Evagation

Thursday, March 08, 2007

I love my husband, even when I don't understand him.

Also: Thank goddess for the internet and online journals and, most importantly, thank you laura and anonymous. After talking to Devin on his lunch hour yesterday, I was even MORE confused about the whole baby thing. At some point in the afternoon, my Mom calls to see how I'm doing because I had called her crying last night and generally freaking out. "I'm... fine." I'm not sure if I want to go into the whole Devin-thought-I-was-trash-talking-him thing right now. It still makes no sense to me. Except my Mom can tell from my voice when something is bothering me. She presses me saying she KNOWS something is wrong, and what is it? Tell her about Devin and talking to the guys in the morning about my freak-out and making it sound funny, then telling me that it was my own fault for trash-talking him to my Mom. "WHAT? You didn't say a bad word about Devin! In fact, you even said that he's agreed to give up his game room if it came down to you two needing a nursery! You were NICE!" My Mom can always be counted on for being completely on my side, even though this time it was actually warranted to be on my side because Devin was going crazy. "Oh GOOD. I thought I was losing my mind. I had no clue what I said that made him so mad." "YOU WERE NICE. Do you want me to tell him that? Your brother heard the whole thing and he can back you up on this, too." "Um. Thanks. But I just wanted to make sure I'm not the crazy one right now. I'm not going to sic my family on Devin as if he's on trial and lied under oath. This isn't a trial. This is supposed to be a HAPPY TIME." We talked a bit more but I was glad to have cleared that up. Okay. I'm not the crazy one right now. That's a shocker. Finally Devin gets done with work and comes sit with me in my office. We're both glaring at each other. I ask him what he heard me say, and he says something about how I said that it was all MY decision and I'm not respecting HIS feelings and that it's HIS decision, too. Decided to not go down "It's My Body, My Choice" route because that's not really how I feel. Explained that I said that I was scared that we were having to make a decision now and that I'M SCARED. Said I didn't think he'd appreciate me telling my Mom about his feelings because, right now, I have NO CLUE what he is feeling. Yet again, this was not a good time to talk about this, he wanted to go home. Alright. Fine. (There's that fake "Fine" again. Perhaps I just need to scratch "fine" from my internal dictionary.) I'll see him when I get home. Except by the time I get home, I'm pretty much not talking. At all. Just quiet Katie helping clean up the kitchen and start some laundry. Devin is cooking dinner. Which I realize is a peace offering of some sort but I'm still mute. "Are you going to be snarky like this to me all night?" Devin inquires. "I haven't said ANYTHING. That's not snark. That's SILENCE. THIS IS SNARK." Cue exit, Katie, stage left. Dinner is taking a while. I sit down with the new copy of "Newsweek" and Devin sits down with me, staring at me reading. "What? Are you ready to talk now?" "I was freaking out." Wait a second. "What?" I ask him. Maybe he meant YOU were freaking out. "I was freaking out. I didn't know what to say. About the baby. And being able to start NOW and not some far-off date in the future." When Devin has his sheepish, aw shucks expression on, he looks about sixteen years old. "You're kidding me, right? I mean. You were the one with the schedule. Long before we got married you made it abundantly clear that you wanted kids before we were 30. YOU were the one with the cut-off date, and I was the one who had to wrap my mind around that. Now that I've come to terms with having a kid before we're 30, you are now FREAKING OUT? How is that even allowed?!" "I KNOW. But 30 seems like far-off, distant future..." "Devin. We're going to be 30 in four years. I thought this was what you wanted." "Oh, I do want to have a kid. Or two. But right now? I don't know if I'm ready for right now. So, I freaked out. I figured that I had to say SOMETHING positive about all of this, so I just..." "...Started talking about what time of year you want me to birth a child? Then ridiculed my freak-out to your family?" "Um. Yeah. Sorry about that. I just didn't know what to say. I was freaking out." This is where I am so grateful for reader comments to my last entry. laura made me realize that the anti-anxiety drugs are WORKING and I'm being fairly calm (and laura's known me since high school, so if she says I'm being calm, she knows of what she speaks). That made me feel better. And Anonymous talked about Devin being on another planet and I just needed to give him time to come back down to Earth. I kept running that advice through my head last night when