How an empty pickle jar can become an emotional tragedy

I, like many others before me, have this Cool Awesome Self that's tucked away in my brain's back pocket. It's that Self that I channel while making various Zoolander-y faces in front of the mirror, attempting to coax out some cheekbones. Cool Awesome Self also appears in flatteringly stretched-tall reflections on glass doors of office buildings. (Here, it tends to have an over-sincere expression, like it's trying to convince passers-by that I'm studying the corporate furniture layout of Industrial Tech Enterprises, Inc., and not narcissistically seizing every glass-windowed chance to check out my hair's frizz status.)

Pregnancy has, shall we say, made a few dents into the Cool Awesome armor. Actually, I have a more hipster-appropriate comparison: pregnancy has gleefully pierced the (BPA-free) plastic lid of my Cool Self Image mason jar with multiple holes, forming a sort of DIY watering can that bathes me daily with a steady, gentle sprinkle of crazy woman water.

One of these gentle sprinklings reminded me of the reality that I am, indeed, a pregnant woman that that can quickly be reduced to a pile of tears at various provocations: humidity, peanut butter that I thought was salted but is actually unsalted, a Yogi Tea quote, smelling coffee that reminds me of my mom, untied shoelaces, black-and-white pictures, or stuffing a dress I used to be able to wear literally one day ago into a dark, unmarked suitcase.

This is so unexpected, people. I always thought of the pregnant woman as a serenely glowing figure, sporting a cute maternity dress that billowed maternally in all the right places. She would give off the unmistakable, mother-to-be aura of a Goddess, rather than lumpy-bloated, ate-too-many-Pop-Tarts fallible Person.

I figured that when I was pregnant, I too would embrace this mature, elegant carriage. Pregnancy would not be marked by hours spent curled in bed, nights in a row, simultaneously marathon-watching Alton Brown's "Good Eats" and faux-retching at the ghastly combination of apples and pie crust.

And yet, the pregnancy watering can continued to pour, steadily quenching my body's apparently intrinsic thirst for embracing Manic Pregnant Woman Clichédom to the hilt. One such sprinkling introduced me to my repressed love of vanilla. By repressed, I mean that I had never consciously declared any feelings towards vanilla; it's called plain vanilla for a reason, people! (Clearly, this attitude toward vanilla is deep-rooted in my childhood and my relationship with my parents.) Pregnancy, that curious psychotherapist, gave me the courage to face subconscious truths, and my love for vanilla now flows like love for my unborn child. It was when I was at the grocery store one Monday evening, cradling the kosher dill pickle bottle in one hand and balancing the pint of vanilla ice cream in the other, that I snapped to my senses, rolling my eyes at myself. Seriously?! The original, Cool Awesome Badass Self was buying pickles and ice cream?  I always imagined I was more original than that.

But I guess not. Those who know me would, of course gently and kindly, call me an emotionally "sensitive" person. Meaning, I am known to feel things deeply. I have been known to get rather, shall we say, anxious at times about various things, like when my sister texts "Hi!" instead of "Hi!!!", or when my husband takes a shorter-than-usual shower, or when a car rolls up alongside mine blasting Lady Gaga's "Just Dance". To clarify, this was pre-pregnancy. Add pregnancy hormones to the bandwagon, and all bets are off.  Did you know that estrogen increases one thousand fold in the first few months of pregnancy?! Thanks, estrogen, for nurturing the inner banshee that I knew always rested inside me.

The true victim in all of this is, of course, not me. It's not even the baby, who's swimming around blissfully in its own pee, whose innocent neural networks can't comprehend the logic behind its mother's histrionic fits over a wrongly-squeezed tube of toothpaste. (To be fair, many people's neural networks may not be able to comprehend this logic, either.) No, the wise among you will likely have guessed: it's Kurt, of course. Poor Kurt is the main battlefield in which the Pregnancy "Shock and Awe"-themed invasion unfolds: rage attacks, clinging attacks, crying attacks, anxiety attacks, hunger attacks.

Hinting at his inner wisdom, Kurt had long-ago planned his escape: a "work trip" coinciding with the same period Crazy Self symptoms threatened to wreak most havoc. So, truth be told, the most recent victims are quite possibly my parents and sister. In a clever foreshadowing of what could likely happen to me in ~ 33 years, my mom and dad both sweetly and selflessly volunteered to leave their 4000-square-foot house in suburban Plano, and instead spend three full weeks in my 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom, non-airconditioned, 750-square-foot little cottage in Santa Monica, in the midst of a crazy Santa Monica heat wave. Did I mention the one bathroom part?

