could it be possible?

a few short weeks after God gave us dessert, he also gave us bronchitis. some may think it unfair that i say he gave us bronchitis when annie was the only one to actually manifest physical symptoms, but believe me, we were both afflicted.

it happens pretty much every year, the bronchitis does, and under normal circumstances annie simply hops herself up on her inhaler during the day and codeine cough syrup at night for about a week and then she feels better. but pregnancy by no means qualifies as normal circumstances, so with the usual treatments out of the question for fear of harming the bean sized fetus now inhabiting my wife's belly, we resorted to "natural" remedies.

during this time we learned a couple things: 1) i am not sure what pregnancy safe cough lollipops are made of, but i am fairly certain the company that makes them has long since boarded up their windows and made off with our hard earned cash b/c those things were a scam. 2) putting a tablespoon of vick's vaporub in a pot of boiling water and then inhaling the steam does help clear up chest congestion, sometimes so effectively, in fact, that it causes one to cough hard enough to throw up on the red hot stove top. here is to our first new year's eve as almost-parents. don't worry, it got better from there, we were in bed by 9:15.

the worst part of the whole three-week ordeal wasn't having to wipe up my wife's vomit as quickly as possible so it didn't become charred on the stove, or sleeping alone in the guest bedroom so she could spend the night propped up in bed, or even picking up countless pieces of crumpled toilet paper containing wonderful little phlegm wads, but it was worrying about our kid. i didn't know him, i didn't even know it was a him, and yet i was desperately concerned with his well being. at times i found myself getting pretty angry with annie for her inability to quit coughing, thinking it a shame that as a man i couldn't carry this baby, b/c i am sure i wouldn't cough so freaking much.

in retrospect, however, i have decided that even if modern science comes to the place of making male impregnation possible as they did for arnold in "junior", i still want no part of it b/c when i am honest instead of angry i know i wouldn't be able to hack it for a week let alone 10 months. (that is right 10 months. that is one of the biggest/meanest jokes they pull on you when you get pregnant aside from the fact that "morning" sickness actually lasts all day.)

so we worried, we prayed, and then we went to the doctor. we saw our son on the sonogram screen, his heart racing at a healthy 140 beats per minute. we didn't worry quite so much. we marveled at the design of the human body. we cared about him even more. if only every part of pregnancy was as easy as cleaning puke off the stove.

grace,
stew