Lucky Thirteen

I've just made it to my thirteenth week of pregnancy and I'm still waiting for that magical moment everyone talks about where the nausea and headaches end and all of your energy returns. But I recently read in What to Expect When You Are Expecting (a.k.a. Baby Bible) that some women actually get sicker in their second trimester and it almost brought me to tears. Lord, save me from that fiery pit of hell!

Last week, I finally decided it was time to tell my graduate advisor (i.e. She Who Holds All the Cards) that I was pregnant. Believe it or not, it took a while to work up the courage to do this. My advisor is in her mid-sixties and has never married or had any children. She told me once that she doesn't even like children until they are old enough to be reasonable. ("When's that anyway?" I silently wondered. "I think my mom is still waiting on us.") And she is a self-professed, hard-core, old-school feminist who recently asked one of my engaged colleagues if she had to overcome "numerous feminist reservations" in order to agree to get married.

Do you see now why I was sweating this?

I decided that it was just better to get it over with quickly, like ripping off a bandage. So I cornered her at a school function and just made the announcement. "Liz," I said. "I've got some great news. I'm pregnant." She silently started at me for a minute before answering in a very flat voice, "Well, all right then." And that's it.

The way that I figure it, things could've been a lot worse. She didn't get angry at me and start ripping into me, she didn't kick me out of my program, and she didn't (heaven forbid!) ask me if I was planning on keeping it. But she couldn't manage to muster any enthusiasm for a life choice that was so far out of what "living" has meant to her. That was hurtful to me in its own way, even though I expected little else than what I got from her. To her, a baby seems to be little more than another hindrance yet to be overcome in the pursuit of a Ph.D. To me, this baby represents one of the greatest pursuits of my life in and of itself. To have both--this Ph.D., this baby--represents the fullest kind of life in my mind, the best of all life in two worlds rather than in just one. Why would I settle for having anything less than that?