The effect of having my parents around, after a few tense moments and middle-of-the-night threats to claw down the bathroom door, ultimately had the effect of taming the wild banshee. The epiphany came one hot summer evening while we were all clustered together in my living room, on two futon-couches which have an uncanny effect of producing an insiduous backache in any couch occupant over age 50. It was approximately 85 degrees and sweltering, but felt even hotter because we were all logically sipping extra-hot, homemade chai teas that my mom had whipped up, logically, around 10 PM.

"You know, it's actually a great thing when things don't go our way," said my dad off-handedly, in between sips of chai and flipping the pages of the Economist.  "If things went our way all the time, there wouldn't be any growth."

Obvious, yes: but the words somehow pierced right through the Crazy (Overheated) Person that seemed to have overtaken my brain. Of course. That made sense. Right now, I was allowing Banshee-Self to take over a lot of the time, using pregnancy as an excuse.  Let's face it: I'd used pregnancy to become a card-carrying member of the I Want What I Want When I Want It Club.  It was how I imagined D-list celebrities get tables at fancy, overbooked restaurants. Yes, they could try name-dropping; or, they could just ruthlessly drop the P-word to the maître-d and be seated immediately, with a customized gluten-free (except sourdough bread), dairy-free (except ricotta cheese), peas-and-spaghetti-themed menu at their immediate disposal. 

Don't get me wrong: pregnancy is a great excuse. (See: estrogen x 1000, growing New Thing inside you, weird stomach issues, hotallthetime, feeling like a truck, etc.)  BUT. The pesky little problem is: things are not necessarily going to get any easier.  As scary as it is, pregnancy is probably kind of a cakewalk compared to what follows. There is very little chance that, in the year and immediate years to come, I am going to return to my pre-pregnancy oblivion of 8+ blissful hours of sleep, unlimited gym time, impulsive Sunday afternoon baguette-making projects, and Portlandia marathons with Kurt on a Wednesday evening.

I haven't allowed myself to think too far ahead, but I did do a few back-of-the-envelope calculations. It took me about 2 hours to figure out how to set up, troubleshoot and operate a printer, which came with an instruction manual. An IKEA bookshelf and coffee table takes me about 1 day, with help (including googling time, cursing time, going to the store to get power tools, etc.) A new baby comes manual-less, and unlike a printer, is a completely unique, unprecedented, completely dependent living being that is capable of making noises much worse than even the most dot-matrix-y of printers. ('80s throwback, yeah!)  Yes: a lifetime sounds about right.

I swallowed and figured that if I wanted any shot of things I had always assumed I could have, like a Happy Marriage, a Happy Family Life, A Great Career, Friends, Not Having my Family Run Away From Me, etc., it was time to do some work.  You see, I've never had any problems being sweet, friendly, and generally Cool Awesome when things are going my way. In fact, as a reader of my blog, you now have the inside scoop: this is the best time to be around me.  I've probably made all my friends during my good moods.  But that's like perfecting your running skills by exclusively training in cloudy, perfect 60-degree weather on a cushioned, completely flat trails, when the race is actually the Boston Marathon. Or a race that features Heartbreak Hill mile repeats.

In the world of emotions, here is how trying the Heartbreak Hill Mile Repeats Race goes when you are used to exclusively excelling in ideal running conditions. Say someone moved my keys (that "someone" usually being me). Sane Me says: not a big deal - keys can't sprout legs and walk away, right? (Something my mom always used to tell me when I was a kid. Because this "someone moving xyz" phenomenon has, um, a long legacy in my life.) But under Banshee conditions, I would feel like my head was going to explode, and this uncontrollable surge of fury and annoyance and dread would build: I had somehow, irrevocably lost my keys forever, including that one key that I still had no clue what it  opened but was probably very important, and now how would I ever find out, and damn it, I'd need to get a new Ralph's key fob thingy, too! Before I knew it, that fury would seize my insides and command center in my brain, leading me to behave in a way that is not the way I am really made.

So it was time to train on the hills. At first, I tried to practice being Calm under all circumstances. I tried to will myself NOT to get angry, to breathe extra deep, to drink a glass of water, to stay silent rather than say something Banshee-y. I drank a lot of water, took a lot of rib-searing deep breaths, and exhaled so much that daily breathing was starting to Pavlovian-ly create tension.

My attempts at being calmer made me feel like George Costanza in that Seinfeld episode, "Serenity Now!" You know how he makes a resolution to be less angry, and seizes upon that mantra as his go-to tactic to calm him down? Then, when things provoke him, as they do approximately 989 times a day, he turns beet-faced, steam building up palpably inside his head like a pressure cooker about to whistle, and through his clenched teeth he utters a shrill, high-pitched: "Serenity Now!"

