16w0d

I never really thought I'd get to sixteen weeks. In my mind/heart/whatever, pregnancy ended sooner than that. I still haven't really figured out how to tell people and am secretly hoping that someone else will do it so I don't have to. Oddly, it's working so far. Word has been spreading at work, and I've been getting cryptic emails lately from people asking if I have any news. I usually just respond with a date. Again, it's working so far.

I had to go shopping this weekend to buy some clothes that fit, or at least fit better. I was down to four bottoms that fit without one of those belly band things, and three more that worked with it (always very professional to walk around a law firm with your pants undone), and I was scared people would start to notice that I was rotating the same outfits week after week. I almost had a panic attack standing outside the store -- complete with rapid heart rate, shortness of breath, light-headedness, sense of world fading to black. If P and a friend of mine hadn't been with me, I am pretty sure I would have run away. It was way too much for me, and I found the whole experience horribly unpleasant from start to finish.

I feel an odd ambivalence about having people know, which ties in to the clothes issue. If no one knows, and something goes wrong, I will find a way to get through it. What horrifies me is the idea of something going wrong and having to tell anyone else. I feel like people want to know about one another's issues as much for themselves as for the other (or at least that is the case in my family), and I have no interest in comforting anyone else if something goes wrong in my life, which I know will be expected, even if the person doesn't recognize they are in fact expecting as much. So I have been taking advantage of the fact that I, generally, don't really look any different, hiding in looser sweaters and wearing my regular pants/skirts, in the hopes that if no one knows and something goes wrong I can go about my business, crying in my office with the door closed, and shutting them all out.