Finding Out I Was Pregnant at Week 20
Miya's journey to life was a bit of a whirlwind. I didn't find out I was pregnant with her until mid-way through my second trimester at 20 weeks. Around December last year, I suspected something was odd about my body. My clothes felt tighter, and I was constantly bloated. I thought I was overeating for the longest time and needed to exercise a bit more.
In truth, I didn't experience any pregnancy symptoms other than weight gain and bloating. I was on birth control, so the idea of pregnancy never initially registered, and because of previous health conditions, I never had consistent period cycles. Sometimes I would go without having a period for months. While Matt and I talked about it casually from time to time, I don't think either of us had a child on our minds for at least another year or more.
We were also travelling everywhere – Saudi Arabia, the Caucasus, Sri Lanka, and Yemen – for stories and research, so I thought I had picked up a parasite. I remember messaging my friend and pharmacist, Joanna, asking if there was a possibility I had an ovarian cyst or, worse ovarian cancer. I obsessed for weeks over the issue, thinking that wherever I ended up next, I would find a doctor to figure out what was wrong.
It was only with the encouragement of Joanna that I stopped at a vending machine in Italy to pick up a five-euro pregnancy test— a test di gravidanza. She was sure I was pregnant for a while and that the other hypotheses were perhaps excuses for feeling nervous that I hadn't planned this life decision out. For the most part, she was correct. Matt wanted to have children, so it wasn't like I would face opposition.
Still, I let the other scenarios play out in my brain and let the pregnancy test sit in my bag for a day. Matt was sick one morning and taking a nap, so I decided it was time to disprove the pregnancy theory. I was confident it would come up negative, but when it revealed the opposite, I felt flustered and dropped it in the toilet.
Matt was completely out, so he didn't hear the commotion of "oh no……." in the bathroom. It's not that I didn't want to tell him, but it still didn't feel real to me for some reason. The ovarian cyst felt more real. I needed to see a doctor to confirm this was real.
It's not that I never wanted to have children. In my mid-twenties, I thought extensively both about becoming a mother and what kind of mother I would be. But I also experienced insecurities stemming from my own childhood, especially after an estrangement from my own mother.
Then, mental health challenges – specifically, a bipolar diagnosis and suicidal ideations in my early thirties drove me to wonder whether I could be a capable mother.
In the worst of times, I imagined my baby crying alone on a bed while I was hurting myself next door in the bathroom. I talked about this at length with my then-psychiatrist for years.
She told me to take my time and work through whatever I needed to before actually trying. I was also on the drug Lithium, and doctors said I would face difficulties with breastfeeding. I would either have to formula-feed or switch medicines. Some doctors even said I might experience birthing risks. For some time, I temporarily shelved the idea of motherhood and chose instead to chase other dreams.
The reality of it all came back on April 1st of this year. Matt had suspected for some time that I was pregnant even though I kept reassuring him that it was travel weight gain. As an April Fool's joke, he sent a photo of me with what appeared to be a bump to his parents. It was meant to be a joke, but I knew that it might be real because of the test. I panicked.
Because we were travelling so much, I let the doctor's appointment slip. But I always had the pregnancy test result at the back of my head. I broke down and told Matt what had happened. He was upset at first that I didn't tell him. I knew he would be upset, but I wanted a 100 percent confirmation before I turned both our lives around. I needed someone to tell me that I was pregnant other than a vending machine test.
A month or so after the pregnancy test, in between an assignment for the Washington Post in Ukraine and Matt running a trip in Sri Lanka, I finally decided to book an appointment with a doctor – Dr. Atapattu – a kind, older lady at a private medical clinic in Colombo.
The minute she patted my stomach, she was sure it was not an ovarian cyst. "Dear, you are pregnant – maybe two months, three months. Congratulations," she exclaimed. She wasn't exactly sure how far along I was, so she sent me to the local private hospital. The news did not quite end there.
I made an appointment with the first Obgyn available. While the appointment was all of 15 minutes, it was filled with every sort of revelation one could imagine. "Miss, you are rather advanced in this pregnancy," I'll never forget him saying as he revealed I was 20 weeks pregnant. He asked if there was a father.
The appointment itself was a bit comical. The doctor was clearly overworked and a bit disgruntled. My ultrasound results were intermixed with rants about the current government and the faltering economy. This was during the height of the protests against the then government.
The doctor revealed the baby's gender by accident in between complaining about the corrupt government and a missed opportunity to leave the country years before. It didn’t matter – I wanted to know. My heart skipped a beat – I was having a girl with Matt. Deep down, I secretly wanted a girl to re-envision what a mother-daughter relationship should look like after my own fell apart.
After the few initial moments of shock, I thought to myself that the most precious moments in life often come unplanned. For the first time in my life, I grasped letting go. From that moment onwards, I felt this continual release of endorphins, sparked mainly through feelings of elation.
Matt's support only intensified those feelings of joy. He became very emotional when I told him we were 20 weeks in. "I'm going to love this baby so much, and I want to do everything with her," he said. I felt the same. Matt was in the Maldives that week, so I celebrated with Chinese food at a dirty hole-in-the-wall near the hospital. I remember walking back to my Airbnb, smiling from ear to ear.
A precious baby girl was growing swiftly inside me, and in the days that followed, I felt her every sporadic kick, stir and subtle push. No matter how scared I was, the feelings of insecurity abruptly vanished for the moment. I would learn with Matt to plan for her in this next phase, no matter what.
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