That's the problem, I think, when we try to work on things too much. There's this pressure, this conscious awareness of trying to do something, and then it loses innocence and ease. It's great to be mindful. I want to be mindful. But are dogs and birds and flowers growing on the plants by my house trying to be mindful? They just are. That's the beauty of it: it's so effortless. It doesn't declare itself. I could walk by a pomegranate tree and see the fruit ripening perfectly, peacefully, with nature's symmetrical perfection. There's so much going on in that fruit: it's producing vitamins and minerals, releasing oxygen into the atmosphere, developing flavor, and participating in the life-giving network of the tree holding it. And yet, you would never know, because it's so natural.

I have a favorite picture from childhood. I'm about five years old, in front of a chalkboard, wearing a red-and-white checked skirt and a red top.  I'm sitting on the floor, facing away from the camera,  my legs splayed out in a "V",  intently scribbling on the chalkboard with bright pink chalk. My head is turned slightly toward the camera, as though my dad called out to me, so you can see my too-short, ruler-straight bangs and the two mismatched barrettes holding two tiny ponytail fountains. But what I love is this gigantic, 1000-watt grin that's lighting up my entire face. It's the sweetest, most happy, loving smile I have ever seen. Just from sitting there, scribbling something on a chalkboard. I don't think I knew then what "trying" to be happy, or calm, or mindful, was. I just was. 

This is something that is hard for me to conclude, yet I know it's the truth. Ruminating, analyzing, planning, forcing will never get me to that place of Serene Motherhood, let alone Happy, Calm Person. It's too bad, because I am really, really good at all of the above. In fact, any time I have a problem or a situation, that's my knee jerk reaction: analyze, strategize, create contingency action plans, role-play, talk it out, etc. But for me, these things - when it comes to trying to promote peace and calm  - raise the bar, adding tension, and at best creating only an impermanent state of forced, artificial détente with myself.

Having my parents here opened my eyes to a better solution. If I had to pick one reason why I think they're the perfect parents (hard, because there are many!), it's because they raised my sister and I with this: step back, and just love.  I think that's the best thing that I can do too, in the face of the overwhelming changes that are happening and that are only going to happen. Don't try so hard, but just love. Love everything, even my crabby, overheated, cargo-truck Banshee self.  Love the things and the people and the situations that are making me crabby and overheated. Shower love on the cargo truck which seems to be expanding with every single second, and of course shower love on the cargo, too. Love the beauty of where I'm at, because it's brilliant and miraculous and really pretty awesome, when I start to think about it lovingly.

One of my favorite quotes: "With love, you can do miracles." Love turned a frog into a prince, didn't it?  Here's to turning a moody cargo truck into a beautiful, serene, pregnant goddess. Here's to love.

The waiting begins, and getting "ready" to be a mom

After a climactic day of Discovering I Was Pregnant,  I had a rather anticlimactic period of Discovering I Was Going to be Waiting, A Lot. This realization didn't set in for a while. At first, I tiptoed around gingerly everywhere I went, as though I was a ballerina practicing good posture by balancing a stack of books on her head, except my stack of books was topped with a sign proclaiming, "Guess who's Pregnant?!" (with an arrow pointing downward for clarity). Meaning: I figured that somehow everyone could tell that my life had suddenly taken a dramatic turn toward the unknown, due to the fact that I was, oh, growing another live human being inside of me. (AHHHHHH!)

But in fact, I slowly realized that things pretty much looked the same from the outside. No one could tell that my sudden voracious appetite was due to, oh, the growing of another live human inside of me (AHHHH!), or that my constant dizziness and intense fatigue was from, oh, the growing of...okay, okay,  you get the picture. While my world had suddenly turned upside down, things were annoyingly, stubbornly, outwardly THE SAME.  This was a problem.

A little background, as always. You know how some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouth? Well, I was born with a mouth. One that I immediately decided to start using for talk therapy. Meaning, any time anything of any significance happens to me, I feel the urge to share it. With anyone. This is how I routinely emerge with new recipe ideas after sharing my excitement for preserved lemons with the grocery-store clerk, or how I recovered from intense grief while bonding with a Drybar stylist over the tragic breakup of Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck.  But now, all of a sudden, something of actual, honest Significance had happened to me, and I couldn't share it with anyone.

