THE TELLTALE TITS

“Damn, I must be just about to start my period.”
“Oh yeah? Why do you say that?”
“Because my boobs feel huge. And they hurt.”

I’m all but certain the only reason my boyfriend even responded to my comment was because I was standing directly in front of him groping myself. I grabbed his hand and brought it to the right one.

“Feel,” I directed. He pawed around, eventually cupping my boob from the bottom as though weighing it. He brought his other hand to lefty for comparison.
“Yeah, they do feel pretty big. Huh. Well that sucks.” It did suck. It sucked for me because I was leaving the next day to spend a week with my family in Michigan and getting your period on vacation is the pits. It sucked for him because he only had one night to enjoy my giant tits before I left.

It was odd though. The timing was right to start my period, but the giant, achy boobs were not a typical symptom of PMS for me. The days before my period were usually spent crying over rescue dog videos I found on the internet, eating bread by the loaf and snapping at said boyfriend for not responding quickly enough to my texts. In my twenty-ish years of menstruating, I couldn’t recall one time I had experienced this particular side effect. I knew it was a thing. It just wasn't my thing.

The next day I boarded my plane to Detroit. My mom and brother picked me up at the airport, and we headed through the gray freeze to my mom’s house a few miles north. We spent the cold afternoon indoors, noshing on plentiful snacks and chatting about life stuff. I didn’t bring up my engorged boobs because, ew, why?

I woke the next morning still chesty and period-free. It didn’t concern me much that day but when it happened again the next day, then the next, then the next, I began to worry. I was now a solid three days past my expected period start date, which wouldn’t be disconcerting to a lot of women but alarmed me. My shit was super regular. Like, I could usually pinpoint the start within hours. Three days late was well outside the standard deviation. What if it wasn’t PMS? What if it was…the other thing?

The next day, I still hadn’t started. That night I borrowed my mom’s car and headed to a girlfriend’s apartment to hang out with some of my hometown pals. It was a quiet and dreary weeknight. I stopped at a squat neon liquor store and bought the least shitty bottle of red wine I could find for ten dollars. When I got there, I realized one of my friends had her newborn daughter with her. Without admitting my suspicions, I picked her brain.

“How did you know you were pregnant?” I asked during a lull in the conversation, hand tense around the stem of my glass.
“Well,” she started, “Jay and I had been trying for a while. I had a miscarriage in November and then another one in January. We agreed to stop trying if I had another one. Then in March, I started getting so sick at work I would dry heave every day at my desk. I actually had to leave a meeting one day to go hurl in the bathroom. That was when I knew.” I nodded and relaxed my grip. I hadn’t felt sick to my stomach at all, just emotional and top-heavy. It was probably nothing. Or maybe it was a tumor on some hormone-regulating nodule in my brain. Either way, I didn’t have to deal with a baby.

When I arrived back in Atlanta, I was way overdressed for the 72-degree weather and officially a week late on my period. Brandon, my boyfriend, picked me up outside Hartsfield-Jackson in the afternoon. The sun was high and small in the cloudless sky.

“What’s up, baby? Happy New Year! How was your trip?” He hopped out of the driver’s seat to smooch me on the lips and load my suitcase into the trunk.
“It was pretty good,” I climbed into the passenger seat as he returned to the wheel. “I still haven’t started my period,” I blurted like a weirdo.
“Oh. Huh,” He squinted at me, brow knitted. “Are you- do you think you’re pregnant?” His eyes softened in concern.
“Noooooo,” I said, overconfident. “I’m sure I’m not.”
He stared at me for a long moment and finally grinned.
“I bet you’re fucking pregnant,” he laughed as he shifted into drive.
“Shut up!”
“You are. You’re pregnant,” he taunted.
“Oh my god, stop.”
“Pre-go, pre-go,” he chanted.
“Stop! If I am, it’s your fault!”
“Whatever. You liked it.”
“Oh, shut the fuck up,” I crossed my arms. He ribbed me about it the whole way home, giving a mocking voice to my lingering suspicions. I denied the charges adamantly, mostly to reassure myself.

A couple of days later, I returned to work. At the time I was a production assistant on a television show, and the return from winter hiatus meant lots of busy work and distraction from my potential condition. I ran around distributing scripts, copying budgets, cleaning offices and generally ignoring my giant boobs and blood-free vagina.

Brandon hadn’t forgotten.

“So…what’s going on with your lady bits?” He taunted me one night.

I glared at him and lit a bowl of weed.

“Nothing,” I squeaked through a mouthful of smoke.
“Mm-hm,” he smirked.
“Oh, can it,” I exhaled long and slow.

I was two weeks late when I finally decided to buy a pregnancy test. Ever the thrifty shopper, I found an internet deal on 25 pregnancy tests for eleven dollars. They would arrive two days later, and then I would finally have an answer.

Though part of me was suspicious, I refused to believe. I had scared myself into thinking I was pregnant several times in my twenties. These were completely unwarranted instances of worry, usually occurring after I had a one-night stand with some asshole. I would convince myself that even though we’d used a condom, I was the one percent of instances where it hadn’t worked. Or even though he’d pulled out, some of his little spermies had pre-ejaculated and swum up to my egg. It would be less than a week later, and I would stress myself out so much I’d get a stomachache. Then I would convince myself the stomachache was morning sickness and feed my obsession. Before I even had the chance to miss a period, I would drop fifteen bucks on a two-pack of pregnancy tests which always came back negative.

Not this time. This time I was two weeks late, had had fully unprotected sex with a man I loved and wasn’t going to waste my money on some goddamned name-brand pregnancy test just for the convenience of buying it at the drugstore.

