12weeks: Superstitious

Want to hear about one of my family “scandals?”  Don't get too excited - I use scandal in the loosest sense of the word, since the only one who thinks it’s more than a juicy tidbit of family history is my 91 year old grandmother.

Are you ready?  Ok.  My grandmother was born as the result of a tryst between my great-grandmother and – gasp! – a Jewish man.

Jews and Catholics are, of course, not all that different – we’re all neurotic, feel guilty a lot, and have overbearing mothers (joking, of course!).  So being one eighth Jewish was never something I considered much until recently, when I discovered how superstitious Jews are about pregnancy.  The most superstitious Jews, it turns out, won’t reveal a baby’s intended name before the bris, won’t buy anything for the nursery until the baby is born, and have all sorts of customs to ward off the evil eye.  My Jewish co-worker tells me that when she was pregnant, her own mother wouldn’t even look at the ultrasound pictures.

Jews, it turns out, are excellent at not counting their chickens before they hatch.  And in that sense I am 100% Jewish.

I am 12 weeks today and, despite what I said in my last post, still not comfortable telling anyone about my pregnancy.  (The dull, consistent ache I’ve been feeling in my uterus for the last few days hasn’t been helping matters, even though intellectually I know that it’s probably the result of my uterus growing really fast + me doing a lot of walking this past weekend.)  No one at work other than my boss knows, most of my friends don’t know, my dad’s family doesn’t know, and Facebook most definitely does NOT know.  I cringe whenever someone gets excited or squealy about the babies.  Henry and I are getting close to buying that house I wrote about before, and it makes me so nervous to make such a big life change for two beings the size of limes whose heartbeats I haven’t confirmed in nearly two weeks.  I don’t even want to post about the pregnancy here, because I don’t want to jinx myself by saying everything’s fine when I haven’t had recent reassurance that it is.

Even though my lips are sealed, the not telling is getting a little ridiculous.  I’m starting to show enough that my friends have been pulled aside by acquaintances who ask if I’m pregnant (the “or getting fat” remains unspoken).  The majority of my pre-pregnancy clothes don’t fit; in a few days, I’ll be down to one pair of work pants and one pair of non-yoga casual pants.  As my exhaustion eases up and I go out into the world more, I won’t be able to help people finding out, whether it’s me or my belly doing the telling.  Or, more likely, Henry, who feels no such qualms about announcing the status of my uterus to everyone he sees on the street.

But, dear God of Jewish superstition, please just grant me nine more days of secrecy.  On May 30, I will have my NT screen.  I will see the babies, hear their heartbeats, hopefully be reassured about their health, and recharge my faith that this pregnancy is real.  And then I’ll come home and, I promise, tell everyone I see before I have the chance to get worried again.