Parallel universe
When we were newly married, my husband would frequently call me in the middle of the day or come home at night and say, "I saw our daughter today." He loved to imagine what our future children would look like, and was forever spotting little girls who looked like they could be ours--half-Asian and half-white, adorable and charming naturally.
Today I saw our daughter. I was on the train to work, minding my own business, and a woman sat next to me with her little girl. I don't normally find looking at babies and small children (very) painful, but this felt so parallel-universe, what-might-have-been that I was actually having a little trouble breathing. The mom was Asian (like me) and had glasses just like mine; she wheeled her baby up in an orange Bugaboo (yeah, I wish I could afford one of those); the girl had huge brown eyes and that gorgeous complexion that many hapa children have. She was probably just shy of two; I don't know, I'm pretty bad at estimating children's ages, but she had tons of teeth and wasn't quite talking. She was so well-behaved, but alert and curious; her mom was amusing her with some balls of PlayDoh, but she also kept looking around the train car at all the people, smiling and babbling little incomprehensible questions and proclamations. On the other side of her mom was sitting a teenage kid bopping away with his headphones on; the girl pointed at him and gleefully yelled, "Singing!" And of course she kept smiling at me and trying to talk to me, even though I was trying to read my magazine and not sneak too many peeks at her, for my own sanity.
Thirty minutes of this. I swear. It really made me painfully conscious of what is missing right now, and made me realize that it will be a long time before I have a little toddler like that, if ever.
I'm currently on CD37 and have been feeling this weird low-level nausea for the past 2 days. It is theoretically possible that I could be pregnant, I suppose, though I don't hold out much hope. I've been charting my BBT this cycle (because if I don't get my period by CD40 or so I'll take Provera to bring it on, but I don't want to take it unless I haven't yet ovulated) and it's been all over the place, so I'm inclined to think I haven't ovulated. I had a little bit of spotting over the weekend but nothing since then, and given the current state of our sex life it seems too soon to have been implantation spotting. But of course there is a tiny corner of me that holds out a little hope.
Today I saw our daughter. I was on the train to work, minding my own business, and a woman sat next to me with her little girl. I don't normally find looking at babies and small children (very) painful, but this felt so parallel-universe, what-might-have-been that I was actually having a little trouble breathing. The mom was Asian (like me) and had glasses just like mine; she wheeled her baby up in an orange Bugaboo (yeah, I wish I could afford one of those); the girl had huge brown eyes and that gorgeous complexion that many hapa children have. She was probably just shy of two; I don't know, I'm pretty bad at estimating children's ages, but she had tons of teeth and wasn't quite talking. She was so well-behaved, but alert and curious; her mom was amusing her with some balls of PlayDoh, but she also kept looking around the train car at all the people, smiling and babbling little incomprehensible questions and proclamations. On the other side of her mom was sitting a teenage kid bopping away with his headphones on; the girl pointed at him and gleefully yelled, "Singing!" And of course she kept smiling at me and trying to talk to me, even though I was trying to read my magazine and not sneak too many peeks at her, for my own sanity.
Thirty minutes of this. I swear. It really made me painfully conscious of what is missing right now, and made me realize that it will be a long time before I have a little toddler like that, if ever.
I'm currently on CD37 and have been feeling this weird low-level nausea for the past 2 days. It is theoretically possible that I could be pregnant, I suppose, though I don't hold out much hope. I've been charting my BBT this cycle (because if I don't get my period by CD40 or so I'll take Provera to bring it on, but I don't want to take it unless I haven't yet ovulated) and it's been all over the place, so I'm inclined to think I haven't ovulated. I had a little bit of spotting over the weekend but nothing since then, and given the current state of our sex life it seems too soon to have been implantation spotting. But of course there is a tiny corner of me that holds out a little hope.
posted by electriclady at 6:18 PM
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