Not being able to share this news had a weird side effect on my normal, gregarious, tell-all self: I became a wallflower, unable to talk. I couldn't call friends, knowing that I would instantly blurt out the news that was overtaking my mind and life. I didn't want to go to parties and bailed out on dinners and Fun Events, knowing I would be relegated to nibbling on bread, sipping seltzer water and smiling wanly and nodding at things I barely heard. I looked longingly at our neighborhood postal carrier as she dropped off a package, wondering if she would be weirded out by a random pregnant woman confessional. I stood mute in checkout lines (checkout lines!! My talk mecca!) staring unenthusiastically at the milk and pickles that I was buying (yet again), studiously avoiding eye contact with the teller lest I blurt out uncontrollably, "Dear God I'm buying pickles because YES I KNOW YOU'RE THINKING IT - I'm pregnant! I'm just a pregnant cliché!" 

Even though I came home every day feeling as though I'd run two marathons, I looked stubbornly normal on the outside. Close, daily scrutiny of my stomach in the mirror showed only my normal, ab-crunch-resistant food baby, but no telltale sign of a real baby. (This is another thing my doctor-trained self had not internalized about pregnancy. Didn't every pregnant woman start to have a cute little "I'm pregnant!" bump starting at, like, week 4?!) Inside, of course, I felt like my emotions were a bunch of white iPod earbuds that had all been careslessly crammed into an Altoid tin that then went through 3 moves and had thus become hopelessly, inextricably tangled together.  Crying became my automatic response to most things: plucking my eyebrows, seeing a music video during spin class, eating a stale cookie, thinking, talking to my parents, feeling exhausted.  If I wasn't crying, I was losing my temper what I euphemistically like to call "being feisty".

Actually, I've decided that the emotional drama of pregnancy is a thoughtful, intelligent evolutionary design. See, basically, pregnant women begin to become like babies and toddlers: we start crying, we throw temper tantrums, we get colicky and gassy, we can't deal with pain, we need a ton (a ton!) of attention, we go to bed early, and we can only digest one variety of peas and plain boiled chopped pasta and they CANNOT be mixed together, for the love of God. By thusly going through this pregnant-toddler hybrid phase, we will never forget to empathize with our little incubating child a few years later, when s/he is throwing temper tantrums about the fact that there is green food on his plate and green food is not acceptable, MOMMY.

What surprised me also was how independent, carefree me suddenly became overwhelmed with a need to be around Kurt all the time. I felt personally affronted when he did things like, you know, leave in the morning to go to work. (The nerve!) Maybe this was a subconsciously fueled by the baby's demand for Dad: "Hey Pops! Just said hi to Mom by giving her some nasty heartburn, and now wanted to check in with the person who's determining whether I'm a boy or a girl! Thanks for the chromosome!" Unfortunately, given my aforementioned tendencies for 1) crying, 2) sleeping, 3)"being feisty" (heh heh), one can reasonably understand why a sane, Zen-master man would not be particularly motivated to spend 100% of his time glued to my hip. But, as the good sport he is, he did endure a good 60-70% of glue-time. This, in turn, inspired his composition of catchy, two-line ditty (kind of tuned to Disney's "Under the Sea" steel-drum intro tune, but not really):

"Mood swings, go away/
"Don't come back, ever again".

My parents, meanwhile, would have none of my freaking out. They were genuinely confused: "You're pregnant. It's a huge blessing. What's the problem?" Even my mom. The woman who bore me. Who should understand my woes. But because my mom is actually a Superhero-slash-Angel, she was probably not the least bit feisty or cranky during pregnancy. The worst she did was make my dad buy like, a crate of oranges, like, maybe twice. I have already done approximately 1596 things to Kurt that have topped that. I am not a Superhero-slash-Angel. I'm more a pickle-fueled Beyoncé, with a little dash of J-Lo-level divadom, sprinkled with a dash of Alec Baldwin-esque temper.

My freaking out initially vacillated between two states. One was a paralyzing fear that I was not ready to have a baby. In my mind, "Readiness for Motherhood" was a nebulous state that one could reach only after a period of intense penance of doing things like Making and Sticking to a Proper Budget, Going More Than A Week Without Serving Frozen Amy's Burritos for Dinner, Practicing Selflessness Daily, Not Whining, Avoiding Grocery Store Impulse Shopping and Becoming a Morning Person. Needless to say, I had ticked a grand total of zero checkboxes off this list.

The second was an emotion that would become a constant companion over the weeks to come: anxiety. Pregancy anxiety is like Spanx: a torture tool lurking beneath a smooth exterior, supposedly there to help by encasing a bulgy belly in a protective, slimming embrace, but instead having the decidedly unfriendly effect of threatened suffocation.  Sure, I may not have been "ready" to be a mom, but now that this little sucker had decided that it wanted to set up shop in my uterus, it could not change its mind. Every day, I spent several minutes anxiously pleading with Little Embryo not to break its lease.

