A typical morning in the life of a catastrophic thinker

Yesterday I revealed the ruinous thoughts that run through my mind on a regular basis. Today I’m going to tell you about just one catastrophic morning.

I’m going to tell you about this past Saturday morning in fact.

It’s the morning that I realized I was on day 36 of my menstrual cycle.

It’s the morning I said to myself, “I’m menopausal at 38?! This isn’t fair. I’ve already gained 10 pounds this winter! Now I’m going to gain even more. And my boobs are going to sag. And those wrinkles are going to proliferate. And my arteries are going to clog up. Hairs are going to grow out of my chin.”

As I walked the 15 feet or so that separated me from my husband, I made a mental note to research “early menopause” on Google to see if there were any foods I should be eating, supplements I should be taking or exercises I should be trying to forestall this rapid march into washed up, barren old womanhood.

“It’s official,” I told my husband. “I’m going to skip a period.”

He said, “Whaaat?!” He said it the same way I would have expected him to say it if, instead, I’d said, “There’s a small fire in a corner of the basement,” or “I was just in the garage. Your BMW doesn’t seem to be there. Did you park it somewhere else?”

Me: “It’s not like that. I think I’m officially perimenopausal.”

I was about to tell him that we’d wasted our money on that vasectomy he got last year because, as it turned out, I couldn’t have gotten pregnant anyway since I my ovaries were biologically older than anyone had ever imagined, when my husband asked this:

“Are you sure you’re not pregnant?”

Me: “That’s impossible. You have a vasectomy.”

Then he gave me one of those looks. It said, “No, it’s not impossible if you had sex with someone other than me.”

And so I gave him one of those looks right back, only mine said, “I so did not do that.”

(Which I didn’t, by the way, just in case you were wondering. If I had, I would definitely tell you, because I know you all are down with keeping my deepest darkest marital secrets.)

Him: “Well Lance Armstrong just knocked someone up.”

Me: “So?”

Him: “He wasn’t supposed to have any swimmers. I’m not even sure if he has any balls. If he knocked someone up, anything can happen.”

Me: “It wasn’t in vitro?”

Him: “No.”

(Author’s Note: It really wasn’t. Apparently, Lance truly has superpowers. )

So we stood there for a while.

Then I thought of how much I did not want to have a baby. I was just starting to feel normal again. I couldn’t face the morning sickness, fatigue, heartburn, leg cramps, constipation, hemorrhoids, mucus plug and full body pillow. I didn’t think I could stand the stares from just about everyone—including the hundreds of customers who frequent my husband’s store. They all knew my husband had been snipped. They’d automatically assume that I’d had an affair. My friends at Girl’s Night Out would interrogate me, wanting to know if my little tryst was worth it and whether they should have one, too.

I’d also finally just created some semblance of definition in my stomach. I didn’t want to lose that.

I figured out exactly what we would have to do so I could have another baby. It was official. My husband would have to sell his store and become a stay-at-home dad. There was no way in all burning tarnation that I was going to do what we did last time, which was try to work while nursing a fussy baby and not sleeping. No way. Got that? Never again.

But I immediately saw problems with my plan. No one would want to buy a store during a recession. My husband’s business partners might not agree with my decision. There might be a mutiny among Emmaus cyclists. In fact, these Spandex-wearing folks might chase me out of town with torches just for voicing the idea.

I decided not to tell anyone about the pregnancy anyway. No one would suspect it. They all knew my husband was snipped. They’d just think I was getting really fat. There was the wrinkle of what my girlfriends would think when I went all club soda on them during  Girl’s Night Out, but I could always just say something about my 12-step program and leave it at that.

I cursed at myself for giving all of our baby stuff to friends and Goodwill.

Financially I wasn’t sure if I could afford to pay for two kids in daycare at the same time, not to mention two college educations.

I thought, “Who has a baby during a recession? This is crazy.” I got mad at God, because getting knocked up when one’s husband has had a vasectomy must certainly be God’s fault.

I wondered if my husband would want a paternity test.

Then I finally got up the courage to drive to the drug store and buy a pregnancy test.

The test only cost $13, and it came with two sticks. It would have been a bargain if I’d thought I might ever have some use for the second stick. That, and if I hadn’t spent $35 more on tissues and multiple tubes of moisturizer that I didn’t need.

Then I drove to my husband’s coffee/bike shop and made myself a double latte. I figured it might be my last one in a while. And the coffee would help me generate needed urine for the pregnancy test.

As I drank the latte, I realized that there was a more than slim chance that my baby would have some sort of deformity, given all of the caffeine and alcohol I’d consumed during its first month of gestation. I choose not to dwell on that fact until the time came. There’s not use worrying about something that might not actually happen, right?

I drove home.

I walked to the bathroom.

I sped read the instructions.

I sat on our 1950s era pink potty.

I peed on the stick.

I watched the urine soak through the reading strip.

One thin dark line emerged.

“Is that good or bad? Good or bad? Good or bad?”

I read the box again.

I wasn’t pregnant.

I wasn’t pregnant!

And I was both happy and sad, happy because I wasn’t pregnant and sad because I didn’t want to be infertile.

So I tried to cheer myself up by reminding myself that my husband would no longer wonder whether or not I’d had an affair.

I also didn’t have to give up caffeine or wine.

I could continue to fine-tune the work of art better known as my abdomen.

And I now had an extra pregnancy test, a lot of face cream, and spare tissues. I’m sure at least two of the three would come in handy some day.

And then I remembered that my gynecologist had recently put me on progesterone, which I’d taken for a while and then abruptly stopped taking because I’d thought it was keeping me up at night. I’d stopped taking it in December.

It could easily have explained a messed up cycle.

But a temporary hormonal mess is not one of those things someone like me plans for. After all, it’s not a catastrophe. It’s just a minor annoyance.

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Tagged as: catastrophic thinking, pregnancy