A Little Bit Pregnant

First off...no I am not...

it is an expression that for some reason I just can't escape lately...

when I was 14 a very close friend found out she was pregnant...

I was with her when she told her parents...

she said "I'm a little bit pregnant..."

her father promptly responded...

"you can't be a little bit pregnant...you either are or you are not..."

she was...

then you go through fertility issues...

in this world sometimes they call a 'miscarriage' a "little bit pregnant"

because they think that might "help"

or you go through IVF and you enter PUPO...

Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise...

this is an infuriating period because you are chemically telling your body you are pregnant...

and you have little implanted embryos inside you...

and you are thinking...please dear god don't let my body reject this process...

come on stupid body...

be positive...

be more positive...

be pregnant...

not otherwise...

maybe this is a little bit pregnant...

then you have chemical pregnancies...

those suck as well...

but if you tell someone and describe it as a little bit pregnant....

they might say "oh, then you weren't really pregnant..."

it is all so confusing...and deflating...

then you start the adoption process...

you are a pre-adoptive parent...

someone calls you paper pregnant...

because somewhere there was an article or conference or group that decided maybe we should call this process paper pregnancy to allow women who will not experience pregnancy feel included...or maybe it was thought of as a tool to engender emotional and gestational expectations associated with the placed child...

I don't know...

if your stupid home owner's insurance continues to send you another family's documents instead of yours thereby keeping your file incomplete...

does that mean you are just a little bit paper pregnant...

if you are being forced to rework elements of your paperwork is that a paper miscarriage...

oh the horrors...

all I know is that I am not paper pregnant...

others...you know who you are...have written about this struggle...

it is an odd term for me...

I struggle with it...

maybe it is because when my friend was 14

and we told her parents unequivocally

"she is having this baby and placing it for adoption."

and she went through endless months of swelling and doctor's visits,

and meeting with attorneys...

looking at pictures...

dealing with her family...

dealing with her friends...

dealing with strangers...

being sent away to live somewhere else so that no one would see her "show"

told to be ashamed and this was a mistake...

told by prospective parents to be proud and this was a miracle...

not a one time did she and I ever talk about the prospective adoptive parents as paper pregnant.

it never occurred to us...

when the adoption agreement was finalized and everyone agreed that the adoptive family would provide an annual letter and pictures...

we didn't think of this as paper parenting...

it was just the way it would be...

it was just the way this relationship seemed to resolve...

boy baby with them...her alone...

and before it was...

boy baby with her...them alone...

it was like we were on some bizarre loss scale

and the weights were suddenly and irrevocably flipped...

and then they stopped sending the letters and the pictures...

she is alone now...

and they stopped...

we stayed up late and cried...

she wrote a letter...

"by providing an annual letter and pictures it allows me a window to see my child..to let me know that he is alright...by stopping you have closed the window and I feel painfully cut off...all I ever asked for was the window to be open...I never asked that you open the door, just leave the window open..."

we drove to the lawyer's office...

by now we were 16...

we were so adult...

she was pregnant again...

we dropped off the letter...

they never responded...

we wrote another letter...

we dropped it off...

silence

silence

silence

I wondered to myself do they treat him this way...

are they just silent about this life that gave life that brought life to them...

she kept this baby...

but she never had another child...

I am not paper pregnant.

I don't know what I am...

and I am struggling with my own sense of identity in this process...

I feel as though everyone has more important roles than me...

[sigh]

but I do know...

I am not paper pregnant.