 It didn't help, of course, that the Internet is an enabling haven for the Anxious Pregnant Woman, filled with useful reminders of the various awful things that can happen in the first trimester, posting danger signs on everything from herbal tea to a foot massage to breathing air, thereby allowing any sane woman to conclude that a pregnant woman is a walking eggshell that should not be touched or jarred in any way lest she crack open and baby spills out.  

The anxiety only escalated when I discovered that I actually wasn't going to be seeing my OB/GYN, for, like, many weeks. My father and I shared a moment of righteous indignation as we discussed this. I was a newly pregnant woman! I mean, I was basically as important as the President! How was it that they weren't going to see me for another month?!? Wasn't there some kind of law about the right of a pregnant woman to see a doctor on demand?

Another frantic Google search revealed, however, that the first prenatal visit was, in fact, typically several weeks into the first trimester, so that the baby was big enough to be seen on ultrasound. Despite this bit of Internet foreshadowing, I muscled my way through our clinic's call center and convinced a kindly nurse that I needed to be seen ASAP by my OB/GYN for "stomach issues" (e.g., a pregnancy). I saw Dr. C that week, and had an ultrasound that showed....well, actually, it showed a tiny little dot the size of a sesame seed, e.g., a "gestational sac" that should contain a little microscopic embryo, but no visible evidence of a growing embryo yet. "It's likely just too small, and it's probably too early to see anything," said Dr. C nicely, ignoring the fact that my too-early appointment was a result of me diva-demanding my way into this appointment. She booked me for another visit next week, to check on the status of the sesame seed.

Circle marks the gestational sac, aka sesame seed! But too early to see anyone inside yet. 

After the appointment, I started to cry and freak out imagining the worst, as Zen Master Kurt (who, in typical fashion, was completely unfazed by Unsatisfying Seemingly Empty Sesame Seed Ultrasound) attempted to calm me down.  He convinced me not to research anything about Possibilities (ugh, I hate Possibilities), and so to distract myself, I went to an acupuncture appointment instead. And there, lying on the table with needles poking out of my forehead, ears, belly and knees, I breathed deeply. For the first time, I started to focus only on the Little Being inside me. Not me, the carrier, but this little miracle that had started out, just like all of us, as a tiny ball of cells smaller than the head of a pin. I thought of how it was furiously growing even as I lay there, with all its cells somehow already programmed knowing what they needed to do and what they were destined to become, forming a microscopic, autonomous construction site that would build a beautiful, perfect human being.

And suddenly, I felt something rise within me that I had never, ever felt before. It was this powerful, expansive, endless sensation of love, something much greater than myself. It unfurled from head to toe, directed toward the beautiful little miracle I was holding inside. With it came a sense of total calm, peace, and innate knowledge that this baby was meant to be. It was fine. I was calm, because I knew with complete certainty that this love - the love of a mother for her child - would act as the guardian ensuring its health.

I hadn't thought I was ready to be a mom. Mom-hood was the furthest thing from my conscious radar. And yet, the day I was born, my parents named me "Janani": the Sanskrit word for "Mother".  33 years later, I had finally experienced that title's power. That day, the day I first felt a true mother's love for my child, I knew that motherhood was going to be amazing. I was ready - at least, ready to learn, to start the training and participate in the race.

A week later, Dr. C repeated the ultrasound and we saw that Little Sesame Seed had become a tiny little Blueberry tadpole. with a cute little head. (I love how they included a little arrow, like a tourist map marking the point of interest. Clearly, they are highlighting its Einstein-worthy brain.)

And then we had another ultrasound a little later that showed a beautiful, pulsing little beating heart:

Motherhood, we're a Go.  

The Cliché Begins

Almost 8 weeks ago, my life changed forever.

Okay, that definitely sounds cliché, but part of how my life changed is that I became a cliché.  You know how we all think of ourselves a certain way, maybe with an all-knowing, little inner smirk? Well, my inner-smirk-producing image came from a perception of myself as this creative visionary-type who stubbornly veered off the beaten path.  But in a bold turn of events, the past 8 weeks have taught me that, contrary to my carefully nurtured perception of my indefatigable, pioneering self, I actually fall pretty squarely into the Pretty Typical category of 90% of all other human beings.

Allow me to explain. (Spoiler alert: Do not look at the title of this blog, or the picture above, or you will miss the suspenseful twists and turns about to transpire in the next few paragraphs. Resist!) As with other life-changing moments in my life, this one started in the restroom. I remember everything vividly. But I will spare you these details.

