You can't unring a bell: How growing up in labor and delivery makes it very hard to just relax and let pregnancy come to me

This week I thought I was pregnant. No, we haven't been "trying". But there was some birthday sex and well, let's just say we (in a total spontaneous flight of fancy) left the window open. I was excited and totally freaked out. G was not as excited but he made new and exciting revelations about how ready he actually is every day. It seemed like all he was going to need was time. I, on the other hand felt, and sort of continue to feel very, very conflicted about all of it. In many ways I have been waiting my whole life to get pregnant. The way some little boys dream about becoming astronauts, I dreamt about becoming pregnant. Growing up the daughter of a Nurse Midwife running a private practice, many years mostly solo, one of the only ways to spend time with my mom as a pre-teen and teenager was to take her dinner to the hospital or birth center where she was attending to laboring women, or to drive to home visits with her on Sunday.

My mother was super unorthodox. She is a pretty awesome woman and a total bad ass. As I child I would never have gone to mom for the skinned knee. She was the one who was re roofing the barn or mowing the lawn, my father was the snugly one who you begged to let you into the bed after a bad dream or who would know just how to make that skinned knee better or soothe the sore throat. My Mom was fun and strong and hardworking but she was by NO stretch of the imagination the nurturing one. I didn't even know if she had a soothing whisper voice for when things were scary in the middle of the night. That was what Dad's side of the bed was for.

When I was 10 years old my mom came into my room and asked if I would like to come to a birth with her. WOULD I?! I jumped at the chance to hang out with my Mom. I would have followed her through a burning building! I was so excited to get the chance to see what she DID all those nights she left before dawn and didn't return until the next night, spent and hungry and looking like she had been to war. I was quiet on the drive to the hospital. I was so excited. She parked me in the call room (my only source for cable TV or ANY TV to speak of for the bulk of my childhood) tossed me a hand full of individually wrapped graham crackers and told me she would be back. I was in heaven! It was already past my bedtime and it all felt very secret mission-ee. Several questionable TV programs later she returned and said "OK, you ready?" She took my hand and walked me down the dimly lighted hall to a brightly lit room where a woman with a VERY pregnant belly was sitting in a bed nursing her toddler. I was introduced to the RN who gave me booties to wear over my flip flops. Mind you, I was 10 and just thought it was strange to see a toddler nursing as I knew nothing of nipple stimulation for encouragement of labor progression yet. The woman looked tired but also looked like a warrior. She glowed with this sort of strength and resolve that I found very intriguing. My mother made introductions and the warrior looked me in the eye and said "It is an honor to have you here for this. Is this the first time you have come to a birth with your mom?" I was a gregarious little thing and said "Yes" and "thank you for having me" as if I had been invited to dinner or the movies with someone new. I spent several more hours in the call room with the nurses at the desk checking on me from time to time. I slept and watched more questionable TV. Several hours later one of the nurses came and woke me up saying "it's time". I was escorted down the hall where my mom was in full battle dress and wheeling a mirror out of the hall closet into the room. "Hiya kiddo, you ready?" I didn't have a clue what I was "ready" for but I said yes. I walked in and the warrior in the bed looked very different now. She was sweaty and all wadded up in the middle of the bed. Her toddler was in grandma's arms beside her. She had steel in her eyes and glanced at me, breaking her focus for just a second before the next contraction to wink at me. Mere moments later she was pushing and my mom was giving her instructions in a soothing night time voice I had never heard before. The warrior pushed and my Mom encouraged and before I knew it I felt the hands of the nurse guiding me into a chair she had pushed behind me. I sat down hard as the head delivered and I remember letting out a sound like "ohhahh". Then I was crying for no reason as my mom pushed this slimy, wet, pink and blue mess onto the warrior's chest still speaking in the soothing voice. It was the most magical thing I had ever seen. There had been 5 people in this room and now there were 6 and the doors and windows were all closed. Now there were 6 people breathing and living and moving and making noise in that room. It was all it took. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was magic and I wanted to be a part of it. This one night lead me to many many more nights with my mom in the dark hallways of the labor and delivery unit, the stairways of the birth center, the back bathrooms of people's houses. I spent the next 18 years thinking about women and the journey of pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood/familyhood. I spent the next 18 years, the last 18 years thinking about when it would be my turn to be a warrior.

Nursing school, a degree in biology, over 30 births attended in all fashion from fly on the wall to child caregiver, photographer to labor coach and resident bouncer taught me a shit ton about women's health, fertility, pregnancy, sex, labor and babies. What I fear now is that like the unwitting witness of a crime I "know too much". I know that, despite what the sex ed teacher wanted me to believe, I only have a 36hr window where I can get pregnant. After that, it is a very delicate and frankly fucking miraculous dance of floating eggs, determined sperm and hormones that needs to be executed nearly perfectly for there to even be a chance of fertilization let alone implantation, let alone holding on to viability and then term. This is one nasty ass obstacle course for some clusters of cells with no eyes, ears or brains (sperm and egg) to work through before you end up someones mom. It feels like shooting a cannon through a bathroom window...the odds of missing are HUGE.

So, now, I am coming up on 30, my magical age for taking up the mantle of warrior as determined by my ten year old self that night. I have a wonderful husband, a beautiful house, a great job, beautiful friends and community and I am scared out of my mind that I am going to be a neurotic mess. The Hubbs and I have talked in varying degrees of specificity about the when. It seems to be a fluid concept. But no matter when the when is I am afraid that I will be unable to put down the thermometer and charts and just throw away the condoms and have sex. I don't know how to stop looking at the charts and pinpointing the most likely days and what I WANT is to be one of those women who floats into pregnancy on a clam shell and sea foam of zen goddessness. I want to just let it all go and let it happen. The problem is I am ready to just let it happen and if I get pregnant next month cool, if not, fine maybe in September....The Hubbs doesn't know the science and all the possible ways I can obsess between now and a year from now. He also doesn't know to what extent waiting will stoke the fires of my obsession as it seems that you can't swing a recycled grocery bag without hitting a pregnant woman or a newborn in Portland. They are freaking EVERYWHERE!

So, I wasn't pregnant this month. Instead, I had one of the worst periods starting on my first day back to work. I am a Paramedic which means I drive around in an ambulance all day (12hrs) with an old guy (my partner) who thinks he knows everything about everything and is more than happy to plaster you with his opinions and knowledge and if you don't have any questions for him that's fine he'll just talk about anything or nothing. I have no control over when/if I can get to a bathroom as, if a call drops we will walk away from food we have paid for and scoot to the ambulance. More than once this week, I threw away underpants that were just totalled from running a call when I really needed a ladies room. Yay periods! Anyway, this week sucked. I was cramping, bleeding like I had been shot, crying for no particular reason and thinking about how unready I am to raise a small person. I feel conflicted. I am afraid to become a warrior but simultaneously dying to become a warrior. I feel like I need the power taken out of my perceived control...I want to throw away the condoms and just see what happens before my heart breaks and my head explodes.