Blog Friend Feature: A First Pregnancy Scare

There are a few people who have the ability to always make me laugh. This week's Blog Friend Feature is one of them. Her posts, her tweets, even her comments- make me crack up! She's quirky and off-beat and the kind of girl you know you would have a blast hanging out with.


Megan from Best of Fates is not a mom blogger, but she does have this hilarious post about a time she thought she was pregnant.

Pregnancy is frightening.


There's the nausea, the pickle cravings, being accused of eating a baby* - each concern piles upon another. If the pregnancy is unexpected, there's the worry over what others will think. Friends, local celebrities, your parents - all standing by, waiting to judge you or send taunting fliers about the cost of child care.**


I was sitting at a desk, daydreaming, when I first had the thought.


"Am I pregnant?"


My mind started racing, imaging just how could I tell people, what I would do, but most of all, questioning just how did this happen?


I was a good Catholic girl.


I attended weekly mass and confessed my sins and hardly ever sold drugs or illegally downloaded music.


Why would God let this happen?


Was it because I watched Pretty Woman?


(It does perpetuate negative stereotypes of couture saleswomen.)


(They're people too.)


(Fancy, mean-spirited people.)


Was it punishment for not eating my vegetables?


(Has God tasted peas? Because blaming me for his lack of flavor inclusion did not seem all that "just and mighty" to me.)


My fifth grade mind just couldn't figure out what I had done to deserve such a fate.


It also didn't fully understand how a girl got pregnant.


But however it had happened, the result was obvious. Pressing my stomach into the desk in front of me I could clearly feel a heartbeat.


What could it be but my unborn child's heartbeat?


(Brace yourself for the twist ending.)


Turns out, it was my heartbeat.


Turns out, I wasn't pregnant at all.


Not that I was informed of my barren womb***** by a medical professional. I was too ashamed to tell anyone of my coming bun, given it's placement in my unmarried and oh-so-young oven.


I kept my frightening knowledge to myself. As days and weeks and months passed I never confided in my mom or dad or best friend or loyal beagle******.


I don't remember the moment I regained confidence in my childless state. Yet gradually my fear faded and one day I looked back and realized there was very little chance I was about to be a mom.


Yesterday I told my best friend the story of my traumatic heartbeat and discovered she also had a childhood pregnancy scare. Attending a dance with her middle school boyfriend, the costumes required them to wear each others' clothes. This included underwear, and following the dance she slowly convinced herself that his underwear had gotten her pregnant.


Hearing this story filled with a sense of vindication and a strong desire to do my laundry.


I'm not suggesting that all people have a childhood pregnancy scare story, but rather that disproving my assumption, I'm not the only one.


This is all the rationalization I need for my happiness. For if an embarrassing incident once also happened to a stout man in Romania, then isn't it just a universal human experience and nothing for which I need to feel shame?********





*I've never actually been pregnant, so might be wrong about some of the issues involved therein.


**Different people show love in different ways. Like how when you're a little girl and that boy in your class pulls your hair and throws rocks at you and you have him arrested for assault and battery and fraud. The lie you told about him stealing your identity to assure the maximum sentence? That's means you like him.***


***You won't realize that's true until a college psychology class taps into your deepest soul and informs you that you were once Cleopatra and then an insignificant butler in Victorian England and your only chance at true love was little Timmy so you should hope that boy's got himself a MySpace page and is currently open to new paramours.****


****I sometimes confuse psychology with pseudoscience because they both have more than three syllables and are in the same encyclopedic volume. (You should enjoy that reference because you're the last generation that will understand it.)


*****Barren might be a strong word. Currently unoccupied? Though given the first *, it is possible my womb is barren. Truly, there is much medical science still doesn't know about my womb. It's like the last space frontier. Or Alaska.


******Named Muffins*******, my beagle was sweet and snuggly and a voracious eater, though she never once attempted to use a typewriter. Though I never provided her with one, nor was I particularly supportive of her possible literary dreams, so maybe that is my fault.


*******Though a singular dog, her name was a plural noun. Because I said so, that's why.


********No.

I know you had to snort with laughter at least once during her post, didn't you? Please leave Megan some comment love and then go follow Best of Fates if you don't already!