 Instead, let me back up to set the scene. I had just spent another productive afternoon shopping at Trader Joe's. It wasn't the overcrowded Trader Joe's on Pico, that barren land of out-of-stock Soy Creamy Ice Cream Sandwiches, watery coffee samples and sluggish "express" lines of people dotted by flickering iPhones.  Going to the Trader Joe's on Pico means you are a implicitly consenting to enter a hyper-competitive Grocery Mud Run, where experienced athletes sprint over carts and wailing children to grab the last bag of Organic Power to the Greens, or perhaps maneuver to a checkout line - without cart or basket! - expertly balancing five tubs of Organic Greek Yogurt and a bag of Powerberries in the crook of an arm.

Instead, that day I avoided Mud Runs by stopping at the more chillin' Trader Joe's on Barrington, near UCLA. Here, I spent a perfect hour filling up on coffee samples, perusing the New Arrivals aisle, fingering the silver-tinned Truffle Salt with the air of a discerning diamond appraiser, and leaving contentedly with three bags of groceries.

It was 3pm, and like any good Los Angeleno, I passed time in the stop-and-go traffic on the 10 freeway by chatting on the phone (hands-free). I talked to my parents, who live in Texas, and unlike any good Los Angeleno, are truly interested in hearing every word clearly enunciated without any static. The inevitable "What did you say?" and "Could you repeat that?" redundancies in our conversation allowed us to get a few pleasantries in before I pulled up to my driveway.

I was balancing the 3 bags of groceries and cradling the phone against my shoulder (conditioning from my frequent Grocery Mud Runs at the Santa Monica Trader Joe's) when I realized I really, really, really had to pee.

Normally, this is not an unusual occurrence. But what rendered this particular instance of urgency special was the fact that I had also made an earlier stop, prior to my Trader Joe's soiree, at CVS. For some reason, I was motivated to enter Aisle 17 and surreptitiously purchase a pregnancy test.

Now, I have no idea why I did this. 95% of me believed that there was nothing unusual or remarkable that I would discover as a result of this purchase. It was as though I was purchasing a souvenir for a dear friend at an overpriced gift shop. That's right. I wasn't buying a pregnancy test and it wasn't a CVS. Instead, I was at the top of a mountain I'd just spent 30 minutes ascending. Lured to the lone gift shop by the promise of overpriced water, I was simply succumbing to my usual fixation of finding the perfect $12.50 scenic plastic keychain in order to show my best friend I really cared. Totally not a pregnancy test in an urban CVS.

Sure, I suppose waaaaaaaaay back in the farthest, cobweb-laden, murky corners of my mind rested the subtle awareness of the other possibility that could transpire with the purchase of the modern home pregnancy-test.  You know, that possibility of, say, a positive test result indicating pregnancy. And yet, for some reason, in all contrast to my scientific-doctor-training and reasonable mind, this did not seem like a plausible, or realistic result.  Yes, I was a couple of weeks late on my monthly cycle, and yes, I had been eating a ton of avocados lately...but my monthly cycles were diva-ish anyway and I am basically a woman woven out of weird-food-craving fabric. So this was nothing extraordinary. Yes, I did have a strange sort of feeling in yoga class the other day while blissing out in Savasana - this fuzzy feeling of a warm light in my lower belly and body - but I chalked it up to a combination of pre-class Kombucha, twisty backbends and the trippy Savasana gong music.  None of this, of course, was in any way prompting my CVS trip and purchase.

So when I got home, and really had to pee, I opened the pregnancy test and followed the instructions on autopilot, emotionless, as though I was flossing my teeth or setting up a new printer. (Not a great comparison. Printer-installation, for me, has always been quite an emotional, distressing process.)

A few minutes later, I was staring in stunned silence at two little pink lines that were about to reduce me to a Cliché.  In fact, the cliché stuff started right away: my heart began racing, my fingers felt numb, I felt the room spin around me, and I might have said something groundbreaking, like, "Oh, what, wow."

I took a deep breath and looked at the pink lines again. Wait, panicked self, I asked carefully: Are there really two lines? The second line glared almost indignantly at me, like it knew what I was thinking. It scolded me: "I am most definitely a strong, solid, unambiguous pink line. I exist. Don't you write me off as some little fluke." I could almost see it placing its hands on its hips in defiance.

Then I did what I usually do when I don't know what to do, which is to lie down, stare in panic at my phone, and think of whom I can call for help. 

Luckily, my logical mind quickly rifled through my filing cabinet of names and decided that the other person responsible for this situation, i.e., my husband, Kurt, would make a fine choice. So I called him, and after a few tense moments - pick-up-pick-up-pick-up-oh-my-god-why-aren't-you-picking-up?!- he answered with his usual "Hi sweetheart, what's up?", as though I was calling with my daily mundane check-in about the status of traffic, or what we were going to have for dinner, or some inconsequential thing that had happened to me at work.

