Gold teeth and a curse for this town, were all in my mouth, only I don't know how they got out, dear

Journal entries from earlier in my pregnancy (the second entry is mostly not about pregnancy but it mentions the baby at the end, so I thought it merited inclusion. Also I changed details about clients I wrote about so I'm not violating HIPAA):

October 5
I found out 3 days ago that I'm pregnant! According to my feverish special-special time documentation, and the midwife I talked to at Bella Natal, I am 5.3 weeks along and my little salamander is due June 4. That's right when my mother was due with me! I feel a zealous sort of destiny in the parallel. I hope I can be as kind and fierce of a mother to my salamander as my mother is to me. I wish I had had the foresight to keep my lateness from Jonathan. I would have like to surprise him more with the glad tidings, but I couldn't help myself! I kept telling him, Jonny I'm 3 days late! 4! 5! So when I finally delivered the news he was already expecting that I was expecting. I just couldn't shut up. When I found out by myself, Friday night, I was so amazed. I kept looking in the mirror and telling myself I was having a baby, trying to see a mother in my reflection maybe. I felt nothing but excitement and glee. It works! It really does work! Saturday night I crashed a little when my mother showed me this book about the miracle of life..it showed babies in their various stages of development and it made me a little queasy. All those curled up lizards with their enormous opaque eyes. The first few pages were pictures of loving couples and I felt suddenly horrified that all that would be over now, gripped by the horror of my impulsiveness. I know this is what I wanted, but our tender little marriage is so new, what if having a baby "ruined" everything? I'm feeling much, much better now, and confident that the (hopefully safe) arrival of our child will enhance our relationship. It will make both of us better people. It will bind us to each other as co-creators of adorable progeny. It will fill our house with a sweeter love. I know it will also be stressful, anxiety-inducing, exhausting, and complicated, and I know those little bubbles of resentment WILL come up and have to be popped, but I know what kind of people we are and the role children and family have in our lives. Jonathan is the best man I know and it is honorable to be able to give him children. I'm just as excited to see him be a good father as I am to figure out what kind of mother I will be. I am not at all afraid of ruin. It is surreal to be pregnant and not feel any different. If I hadn't been tracking my special-special times I'm sure I wouldn't even have noticed by now, but I'm already a month into it! I worry about miscarriage, I have known so many who have miscarried their first baby. When I'm alone, I talk out loud to the little salamander and ask her to be okay. I think of it as a girl, which is bizarre because until about a month ago I didn't want ANY daughters EVER, I wanted twelve sons. For some reason my mind has really warmed up to the idea although I still don't know how I'll explain things to her, the things that are diabolically unfair and ugly and that I don't feel peace about. Maybe she'll stay a baby forever and I'll never have to worry about it? :)

October 11
I'm home alone and jumping at little noises. Today was so thick with therapy I just wanted to stay home and let my brain melt. I guess it was a good night for Jonathan to ditch me. Today I spoke with a boy who smokes pot to feel relief from his mother's nagging, and listened to her tell me over and over on the phone, "He's just like his father." He cried when he said she might send him away. I told him I was sorry he'd been hurt. Then I knocked on the wrong number 8 and the man who couldn't speak was so excited to get a visitor. He brought me out his driver's license because I couldn't understand him. He was frightening with his stiff staring but more sad. His name was Charles. I waved goodbye to him as he followed me. He was so excited and I was so out of place in that apartment complex, I don't know how to walk, how to hold my face to look like I might belong there. I found the right apartment but it was still all wrong. It was stretched out and empty except for a couch. Beatriz was stretched out and full of another baby set to never know its daddy like her two other sons. I met the man they want to leave in December. He shouted and pulled her away and will never drive her to therapy. Arturo was sweet and friendly and only turned cold when we talked of his mother. If you aren't set up for the shiny white ladder of success you can become a cholo. I tried to say these things. I told them they're in crisis and that therapy doesn't do much good unless they're stable. That they need a plan to survive. The tiny boy drew a poster on the floor with my markers. I told him "que belleza!" She said Arturo has wanted for nothing. She tells him she loves him by reminding him of all she has done. Neither of them could form a positive statement about the other. They could be gone in an instant, nothing connects them to the place they are, to the false frame of a family they're fluttering around in. She can't go to a shelter you see because he put the bills in her name. Arturo sat clicking his knife open and shut. Later I asked numb questions of a sweet couple with a daughter ridden with adolescence. The mother explained how she was raised by older sisters and wanted to fill up the vacio (emptiness) she always felt in her childhood. She thought if she were good enough, if she could just be good enough, she would deserve love, and everything would work out right. I did the best at describing her feelings for her but I feel like I failed to join with the daughter at all. She's in a smirky little no one understands me world. I am probably terrible at this, but I felt a lot today. I think it's good for me to feel this much. I'm thinking of Romania too and what it was like sometimes--the tidepools of jealously and slimy creatures that seems so insignificant, even insulting to the tumultuous ocean opened before my eyes.

I think of the baby as a seahorse, splashing around in a tiny ocean. Maybe my sorrow and despair are already making acid waves. I wish I could create the kind of peace my baby needs but I feel that would require disconnecting from everything.