he's explaining to me that his freak-out results in crazy, verbal diarrhea that can last for a day, or two. All I could think was that 1) laura said I was being calm so take deep breaths and stay calm and 2) Anon was right. Devin is totally on another planet. "Babe." (We call each other "Babe," and I've never seen the pig movie so I have no cartoon animal associations with the word.) "Why didn't you just tell me that you were freaking out? I had no problem telling YOU that I was freaking out." "I know. I just thought that maybe one of us should pretend to be ready for this... thing." Yeah, the "baby" word is very, very scary. I agree with Devin on that one. Then he started re-iterating all of the fears I'd told him I'd had last night, which was rather nice because then I just got to give him the responses he gave to me. Calm down. Our parents will help us with the money to buy the thing clothes and diapers. The thing isn't coming for at least another year, assuming we start trying right now and we're super successful, so we can worry about getting a "family car" later. Devin started to get that frustrated look on his face, I could tell he wanted to tell me to be quiet except I was only telling him all of the things he told ME last night. "I'M JUST NOT READY." He said, very firmly. "Good. Neither am I. So glad we got that cleared up. Do you want me to cancel my appointment this month for my pap?" Both of our Mothers might think it's odd that I tell Devin about everything that's going on with my body, even the baby-making parts, so he knows what a pap-smear is and how annoying they are to me. I doubt my father-in-law knows anything about pap-smears. "Oh. No. You said you needed one. It's been like... two years? Or something?" "Yup. About two years. Sexually active women, even monogamous sexually active women, should get papped at least once a year." "Didya know that cervical cancer is caused by a VIRUS?" He's laughing now. Because he knows how much I detest those idiotic HPV commercials. "Do those stupid commercial women even know what CANCER IS? OF COURSE cancer can be caused by a virus. It can be caused by all sorts of things. It's just a bunch of strange cells in your body that are either benign, or malignant. STUPID COMMERCIAL." Now he's really laughing at me. Which is fine because the entire world probably laughs at me when I go off on a virus rant. I would laugh along with him except I really, really hate that commercial. "Alright. I'll keep the pap appointment. It's only a week, or so, away." "And making doctor appointments gives you some control over your life." Devin is a smart guy, except when it comes to being able to articulate a freak-out. "Exactly. We don't have to make any decisions right now. I'm only on my first week of my new pack of birth control pills, and all of the literature says that you don't just STOP taking birth control in the middle of the month. Kind-of like steroids. And Vicodin. So, we have a few weeks before deciding if we want to start trying NOW for a kid, or I can just get another pack of birth control pills and buy us another month to make our decision. The only people wanting to rush into this are..." "Our parents." We say together. This would be the first grandchild for both of our parents and boy, his Mom is beyond ready to be a grandmother. She even called me yesterday to say that she heard the "good news" about my health and how great it is that we can start trying to have a kid right now. (Speaking of being inundated with my in-laws yesterday. Devin went to all of them and told them to apologize to me, that he was wrong to make it sound funny and that they shouldn't tease me about it, or pressure me about it. Which definitely put him back into the Good Husband category, so I even did some of his laundry and changed the sheets on our bed. Which he was allowed to sleep in last night.) So, that's where we stand. Neither of us is ready to make a decision about when I should go off birth control, so we're just going to think on it for the next few weeks. See how the pap comes out. Just give ourselves time to wrap our heads around this crazy notion of having a baby. (By the way. The funniest thing last night happened when Devin was still explaining to me that he was just so freaked out that he didn't know what to say, so he said all of the wrong things. He was finally beginning to talk about what was freaking him out and he honestly said, "What if you really love being pregnant? Like Darrell's wife Amy? Or any of the other females in our group of friends? What if you just LOVE BEING PREGNANT? What if you want to get pregnant again RIGHT AWAY BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT?!" Which is when I just started laughing. Which was a bit mean because that freaked him out even more. "WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING? It