Funnily enough, I felt like a cliché on a first date: my hands were clammy, my mind was racing, I was so nervous words wouldn't come out, and I started stammering inelegantly.  Finally, I was able to sputter out something with what I hoped was a casual, breezy air, to the tune of, "Hey, I think it might not be real, but, you know, uh, I think that I, uh, just took a test, that, uh, says that I'm, I think, well, yeah, this is definitely weird, and you know, it might not even be real, but, uh, it says that I could be pregnant."

One thing to know about my husband is that his middle name is Unfazed. It really is. He is simply Not Fazed. Tell him about impending doom, or egregious insult, or crazy batshit thing crazy person did, and he just kind of nods casually and blinks sagely, like a wise Zen master. As a completely opposite type, e.g., Constantly Fazed and Amazed Person, I often study him intensely, as though he is a glass-encased creature of mystery, to see what Moves Him. I've documented his eyes changing expression on only two specific occasions: tearing up at a really sentimental poem about grasshoppers at a wedding, and widening upon digging into my mom's homemade stacks of steaming hot, crispy foot-long dosas. I don't get it. 

So in keeping with his normal Zen Unfazed Self, Kurt didn't miss a beat. "Okay," he said. Which was not quite exactly mirroring how I was feeling, to say the least. I wanted fainting. I wanted theatrics. I wanted a monocled French cartoon character to histrionically shriek "Mon Dieu!" over and over. I wanted a marching band to play pep rally music in my bedroom. But somehow, my casual voice took over, "So, uh, I guess we have to go to the hospital to check?" I actually realized, right then, that I, a double-board certified, licensed, credentialed, 3-years-out-of-residency doctor, did not know what in the hell I was supposed to do.  What did women do after their test was positive? My mental pregnancy decision tree scenario had always ended with, "Pregnancy Test Positive? --> NO --> Continue Life", so I hadn't ever thought about this. Did a positive test mean that it was a pregnancy?  Was I supposed to go to a clinic now? Did I need a same-day ultrasound? Should I go to the emergency room?

So while waiting for Kurt to come over, I frantically Googled the 300,785 other possible causes of a positive pregnancy test other than pregnancy, such as snake venom poisoning or factitious HCG-ingestion. I also allowed myself to think, quickly and in little measured doses, about What This Could Mean.

 Little disjointed facts swam around in my head. I was 33 years old, enjoying an idyllic little married life 17 blocks from the Santa Monica beach. We'd only been married almost 6 months, and still had stacks of wedding thank you cards on our center table waiting to be signed and mailed (I know, I know; don't judge).  After suffering through nearly a decade of medical school and residency, I now lived a pretty chill and fulfilling life working exclusively during daytime hours. I had time to swim, bike or run every day, and was checking off intense workouts in preparation for a triathlon in two weeks. I was also on the verge of deciding my next career move. It was, all-in-all, a pretty Me-driven life. We eventually wanted children, but that was something hovering way off in the future, the way Being a Firefighter hovers in the way distant future when you're in kindergarten and some annoying adult asks you what you want to do when you Grow Up. I was still happily playing with blocks. (Figuratively.) I definitely did not feel Grown Up. (I think Kurt does, but he was probably born that way: a stoic, unfazed wise little boy-sage.)

In the midst of these swirling thoughts, I hatched a plan that involved pulling my doctor rank: go to the Urgent Care where I moonlighted, and order a confirmatory blood test on myself.

Kurt drove left-handedly to the Urgent Care 5 miles away (his right hand was encased in my vise-like death grip.) I nonchalantly ambled, or tried to nonchalantly amble, to my usual spot in the doctor's charting area, waving at nurses and nodding, as though I was just logging into check my patient schedule and not actually ordering a pregnancy test on myself that could change my life forever.

 I glanced around, trying to cover the screen as I pulled up my chart and ordered a STAT "blood pregnancy test": Dr. K. authorizing a blood test for patient Mrs. K. I smiled at the friendly phlebotomist who pricked my vein on the first try. He nicely did not notice, or pretended not to notice, the odd coincidence that someone with a 13-letter unusual last name had ordered a pregnancy test on someone with the same 13-letter unusual last name. "We should have the test result back in 30 minutes," he told me with perhaps what could have been a knowing look.

