Abracadabra

                   

Yesterday was a challenging day. I received news that my latest blood tests showed extremely low electrolyte levels (for those new to the blog, I have a kidney condition that I try not to whinge too much about. Sometimes I’m successful, sometimes not) and this immediately sent me into a panic spiral largely characterized by moping about while obsessively wringing my hands and shaking my fists impotently skyward.

I stopped by to see Adam at work and LO! more bad news of the business variety and more panicking and hand-wringing and fist-shaking.

As the day worn on I managed to get my head out of my arse and talk myself down from this panicked, “Everything is going wrong our baby isn’t getting what it needs and we’re going to end up homeless and alone” circuitous train of thoughts running through my head, and I did what I always do when I’m stressed, I made a PLAN.

Plans are my own personal talisman, if I have a plan, suddenly everything is ok, even if that plan reads simply “Stop panicking.”

Yesterday my plan was a little more involved, consisting of a phone call to my Nephrologist and a schedule for more massive doses of medications and increased monitoring and the potential for weekly IV’s (but we hope it won’t get to that point) and then besides the medication, the plan included several deep breaths as well as a silent incantation of “Everything is going to be fine. Everything is going to be fine.”

Because it will be, right? It has to be.

Last night Adam and I were discussing things like what to do with his business and our finances, and what life is going to look like in the next year with one income instead of two. Perhaps it was the way my voice kept creeping up into the upper registers or my anxious hand gestures or the way I ended every sentence with “Yes, but what are we going to dooo?” but he somehow picked up on my panic (intuitive man, this one).

In a surprisingly sincere gesture for someone who spends 98% of his time joking, Adam looked at me and said, “Let me worry about the business stuff, you just focus on growing a healthy baby.”

And I waited half a beat for some sort of joke about “…and bigger boobs too” or “…and by business stuff I meant business time” or some such Adam-style rejoinder, but none came. Just that same calm, resolved look.

                     

It occurred to me that I wasn’t the only one with a plan. In our own way we are both trying to cobble together some idea of what life will look like in 5 months, and although we weren’t waiting until I became pregnant to make big life decisions about the business and moving and buying a house, something about situations like these seems to invite just that sort of change. If not now, your reasoning goes, when?

As all of this was running through my head, I looked at him, this man I’ve loved for ten years and I decided that yes, okay. Let’s go along with your plan.

I’ll let him worry about the business stuff, confident that he is fully capable of making decisions in the best interests of our little family, and I will worry about the baby stuff, confident that he trusts me to make decisions in the best interests of myself and our son or daughter.

And surprise surprise, today I feel much better. And it seems that our two-fold plan has pleased the gods or goddesses, because LO! when I went to take a washcloth off the shelf this morning, something shiny slipped out and fell to the floor. Picking it up, I realized it was my wedding ring, the one I lost four days ago.

Everything is going to be fine. (It has to be).