I am That Girl.

First of all, thank you all so much for your celebratory comments about our little baby girl! Though I would have been thrilled either way, there is something about a little girl, for me anyway. I guess I always pictured myself as having a daughter. And now it’s actually happening. There is still something not-quite-believable about this whole thing.

Not to switch gears to doom-and-gloom too drastically, but last week I was That Girl. You know the one. You’ve been TTC for a long time, and on the day you get a shitty piece of news, such as a negative pregnancy test or that you need to skip a cycle or that your insurance company is comprised entirely of assholes, That Girl, be it a friend, colleague, coworker, or relative, shares that they are pregnant or some other tra-la-la, sunshine-and-bunnies news about their pregnancy. Such as, I don’t know, ultrasound photos, just hypothetically speaking.

I think I’ve mentioned before that my older (lesbian) sister, RG, has been TTC since last spring. She has been the picture of grace in the face of my paltry four tries before success. I know that TTC has been the hardest thing she has ever gone through—she’s said that nothing has ever affected her as much as this process has—so I know that even with the brave front she puts on, her happiness for Mama Jae and me can’t NOT be tinged by what I know must be a huge grab bag of sad/jealous/angry-at-the-universe emotions. She wouldn’t be human otherwise. I also have read enough of this community’s blogs to know how devastating it can be to be faced with a difficult TTC road in and of itself, and how when That Girl comes along, all of those emotions are only exacerbated.

I know this. I KNOW IT. So why I didn’t think to check in with RG before telling Mama Jae to include her in the list of family members we were going to email the ultrasound photos is beyond me. But I didn’t. I guess I was so happy and excited to share that I just wasn’t thinking. But as it turns out, on the day the email went out, RG had a negative pregnancy test. A few days later, she called me to tell me that she got that email on that day, and I burst into tears, knowing how devastating and awful that must have been. I felt horrible. She emphasized how happy she is for us, and that she doesn’t want to be out of the loop, but asked that I just check in with her first to see if she is having one of those crappy days or not before sharing big pieces of news like that. Which, of course, I am more than happy to do. I just hate that something I did made her day that shitty.

I have always, always felt like an incredibly lucky person. I have been lucky in my family and childhood, in my career, in love, in health, and in personal relationships. There have been very few times in my life when I didn’t get something I truly, truly wanted. Until I got pregnant, I had this feeling in the back of my mind that karma would catch up with me—that my luck would run out—and that I’d have a hard time getting pregnant. But that wasn’t the case. (There is still a little nagging feeling somewhere in my mind that something might be wrong with our baby, but I think that’s a typical worry of pregnant women, and most of the time I trust that she will be perfect.) This is all to say that I wish there were some way to share luck. I would give almost anything to see my big sister pregnant. It is something that she has wanted for so, so long, much longer than I’ve wanted it. It’s just so unfair that she has wanted it longer than I have, that she’s tried longer than I have, and that I’m pregnant and she’s not. Why can’t the universe just be fair? She deserves to have a child. She and her partner would be great mothers. So why isn’t she just pregnant already?

If I’m remembering correctly, they have been trying for less than a year, so I’m hopeful that they’ll be successful in the end. I just wish the end weren’t taking so damn long to get here.