Family and Other Catastrophes by Alexandra Borowitz

Author:Alexandra Borowitz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2018-05-05T04:00:00+00:00

DAY 4

Emily

Hey there, just found out I am pregnant but haven’t gone to the doctor yet to determine how far along. Obviously unplanned. I’ve been on birth control and didn’t know I was pregnant so I have been drinking. Just want to make sure I haven’t harmed the baby. I barely ever get periods anyway because of my pill so I don’t know how long since my last period. Did any of you not show at all in the first trimester?

DAVID LAY SNORING beside her as she typed. She always marveled at his ability to sleep while she was awake and tossing. Normally when she was trying to sleep, she worried about the latest gang initiation method only half debunked on Snopes or wild stories on BuzzFeed about women whose faces rotted off after sharing makeup brushes. If, by some miracle, she wasn’t worried about anything in particular, her brain would put on a slideshow of all the worst things she had ever done. A memory that made a regular appearance was the time she got diarrhea at camp and clogged the toilets with so much toilet paper that maintenance had to be called, and she could overhear the plumbers talking about how “they had no idea so much shit could come out of ten-year-old girls.”

Moments after she typed her query to the pregnancy forum, she got her first response.

“Omg if u hve been drinking durin the first three months sorry but ur baby might be retarded or something...i didnt drink at all when i was pregnant why wud u do that to ur kid???? shame on u.”

She replied, I didn’t know I was pregnant. If I had known, I wouldn’t have drunk anything.

Another message came in:

“To answer your question, when I was preggers with my little Kayden I didn’t show at all until six months. My waist was 23" before pregnancy, and it was only 25" at my fourth month! People had no idea I was pregnant even into my second trimester because my waist was so tiny! (I think all the baby fat went to my big Kim K butt and 28H bewbs lol) I had no clue I was pregnant at all! But I don’t drink so I had nothing to worry about. Good luck!”

And another:

“This didn’t happen to me but I heard somewhere that if you aren’t showing in the first trimester your baby is probably seriously ill. Go to the ER now. What the fuck is wrong with you asking about this online? This is an emergency. SEE A DOCTOR.”

Of course, see a doctor. That would obviously be her first course of action as soon as she returned to San Francisco, thanks to ClearDrop’s bullshit HMO, which wouldn’t cover nonemergency costs outside of California. At least if she hid this from David long enough to marry him, she’d get on Zoogli’s better health plan.

* * *

“You have to tell him.” Emily and Lauren were having tea in the kitchen while the rest of the house slept.

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