You know what the first thing my mother said to me when I told her I was pregnant was?
“Well, there is such a thing as a false positive.”
Amazingly, it did not even occur to me in the moment that this was a totally fucked up thing to say. I had to relate the conversation to a couple of friends who were both totally appalled before I even really thought about it.
But you know, the fact that this is the kind of thing my mother says? Probably not unrelated to the fact that I peed on three different sticks that morning and control tested my tap water just to be sure.
Whenever people say, “Whatever you do [in regards to parenting], it will be fine,” I think, No! I can definitely make things worse! WHY DO YOU THINK I’M SO CRAZY.
As my sister says, at least (she has anxiety, too), probably getting treatment for my anxiety is the best thing I can do, because it makes it less likely that I will reinforce via modeling any genetic predispositions that AJ may have gotten from me.
In retrospect, I REALLY should not have read Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother? when AJ was three months old. Great book. If you have a worsening anxiety disorder and a newborn, for the love of god, don’t read it.
