bird against wind

This is pretty much my life now.

Step one: Apply for Healthy San Francisco. Get rejected due to being pregnant.

Step two: Apply for Medi-Cal. Get rejected based on income. Be told to apply for Healthy San Francisco.

Step three: Call to make Healthy San Francisco enrollment appointment. Be told that you don’t qualify for Healthy San Francisco because you’re pregnant. Mention Medi-Cal told you to apply for HSF because your income disqualifies you for Medi-Cal. Be told Medi-Cal is full of crap and you should have immediately qualified for “shared cost” Med-Cal due to being pregnant. Have appointment made anyway because you sound desperate and near tears and the receptionist pities you.

Step four: Call Medi-Cal caseworker and get busted voicemail. Hang up phone, cry.

Someone needs to explain to my fetus that whiskey sours are an inappropriate craving, as the fetus seems to be in a perpetual state of 3am, post-club. All I’ve been craving is greasy junk food and whiskey sours. It’s like I’m 23 again, without any of the other joys of being 23. And of course, no whiskey sours…and I’m at work, not outside of a nightclub in the ass-crack of San Francisco.

All of the extra sour lemonade in the wooooorld is not alleviating this one. It’s been a week and a half now and I still think of them daily. I don’t even like whiskey sours. Seriously, Belly Monster? That’s how it is? It’s going to be a long trip to July.

My plan has been to wait until Christmas to tell my family. Through a series of unfortunate events, everyone now knows!

My grandmother had a very bad accident happen right before Thanksgiving. When she was due to be released to a rehab facility, they found internal bleeding so she’s still hospitalized. She’s 91 (92? I’m a bad granddaughter) years old and was told she could either choose to die or have surgery with a 50/50 chance of success. She chose the surgery and is now waiting awhile for the bleeding to slow down. In the meantime, the family is saying their goodbyes just in case.

I live in San Francisco, she lives in Virginia. I can’t make the trip right now so I decided I’d call and say my goodbyes and tell her about the baby. We have a big family though and people are always there, so I had to call my dad first and tell him so that he could get her alone in the room.

That was my first mistake – I didn’t know I was on speaker phone, so now his wife knows.

My mom has known for a couple of weeks, so I called to let her know that I told Nonnie, dad, and accidentally told step-mom. Mistake number two! She emailed me to ask how it went but she accidentally replied-all to an email that was sent to me AND my three siblings (it’s ok, Mom! I’m not mad!).

She recalled the email but it still had gone through to me and had all of their emails on it. I assumed it went to them as well so I called so they could hear it from me rather than email.

While on the phone with my sister Erika, I got a text from my brother Aaron that said “STOP!” – apparently they HAD been recalled and only me and Aaron had gotten it because our mail apps were open. It was too late though – I’d already told Erika!

My other brother Johnny, who hadn’t gotten the email, called me while I was on the phone with Erika. I put her on hold and then merged the calls. She thought I must’ve told him in the FIVE SECONDS it took to merge the call, so when she heard him say “hi” she shouted “WE’RE GOING TO BE AN AUNT AND UNCLE!”

I hadn’t told Johnny yet though and he thought it was me saying that (Erika and I sound the same on the phone) and thought Aaron had gotten HIS girlfriend pregnant, so the next five minutes were spent backpedaling and explaining.

So now my dad, mom, step-mom, Nonnie, sister, and both brothers know almost a month ahead of time. I feel weird and exposed and anxious about the whole ordeal. I really wanted to do this in my own time. I’m glad my Nonnie knows in case something happens, and it is nice for the family to have some good news during this hard time.

When I sneeze, my uterus twitches. No one warns you about this shit.

Having a doctor call and say, “Congratulations! You’re very pregnant!” makes everything feel much more real! Yeah, that’s right – he didn’t just say pregnant, he said VERY pregnant! What does it mean?!

I know for a fact based on the whole minimal bonin’ thing that I am at most, 4 weeks and 6 days pregnant. My hCG seems to say otherwise though – he said the number (over 7k) indicates something over 6 weeks?!

I texted my friend with the number and her response was “TWINS!” I will find out next Wednesday whether or not there’s a stowaway in there. For now, I’ll keep right on almost barfing and peeing a lot. Exciting, no?

I figure now’s as good a time as any to jot down strange pregnancy dreams so that I can cite them as reasons for insanity when my future offspring rolls his/her/its eyes at me and proclaims me crazy in the teenage years.

-Two days before I found out that I was pregnant, I dreamed that I was pregnant with twins and my partner insisted on naming them Balrok and No Name. He couldn’t understand why I’d ever refuse such lovely names, which lead to days of bickering and pouting on his part. I’m not looking forward to the real-life version of the dream conversation, as past name suggestions from him have included Zaphod and James Tiberius.

For those of you unfamiliar with Balrok and No Name, they’re hosts of a local late night horror show and they’re pretty fantastic.

-KITTENS! Yeah. I had a dream about kittens. Not JUST kittens though – they were cowboy kittens that lived on a kitten and iguana farm. Yes. A kitten and iguana farm. The iguanas? They had saddles. And the kittens rode them. How awesome is that?! Not as awesome: my creepy ex-boyfriend was a skeleton janitor on the kitten and iguana farm. There aren’t enough cowboy kittens in the world to make that ok.

-QUADS?! Seriously, pregnancy brain. First twins and now quads? You keep the multiples out of my uterus, k? You’re making me really nervous about my first ultrasound.