Reproducing woes

I’m thankful that I’ve never been someone who gets nauseous or vomits a lot when they get sick because I had zero morning sickness and very little nausea in my first trimester.

I felt nauseous a couple of days back in October, but this was following working 13-14 hour shifts, so I figured my body was just telling me that I need to rest. Which it did because a fetus was growing inside of me.

And I had to call off work one day at the end of October, but I think that had more to do with my body’s reaction to receiving the m-RNA Moderna booster (I received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine back in March). Plus, I worked 10.5 hours the two days following receiving the vaccine.

Apparently, I’m not barren like I thought I was. And I’m still ambivalent about bringing this fetus into this world. My anxiety over climate change, future food & clean water shortages, and the fate of democracy all weigh heavily on me, and I cannot use any weed to help calm my nerves about any of the above. On top of the fact of how expensive a child is, and neither Zeke nor I am financially stable.

In addition, Zeke's first son’s mother is an untreated bipolar woman. She lost custody of her first child, and it sent her into a manic episode, resulting in her harassing me and telling me to kill myself multiple times earlier this year. Sadly, it appears she has not received any treatment to help her condition. She has already found out that I am pregnant and immediately sent accusatory messages to Zeke.

If anyone knows anyone in family law and/or social services, please contact me. Zeke and I do not have the financial resources to hire a lawyer, but we need advice. Trying to speak rationally with someone who is untreated bipolar just does not work, so we need legal mediation to help us.

Every couple of days I think about having an abortion because I do not want my child to struggle to navigate in a world with severe droughts, rising sea levels, proudly expressed racism, and where fiction & feelings are followed over facts.

I joked that if I ever did become pregnant that I would be cursed with a girl, but I secretly really wanted a girl to raise to become an independent, strong woman who would hopefully never question her worth as I did. (Plus, I wanted to name her after a young, Indian woman I met in Chennai that sadly just a few months later after meeting her, committed suicide.)

Because I am advanced maternal age, my OB-GYN did a cell-free fetal DNA test to test for the trisomies, which all came back with negative results, but they were also able to determine the sex. (I found out I was 13-weeks pregnant when I went for my first ultrasound. And I initially thought I was 9-10 weeks, but I have abnormal cycles, so I wasn’t too surprised that I was farther along. I technically did not find out that I was pregnant until my 11th week, so yes, the Texas abortion ban is bullshit.)

I made Zeke a card that read,

“Your sperm & my egg created a…

Fetus with a penis.”

At least now I know I only have to watch one dick, and not all dicks, as a friend joked with me a few years ago about having a girl.

In all honesty, I'm a little disappointed and more worried about having a son, mostly due to how Zeke's first son’s mother is going to handle this news.

I don’t want to live my life in fear of her having a manic episode and harassing me, Zeke, Zeke’s family, or my son just because she sees a photo of us together. I live my life authentically, and I will not cower to someone like her, nor will I permit my partner to live his life in fear of her either.

It took years for me to find someone open to loving me; who was not scared of my past and how depressed I was from it, and not scared of my menagerie that I accumulated to try and fill the emptiness inside me.

It hurts me that Zeke has no evidence of me, or us, on his social media, which continues to be a source of temptation for him every couple of months. But he instead does not post anything to celebrate us, or our son, because there will be an onslaught of manic messages from his first son's mom. And I cannot even give my son Zeke's middle name because his one-night stand took it to name her son.

I know anyone I meet now will come with baggage, as I’ve joked before my pool of available men is now the size of a kiddie pool, basically the size of my tiny pool in my backyard. But dealing with an untreated bipolar is a lot more baggage than I sometimes do not think I am capable of carrying, nor do I want to carry it.

But when I think about having an abortion, I immediately get depressed and bawl my eyes out. I think having an abortion would send me into a deep depression. I know I have to seek therapy to deal with all of this, whether I decide to give birth to this fetus with a penis or to have an abortion.

For someone who thought she was barren for the past ten-plus years, I think it’s pretty amazing that I even got pregnant at age thirty-six, had little to no morning sickness, and made it into my second trimester without having a miscarriage.

Perhaps this is the one kid I’m supposed to have. George Carlin said, “You have one child. Insurance for yourself.”