The tests arrived on a Friday. Brandon and I had tickets for a Saturday matinee of Book of Mormon as well as tickets for a Saturday night Dirt Nasty concert. It promised to be a weird double-feature. Not wanting to ruin the fun with feelings of one kind or another, I put off taking the pregnancy test until Sunday.

On Saturday, we first drank in the gilded glory of Atlanta’s Fox Theater, and then inhaled the sweaty, smoky stench of The Masquerade. Both shows entertained. We drank fancy wine and cheap beer. I smoked pot and we laughed and danced and stayed up late.

The next day, Brandon woke me up around eleven with coffee. He scrambled some eggs and made toast. The temperature had dropped but it was still sunny outside. Our tile floors were cold under my feet. I let the morning pass into afternoon. I was giving my body one last chance to start menstruating. We watched some mindless TV and nursed our hangovers. Finally, around four in the afternoon, I decided it was time.

“I’m gonna go take the pregnancy test,” I announced.
“Oh shit. You want to bet on it?” He straightened his back, eager.
“Bet what?”
“I’ve got ten bucks that says you’re pregnant,” he declared.
“Okay, fine. Ten bucks,” I climbed the stairs to the bathroom. The pregnancy tests were hidden behind old bottles of shampoo under the sink. I opened one. It was just a tiny strip of paper. I found instructions inside the box and bounded back down the stairs.

Brandon stared at me, eyes wide.

“I need a cup to pee in,” I said lamely.
“Ew,” he frowned.

I grabbed a crappy floral-print plastic cup and went back to the bathroom. I peed all over my wrist but managed to get a few ounces of urine in the cup. I dunked the strip up to the designated line then laid it flat on the bathroom counter, as instructed. I sat back on the toilet, ready for my two-minute wait.

But I didn’t have to wait two minutes. After about eight seconds two lines appeared on the test. Two lines. Two lines meant pregnant.

I double-checked the instructions. Had I read them correctly? I scanned the tiny paper. Wait two minutes ... line nearest the top of the strip is the control line ... if only this line ... test is negative ... if another line appears ... two lines total ... the test is positive. Two lines total meant the test was positive. There were two lines. I was pregnant.

Or maybe I wasn’t. I immediately ripped open another test and dunked it in my cup of pee. Two lines again.

“Fuck me,” I said to myself and ripped open a third test. This was why I’d bought in bulk. Two more lines.

My heart raced. All those times in my twenties, I had obsessed over the potential pregnancy. I had turned it over and over in my mind. What would I do? I would move back home to Michigan or I would have an abortion or I would stay in Georgia and be a single mom. Each time I had a grandiose plan where I sacrificed heroically for my exceptional and gifted child or went on to save the world in honor of the child I had to sacrifice. But I’d always been let off the hook. This time - when I was experiencing the classic symptoms and had entered a committed relationship with a man I actually loved - this time there was no plan, just a fuckload of denial.

I ran down the stairs. Brandon looked up at me and cocked his head.

“I’m really pregnant,” I stared at him for a long moment.
“Hm. I get ten bucks.”

NOT NOT TRYING

I’m at the age where in any given month, five or more chicks I know from high school announce they are pregnant. After dozens of social media case studies, I’ve found there are basically two types of conception. The first is heartbreakingly difficult. It involves miscarriages and thousands of dollars in medical bills and years of life wasted. These people end up using terms like “basal temperature,” “ovulation calendar,” and “cervical mucous” in everyday conversation. The women drink red raspberry leaf tea, take dandelion and maca supplements and do pelvis-strengthening yoga. The men buy looser pants, quit carrying their cell phones in their pocket and stop jerking off in order to save sperm for the real deal.

This type always happens to couples who really want to have kids. They’re the ones who already have a birth plan written and school system selected. If you believe the universe is a purposeful place, then you might say these are people who need to learn lessons about patience and giving up control. But it might just be that the universe is an asshole and no one gets everything they want.

The second type occurs when couples are too lazy to use birth control correctly or too drunk to pull and pray. This type happens to people who have never kept a plant alive. It happens to people who don’t know the deductible on their health insurance plan either because the last time they went to the doctor was 2007, or because their budget includes enough money for weed or health insurance but not both. Maybe it’s these people who really need the lessons about patience and giving up control. Or maybe the universe is an asshole and an idiot, because what intelligent force would choose these sort of people to reproduce?

I got pregnant in 2015. I’ll give you three guesses which type of conception I had, and the first two don’t count.

Okay, it wasn’t a complete surprise. About two weeks before my offspring took over my lady parts, my then-boyfriend and I had a conversation about a pair of friends. We’d just gone out of state for their baby shower and discovered it had taken them two years to get pregnant once they started trying. We knew we wanted to have a family and agreed we’d be ready for a baby in about a year, but we didn’t want to start trying in a year and then have to wait two years to conceive. So…we kind of took it easy on birth control. And by “took it easy,” I mean we stopped giving a shit entirely. I guess this is the third type of conception: not not trying. You’re not putting any effort into getting pregnant other than having totally unprotected sex, and because you’re having totally unprotected sex, you can’t get mad or act surprised when you get pregnant.

Once I had my first ultrasound, I was able to trace the date of conception back to my boyfriend’s birthday. I remember that night. We went downtown Atlanta and saw a burlesque show, then went drinking. Winding down I-20 East on the ride home, my boyfriend drunkenly told me he loved me and wanted to get me pregnant. He was slouched over, rubbing my thigh from the passenger seat. I was the designated driver because I’d only had five beers instead of eleven and could’ve passed a field sobriety test in a state with very liberal DUI thresholds. As it is, I live in a zero tolerance state, but I made it home alive and then we made a baby.

The universe is a fucked-up place.