s been six months and I have yet to eat a single pickle. To Carlos’ great dismay, there’s been no need for 2am ice cream runs. I never once felt nausea nor vomited myself into oblivion. I don’t cry at the sight of cute dogs on TV commercials. And the shape of my belly has nothing to do with the sex of our baby (sonograms don’t lie people -- either it’s a girl or we’re in real trouble).

When it comes to pregnancy, it turns out that the few people that actually know what they’re talking about are...drumroll...mothers. Yes, mothers, that mystical species I’ve only recently begun to come to terms with. 

For some reason, mothers don’t ever talk to non-mothers about pregnancy. It’s an unspoken rule (that I’m all too happy to break). The space in which mothers speak about motherhood is like that very exclusive club in Chelsea that seems impossible to get into, and elevated hCG hormone levels are the only way to get past the velvet ropes. Once you get in, the floodgates open, and every mother wants to tell you her story, including intimate details about her labor that are best not shared with newbies.

One recurring theme among members of this club is this idea that pregnancy awakens new senses; you develop an awareness that you never knew you had. One of the first thing that a mother will tell you about expecting is that the feeling of being pregnant is unique, even though it’s impossible to describe at the very beginning. Forget morning sickness, missed periods, and pregnancy tests -- you find out that you’re pregnant when your intuition tells you. One day you just wake up and you know.

Of course, anyone can claim extrasensory powers in retrospect, and it’s easy to dismiss this as romanticized hindsight. And yet, the more I think about it, the more I tend to agree that it wasn’t just my body that was acting differently during those first few days of pregnancy.

For first-time mothers, these early spiritual clues can be difficult to read. In my case at least, those first few days of knowing without really knowing were unnerving -- I really thought that I was losing it. By the time I actually believed that I was pregnant, I had blown through $50 worth of pregnancy tests and subjected myself to multiple inconclusive vaginal ultrasounds (I’ll kindly spare my male readers the details). On most days I was certain that the only ward I was headed for was the looney bin.

Looking back on things now, the signs were crystal clear. We had just come back from Berlin and I had come down with a cold. Instead of overdosing on over-the-counter medicine, I decided that my body could battle the flu on its own (this is quite unusual for someone who pops Tylenols at the slightest hint of a headache). Rather than combat my low energy levels at the gym, I buried myself deep in the sheets for unprecedented stretches of time (outlandish behavior for a self-proclaimed non-napper). And for several consecutive evenings during dinner, I watched in awe as my delicious tumbler of cabernet remained untouched (as obvious a warning sign as any). 

And then, just like that, one day I woke up and decided to take a pregnancy test. The fact that it came out negative only served to encourage my bizarre behavior; at that moment I decided it would be a fantastic idea to save the urinated relic. As if that wasn’t strange enough, a few hours later I paid my unlikely souvenir a visit. And that’s when I saw it -- the faintest, most obscure little line you ever saw. Or didn’t. I was sure I was hallucinating.

During the next few days that followed, I woke up every day at the crack of dawn to pee on sticks and scrutinize ill-defined lines. In the process of clearing out the pregnancy test aisle at CVS, Carlos did research on the mystery of the indistinct line. “All the forums say that a line is a line, no matter how fuzzy,” he kept insisting. And even though deep down inside I know that I knew, for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. 

Why did I have such a hard time listening to my own intuition? It may be that identifying this sixth sense is another one of those things that only comes with experience. Kind of like that hard-earned entry into the motherhood club.