I am not known for my ambition. I have always deferred to fear when making most of life's decisions, both major and minor. I, for instance, hemmed and hawed for an hour before going out for a sub tonight for fear that I would not find a close parking space or that the girl behind the counter would use too much mayo. When I did venture out into the cold and both of my fears were realized and I did not wither and die, I decided to grab life by the horns and control my own destiny. I decided not to worry if my blog sounded vain or stupid and to just go for it. With that fearless 5 minutes I started a semi-difficult to locate blog that I am not even sure I will post. So don't make fun of it. It may take me years to get this kind of courage again.
Obviously, fear is one of the driving forces behind my decision to delay parenthood for both my husband and myself for as long as I have. Up until about September the predominant fear was a nine month period of sobriety that did not involve the Betty Ford Clinic or any of those Passions or Paradise Promises places the lucky suckers on Intervention always get to go to. This sobriety would be for the betterment of a teeny tiny inside-me person who did not yet have a say in how he/she/it turned out, not for a reality TV audience. And as I've heard those fetal alcohol kiddies are terribly unruly, I knew that it was best to let my raging alcoholism run the show for a while. Somewhere around mid-September I changed my position on the whole thing, got drunk a few last times, got knocked up and here we are. Drinking O'Douls.Sigh.
What non-pregnant Sarah failed to realize is that the fear of enduring awkward social situations without the necessary martini is tiny compared to the innumerable worries I now face. Every 15 minutes or so it occurs to me to fret over some remotely possible genetic disorder, an impossibly far away international conflict, weather my pets will be alright with Baby Ruiner (that's what we're calling it for now, until I can convince Matt that Bronco is, in fact, not at all a possible name for our child), weather I will ever sleep again or be up all night worrying (yes, worrying about worrying) and the increasingly real threat of a zombie apocalypse shortly after Ruiner is born (or god forbid, before, and I'll have to give birth while implementing my thoroughly researched survival plan, with help from only a rag-tag refugee group hiding in the mountains and without meds).
They say that pregnancy is full of surprises. "They" being the terrifying Mommy-hood websites, the HUGE books with happy looking preggy white ladies on the cover and friends of mine who are mothers but whose children are old enough now that the severe weirdness of the whole thing has slipped their minds and all they can recall is having to pee and the glorious moment they first saw the face of their own Baby Ruiner. I can attest to the surprises, I suppose. I mean, I am surprised my boobs haven't gotten any bigger yet (that's bullshit, btw), I'm surprised that I don't feel sick or horrible or too moody. Just kind of bigger. I'm surprised to the point of blushing when people congratulate me. I mean, it's not like I did anything that millions of teenagers aren't doing every day in their furnished basements. Save the congrats for when Ruiner comes out. I heard that part sucks.