Then began something that I don't particularly like, but that would end up pretty much being the norm for the next several weeks: waiting, and waiting, with no sense of control.  I dropped Kurt off in the waiting room ("Act like a patient!" I commanded him) and parked myself at the physician's station, where I opened my chart and began the OCD-esque ritual of refreshing my lab results every 5 minutes, waiting for the test result to pop up.  30 minutes of frantic, fruitless refreshing transpired. Then 40. Then 45. NOTHING.  All the while, thoughts of Possibilities and Outcomes continued to swirl in my head, intensifying every stubbornly result-less second until I could take it no longer.

What does someone do when things are crazy and uncontrollable and you're terrified and anxious beyond words? Yes, we call Mommy. I couldn't actually call her from the T-mobile-unfriendly workstation, so I opened gmail, turned on gchat, and texted my mom. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: Hey Amma! Just have a random question for you...
Amma: sure
Me: So, just curious. Just wondering. What are some of the things that happen when you're pregnant?
(Yes, I realize that this is an odd question coming from someone who is ostensibly a licensed, practicing physician. My mother, incidentally, is a botanist. And yet, I trusted her answer more than anything I'd ever learned.)
*several seconds pause*
Amma: Well. You won't get your period.
(Somehow, this seemed anti-climactic. I actually did know this.)
*faster typing*
Amma (matter-of-factly, or seemingly matter-of-factly given that she was typing not talking): You notice your breasts start to become bigger. You start craving spicy foods.
(Still no marching band, no histrionic Frenchman. Was no one going to go crazy except me?!?)
Me: I see. Interesting.

And then, as I refreshed for what seemed like the 1007th time, there it came: the result was in! I clicked on it to open it. And there it was.

B-HCG, blood
Normal value: < 5
Patient value: 1337 (H) <--it was bolded and italicized JUST LIKE THAT EXACTLY

And then, everything began to sort of spin and blur. I texted Kurt a succinctly simple, tell-all "OH MY GOD" and then I found myself rushing outside. I was looking for Kurt, except I couldn't find him, because he had left the waiting room in search of me, due to aforementioned tell-all text.  We eventually found each other and I started to freak out as I told him that yes, this was Real with TWO capital Rs, or maybe three, à la Tony the Tiger. Actually, it was probably in all caps. But anyway, it was real.

We drove away in yet another blur, as I called my parents and told them the news (and they too, reacted with controlled, calm, civilized delight, devoid of any Faze - again, was I the only one undergoing internal histrionics? Was no one else feeling like their insides were being chewed up by, say, the spin cycle monster that terrorized clothes in my rickety washing machine?)

And then, I texted my sister, Charanya: I NEED TO TALK TO YOU.  No response. So we called her, on speakerphone in our car, and she actually picked up, by some miracle.

"What is it this time?" she asked. Her voice echoed in the car's speakers with the world-weary tone of one who has seen many a tear-laden retelling of various dramatic events by her older sister (e.g: the time Trader Joe's discontinued South African Smoke Seasoning for 5 months!! Major tragedy.) 

"Oh, well. Nothing much. Just that I'm pregnant," I blurted out.

After a brief pause, our car erupted in a series of shrieks, sobs, and unintelligible phrases punctuated by regular choruses of "OH MY GOD"s.  My sister's reaction set my own heartrate soaring, along with a strange sense of calm satisfaction: Finally: histrionics. Thanks, Cha, for being my Monocled Frenchman. So we group-bawled and group-laughed and group-daydreamed, and after we hung up I suddenly realized that Kurt and I had landed in a comforting place: the parking lot of the Trader Joe's.

Kurt had made a beeline for Trader Joe's to buy me a pregnancy first trimester staple: folic acid. (<---this is an example of the thing that makes him a keeper: underneath that Zen-like exterior is this heart of Sweet Awesome.)

Somehow, it was fitting that the first chapter of this crazy journey began and ended at Trader Joe's, a place where I go for sustenance, surprises, cheesy puns, and Hawaiian shirt sightings.  I guess that's where this journey was heading, too. Actually, I mean that pretty literally. As the Great Beautiful, Crazy Cliche of Pregnant, Not-So-Original Me unfolded over the next few weeks, I would make many an urgent trip to Trader Joe's in search of your cliché staples: pickles, ice cream, vinegar-y chips and salsa.

As we left the parking lot, the phone rang. It was Dr. C, the chief of Urgent Care, a.k.a. my boss.

"Oh hey, Dr. C, how are you?" Why was he calling me at 10:04 PM?  

"Good, good. Uh, so. I was just reviewing our Urgent Care lab order results. You, uh, ordered a pregnancy test on yourself? Well, I have to let you know the results. It's, uh, positive."

"Oh, thanks. Yeah, I know!" I said weakly. My voice was blushing, vividly.

"Great. Congratulations!" Click. 

And so it begins.