The Impact

Chapter 47

I sit down in my first class and stare at the calendar on my phone. Twelve weeks two days. Officially time to tell someone. Shit. When I first suspected, I was hoping I was wrong. And then I looked it up and like fifty percent of women miscarry during the first trimester. So the game plan was, pretend it isn't happening and hope it will go away.

Well it's not going away.

I feel bad about that. Because I wouldn't like, have an abortion. No I read about that I'm too scared of that. I couldn't do that, I'd be too scared that I'd be like, cursed or something never to have kids or something because I didn't want this one. But I sort of figured if I just miscarried which was totally likely to happen then I'd never have to tell anyone and everything would be fine. And if I told my parents before the twelve weeks they'd pressure me about the abortion and now they can't do that. And I might just miscarry and then nobody would have to know.

Except I haven't and everything isn't fine. I feel nauseated every day. And I only fit in my biggest jeans now and even those are tight. And Ian's such an idiot he noticed the red lines they're making on me and said I shouldn't wear such tight clothes it looks uncomfortable. I didn't say anything and because he's a man he forgot about the non-conversation.

And that's totally stupid in and of itself by the way because I'm not supposed to gain any weight the first trimester that's like dangerous and unhealthy so I'm trying not to eat as much and when I figured out I was gaining weight I went on a diet but I've still gained like seven pounds and I'm freaking out. I put my hand on my belly. It's firm and smooth and starting to get dangerously round. I'm eating too much but I'm so hungry all the time.

It's mostly my father's reaction I'm dreading. Ian too a little bit mostly because he's a guy so he's gonna be totally confused about how sex every other day could possibly lead to pregnancy birth control or no you're really playing the odds there yeah he will not see that so he's gonna be like 'what are you sure' like you can mistake having a person growing in you which is going to be annoying. His dads will be nice and kind and I seriously considered telling them first because they are just going to like worry about me and be calm. I don't know that for a fact but they were calm when one of them cut his arm off so I'm going with that they'll be okay. The main problem is they haven't adopted me like Mr. Sloan complains they might as well so I'm still on my dad's health insurance.

But I know I need to go get prenatal care here since the baby's apparently sticking around. And now that it is I'm sort of feeling sentimental about it. Like this could work. we are going to graduate----I am a teenager---but like, I'm gonna be nineteen by the time it's born. That's young but that's not super young people do it. And it's before we might have planned but Ian loves me and---why can't I shake the feeling that he's so different now? That it's like it's not him? It's just because he talks. And wants to have sex. And eat raw meat. Those are big changes for a person. and I need to quit stalling and just tell him.

And having to pee every ten minutes is getting annoying.

I ask permission to leave class and five minutes later I'm standing in the bathroom looking at spots of blood on my underwear. It's not a lot of blood and yet it is a significant amount of blood considering I'm after twelve weeks so I shouldn't miscarry. I frantically google 'miscarriage after twelve weeks' but in my state I can't figure anything out except that the baby is bigger so it's more of a big deal and of course it's a big deal my baby is dead and I might start hemorrhaging or be infected or something and it might not be dead I might just be bleeding but I officially need to go to the hospital.

So I stuff my underwear full of toilet paper (now you guys know what we girls do when we don't have a pad/tampon) and I drag Ian out of class by his arm as he says 'what' a word I'm going to expect to hear a lot in the next few minutes.