Monday Mission: The Unstable Self

(The idea this week is to use a rapidly shifting POV to indicate an unstable personality or intense distress. 500 words.)

The first afternoon is the worst, or so she thinks, the doctor's words stuck in her head on repeat ("Your baby might have a mild form of dwarfism") while you comb pubmed for articles on femur length and ultrasound and percentages and risks. None of it helps. Because the chances might be low and now you know how low they are but the fact remains that the baby might have a mild form of dwarfism.

Mild form of dwarfism. What is a mild form of dwarfism? Pubmed can't tell you, and neither can Google. Does it mean hypochondroplasia? It can't be achondroplasia, that's not mild, she tells herself. Looking at photos on the internet. They seem happy, why are you crying?

There's a key in the lock on the front door and her husband is home, and she walks down the stairs. She has been crying all afternoon and the look on his face is alarm and now you are crying again. "There might be something wrong with the baby." You are sobbing now and he is trying to comfort you by telling you that of course nothing is wrong, nothing is wrong, how can it be wrong, look at the odds! It doesn't help.

The first afternoon is the worst, or so she believes, as she shuts the door to the baby's room. The next day she doesn't cry as much; she goes to work and sits in front of the computer and if she doesn't get anything done at least she isn't dripping all over the keyboard. It's just work. She can work. At least she can sit at work and pretend.

There are decisions to be made. Does she want an amniocentesis? It might be able to tell her if there really is something wrong with the baby, and what; but she can't have one until after 36 weeks, when the risk of miscarriage or early delivery won't be so disastrous. She doesn't know, does it matter? Will she change anything anyway? The baby is coming, no matter who she turns out to be now. She'll know at 36 weeks or at 40 weeks and she's already at 33 weeks and how much does it really matter now? She still doesn't go in the baby's room, and stops wandering through the baby sections of department stores in her free time. What's the point? How can she tell what will fit, what she will need? All of this is made for normal babies. Babies without any form of dwarfism, mild or not.

There is another ultrasound. At one point the tech freezes the screen showing the baby's head in profile and she and her husband leave the room while the mother-to-be lies on her back in the darkened room. She stares at the profile and is convinced that it shows a bulging forehead, a sign of dwarfism, one that she read about on the internet. You are seized with panic, then revulsion, then shame. You can't do this. You can't do this you can't do this you can't do this. You thought you could but you can't, it's too much.

You thought the first afternoon was the worst, but it wasn't; instead of getting better it only gets stranger. Whenever the baby shifts and you watch its little butt move from side to site, feel a fist pressing on your organs, you wonder who or what it is. Whether she sleeps or wakes, whether she walks or laughs or talks or works or rests or watches television or reads or cooks or tests her blood sugar (as if macrosomia could possibly matter now!), it's there, underneath. Who is this baby? She never really knew and she knows that she never really knew, but before she got to pretend, some imagined melange of herself and her husband dressed in clean and pressed clothes, laughing. Now, who is she?

But even that is not the worst.

One day she is at work and absorbed in something on the computer. A spreadsheet. Numbers and equations and calculations to figure out--who gets to work how, and why, and whether they can change it. Her hand and wrist are aching from using the mouse all morning, and she is beginning to get hungry; it is nearly lunch time. She rolls forward and bumps her stomach into the keyboard tray, looks down. What the hell happened to me? My stomach is huge, what happened, it's like I'm ... oh, that's right. I'm pregnant. And then it all comes rushing back. You're pregnant. There might be something wrong with the baby.

Posted by Andrea at February 4, 2008 11:04 AM under Monday Mission

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