Mommywood Read Online Free PDF Page B

wrong. That‘s not a line.
    Clearly I needed more tests. Lots more.
    I didn‘t want to be seen (or, God forbid, photographed by the paparazzi) purchasing pregnancy tests, so I dragged my best friend, Mehran, to the drugstore with me. He and I have been best friends since high school, and every time Dean goes out of town, Mehran and I have a sleepover, staying up late to watch horror movies and eat piña colada Yoplait yogurt. When Dean does guy stuff, like scuba diving or motorcycle racing, Mehran is there to fill in. We go get pedicures and go shopping. Mehran was the natural recruit.
    I stood on the other side of the store, in the first-aid aisle, while Mehran picked out a pregnancy test. I pretended to be contemplating my wart removal options, though, come to think of it, being outed as a warthog would be much less flattering than being outed as possibly pregnant.
    After what seemed like hours Mehran came back across the store with a pregnancy test. It said it was ninety-eight percent reliable. We could do better than that. I sent him back to try again. But the design of the next pregnancy test looked cheesy. I wanted more scientific-looking packaging. Back Mehran went.
    Finally we settled on a test with high reliability and an acceptable design. There were no ambiguous pink lines on this test. It would say ―pregnant or ―not pregnant. Nobody was going to accuse me of reading that test wrong.
     
    We headed back to my house and I drank lots of water and peed on all three sticks. Mehran and I waited a few short minutes for the results to appear. Was I pregnant? The first test said ―pregnant. The second one said ―definitely pregnant. The third one said, ―Ask again later—nah, just kidding. You‘re totally knocked up.
    Jenny and I would be pregnant together for the second time.
    Some women who live or work together get their periods at the same time. Apparently Jenny and I get pregnant at the same time. I‘d had all of a week to live it up at my goal weight. Now I was four weeks pregnant. I looked down at my Fred Segal skinny jeans and sighed. I knew they weren‘t long for that body.
    I‘d just given away all my maternity clothes. I mean, I knew I was going to want at least one more child, but I thought we‘d wait till Liam was a year old to start trying, and by then all of my maternity clothes would have been out of style. As it happened, Liam was only seven months old (six when we conceived)! He wasn‘t content to hang out with us in his carrier anymore. He wanted to wiggle around, explore, eat solid food, and make a mess. I couldn‘t imagine what the workload was going to be like with two.
    But I remembered how much I‘d loved being pregnant. It calmed me. I felt safe and completely at ease. I loved the feeling that I was completely responsible for protecting and taking care of someone else. We were taking care of each other. I was never alone. Call it pregnancy hormones, but I‘m convinced that pregnancy gave me the sense of connection that I was missing with my mother. I was caring for a child, but I didn‘t have the fear that I was doing it wrong.
    Mehran, my gay husband, had guided me through the testing phase. Now it was time to tell husband number one. I was nervous about telling Dean. My heart was pounding just because it was big news: I didn‘t really think there was a chance he‘d be anything but excited. There was no doubt that we wanted multiple children together. Things were just happening a little faster than we‘d anticipated.
    I put Liam in a blue shirt and taped a little sign that said
    ―I‘m a big brother to the shirt. Then I called Dean up to the bedroom. Liam was in bed with me. I handed him to Dean. No reaction. ―Babe, I said, ―look at Liam‘s shirt. Dean sort of chuckled. Like the way you‘d chuckle if you were pretending to get a joke but actually had no clue. Dean has many fine qualities, but I had to walk him through it: ―What does the shirt say?…Right, and if