What Happens When Type-A People Plan for Pregnancy

We treasure what we can measure

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Down here, on the southern side of the world, The Holidays means summer. If we’re lucky—and this year we were—we can barbecue for Christmas dinner, spend New Year’s on the beach. Those of us blessed with being teachers in a country where the salary gets us through the summer without a second job can take our plan books and holiday research out to the backyard and “work” while stretched out on sun warmed grass. It’s a lifestyle I can recommend. Sometime this past week as I was… ahem… making calculus notes… I noticed that, for what may be the first time in my adult life, I do not have a watch tan. Both wrists are empty, and roughly the same shade of just-past-pale. My watch strap broke back in November.

I have always been a punctuality person. I like time. Actually, I like basically anything that I can measure. I’m a maths teacher, so it somewhat comes with the territory to like numbers, but I also just really enjoy keeping track of things. I totally heart spreadsheets… And so, I have always, always worn watches. I started wearing a digital watch while I was going through teacher training to help with timed activities and I got very attached to being able to track and schedule my time with even more precision. I think it would be fair to say that I considered keeping track of time to be more or less the same as keeping track of my life.

Here’s the thing: the Dude and I are planning to start trying for a baby this year. Among the things that terrify me about the process of having children is the timing. Never seems quite right. And I can’t even plan for wrong. I was diagnosed with probable endometriosis at twenty two—several years after the first time I ended up in urgent care during a period, and even more years since I’d started needing prescription meds to handle the pain—and I’m officially past thirty now, so it’s even less predictable than normal. Maybe we’ll get pregnant naturally and we’ll be having a baby by the end of the year. Maybe in six months we’ll decide we need medical help and it’s going to take years. I hate that. That uncertainty. And then, once/if there is a baby, from everything I have seen and experienced, my general desire to keep my life on a predetermined schedule seems likely to be… disrupted.

And then, my watch strap broke.

It’s weird that something so little could be cause for self-examination. I know it is. But it was. Somewhere between this being the third of exactly the same watch that I’d broken, and trying to find time at the crazy end of a busy school year to replace it, and balking at the price tag (since for unknown reasons all watches without cartoons on them cost at least $100 in New Zealand), I had a moment of wondering whether it was entirely healthy to be as attached to my watch as I am. Maybe I needed to learn to relax a bit. Clock-watchers are stressed out people, right? I was tying myself to schedules, pinning myself down with my obsession with time!

So I thought it’s summer anyway; I don’t have a lot of commitments. I have a phone with a clock on it and I can ask for a watch for Christmas. There are plenty of people who, without a watch, manage to live their lives. I can do this. I can learn to live without a watch. I can become less time-bound.

The watch that arrived in my Christmas package from home was a beautiful steampunk faux-antique deal with miniscule roman numerals and a rotating face that makes it even harder to use as an actual time telling-device. Perfect, I thought.

The summer started out okay. Lots of lazy days, planning by keeping an eye on the sun and deciding whether I was hungry. We went on a holiday and we were in the car a lot, so there was a clock there. We did a three day hiking trip on a beautiful southern island full of birds, and I took my pocket watch, pulling it out and feeling very proud of myself for saying things like “it’s 11ish, we’ve got lots of time.” But, I kind of missed my digital watch. There were moments when I found myself wanting to time something, and I felt like it wouldn’t have been so un-free to be able to.

In the last week of my summer holiday we had planned a very ambitious, multiday hiking trip through a wild section of the Able Tasman National Park—think sort of like four days of the Pacific Crest Trail except super steep with massive recent flood slips. As we set out, I thought to myself that it would be a great culmination to my experiments with giving up time for the summer.

I stressed out for three days. I tried to keep it to myself and not freak everyone else out by asking what time it was every five steps, but every time we’d stop to look at the map our friend Jen would have to haul out her watch for me. Even on day four, when the stress finally eased because we knew we could make the distance, I wanted my watch.

I realized as we marched along that I would have been significantly happier if I had allowed myself to be me and keep track of our progress the way I like. This is who I am, I thought to myself, this is how I take stock of the precious moments allowed to me on this earth. I wanted to be able to calculate our speed and I wanted to know how much time I had left to enjoy the hiking. I wanted to know that we’d make the hut before nightfall and I wanted to be able to take my pulse and watch it change as we hiked up and down gorgeous mountains. I wanted to measure things and treasure them in doing so.

I can’t fix the unpredictability of having a baby. The fact that I just don’t know when or even whether we’re going to be able to get pregnant is—and is going to remain—totally obnoxious. I have cringed every time I’ve made a commitment at the beginning of this year—to my students and colleagues, to friends who want to plan cool trips (why do you have to register for marathons eight months in advance?!), even to my family who are completely aware of what’s going on in my life. I really cannot say to my students, “I’m going to be your maths teacher for the rest of this year and next year unless I successfully get pregnant in which case I’ll have to leave at some point for an unspecified length of time…” (not the least because I’d be admitting that I have sex in front of kids…), but I hate not being up front about it. I can’t even say to my husband, “Yes, you can accept that invitation to talk at an awesome conference in a country on the other side of the world, no problem.” All I can say is, “Well… you can book it, but if we get pregnant, I might be delivering around then and I’d really love for you to be there…”

Doesn’t that suck?

Yes, yes it does suck.

But, that doesn’t mean I can’t handle it. I’m just going to have to handle it my own way. Life is unpredictable. All life. And I’ve managed just fine so far. Despite recessions and unexpected international moves, earthquakes, and meeting future spouses at the wrong times. I’ve managed—I’ve thrived—by being me, by accepting myself and playing to my strengths. By keeping track of my time. By making lists and schedules and contingency plans. By measuring things and treasuring them.

My steampunk pocket watch is lovely, and I’ll keep it for my dress-up box. But I’m buying a digital wristwatch once school starts.

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