could happen!" "Devin. I love you but I can almost guarantee you that I will not love being pregnant." "But what if you love growing a human being inside your body?" "Well, yeah, hopefully that part will be cool and just a bit freaky. But I do not anticipate enjoying the process of pregnancy. For starters, I have enough trouble walking around without stumbling, or banging into walls, and I'm not currently carrying most of my weight as a huge, heavy balloon in my abdomen. Also not looking forward to my breast getting BIGGER. Since that is just a cruel, cruel joke to a woman with a 32-DD rack." "Oh. No. That part's going to be nice." Yes, dear, I know that you can't wait for my boobs to inflate to the size of basketballs. Such fun. Devin continues... "Except after the baby is born, they're not going to be MY boobs anymore, they're going to be for the baby. Because you'll be breast feeding." "For the millionth time. They aren't your boobs! They belong to ME. And I haven't decided about breast feeding yet. Docs say that most women can take mild doses of certain medication even while breast feeding because the body tends to filter that stuff out of the breast milk. So. I don't know about that one. It would be kind-of nice to actually have a purpose for my boobs." "They already have a purpose in life. To make me happy." And they really do make him happy. Just thinking about them puts a goofy grin on his face. In the evening, when I'm changing into my pajamas, if Devin is in the room, he'll make a beeline for my chest as soon as it's exposed saying "Boobiesboobiesboobiesboobies" the entire time. Which usually means that I have to stand there, topless, while my husband gets his fill of fondling my breasts. I have been told that men never grow out of this fascination with breasts, and I will pretty much have to put up with it for a very, very long time.) Now that we're freaking out about this baby thing TOGETHER, it makes the entire task seem less daunting. (Also. Before I wrap this incredibly long entry up. I do not want to become a mommyblogger. I understand how great it is to talk about your kid, and how amazing your own kids seems to you but in no way do I want to dump all of that here. If I do decide to write about my kid--once we have one, of course--odds are it will be a private, password protected journal for family, friends and long-time journal readers. Not for the internet at large. That way I could write about it if I felt like it but I wouldn't have to bore people who just don't want to hear it. Or worry that some strange pervert is looking at pictures of my kid.) It'll be interesting to see which one of us is the first to be "ready" to have a kid. (Re: Comments for this journal. I don't know what I did but now the comments made on any entry are tacked onto the bottom of that entry as soon as I write a new entry. Making me wonder what in the world I did with crazy blogger, and I'll spend the rest of the afternoon trying to fix that so I can properly respond to comments. So, for now: To the other anonymous, you were right, it was just a minor bump in the road and we worked it out fairly quickly. Thank goddess. Even though right now our next step is to just wrap our heads around this idea and try to figure out if/when we'll be ready for a kid. And to johnqcasual: Thanks to you, as well, for the male perspective. I honestly didn't think that Devin was saying something and the guys were the ones saying it was funny. I simply thought that he was "in" on whatever joke those guys were making about all of this. He's got the message now that it's FINE to vent. I have this journal to do my venting. I'll bet that once I go off birth control and my hormones start going nuts, he's going to need to vent about me in order to stay sane. He's just now going to explain to the guys that they shouldn't turn around and tease me about everything he's said, or even acknowledge to me that Devin's venting his frustration about his sometimes crazy wife. On this one, my ignorance is bliss. I completely respect his need to vent, I just don't necessarily want to hear what he says in a silly telephone-like game. If he wants to tell me what he's saying, that's fine as well, but he can feel free to gripe about me behind my back all he wants as long as the griping remains mostly behind my back. I think that's a solution that works for both of us. Now I must eat lunch. Then figure out what I did with blogger and journal comments. I would actually LIKE for comments to look like they are part of my blog, and not some pop-up blogger window. So, I've done something half-right. Now I just need to figure out what the heck I did.)

Posted by Katie. on Thursday, March 08, 2007 at 8:37 AM | Permalink | 0 comments | links to this post   

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