Oh, Boy (I hope)!

Well, today was definitely interesting...even life-changing, you could say...

I now have my referral to see a psychiatrist. The doctor said it should arrive in the mail in about a week.

I also have a baby in my uterus. The doctor said it should arrive sometime around my birthday in January. Hee, hee!

Oh, boy. And just when I had decided I wanted to put off motherhood a couple more years.

I guess I'm really fertile. My husband and I had halted our birth control methods for only about six weeks, maybe less. I guess getting pregnant so quickly makes a fair amount of sense to me now: women in my family have never had trouble producing. My mom had me when she was 19. Her mother gave birth to six children, my mom coming in her mid-to-late thirties. And my brother, the one with the four-month-old baby girl, told me when I called to break the news that his wife might be pregnant again. They are going to the store tonight to buy a pregnancy test. He's 19, too. I'm thanking my lucky stars right now that I waited until 24 to get married.

I'm not sure how I feel about all of this. On the one hand, I'm intrigued. A baby: a combination of my and my husband's very different genes. (For starters, he's blond and blue-eyed; I look like a Native American.) What will our baby look like? What color hair will it have? Will it be cute? What kind of personality will it develop? Will it be smart? Will I enjoy feeling it grow inside of me?

On the other hand, I'm a bit nervous. I'm not sure what the psychiatrist will say about my current mental health. Now isn't necessarily the best time to be trying different medications. And with my husband in the Navy, we're scheduled to move sometime in October. We could very likely end up in Japan, because that's one of the bases we requested...when we thought parenthood was a distant scenario. I've been to Japan before; it's a wonderful country--if you don't mind living in a space the size of walk-in closet. If we get stationed there, we'll be living there for four years. How will I deal with raising a two-year-old in a walk-in closet? In a country where you can't buy macaroni and cheese?

At least my writing is going well.