MommyFear #2

It's hard not to let the fears of parenthood ooze out of my brain and all over everyone I come into contact with. I already wrote about one fear - the one that involves me losing my identity as a not-mom - but I've been assured that I won't turn into that unless I allow it. Fair enough. But there are a billion other things to worry about (and they don't even involve my house burning down, which is my number one fear ever, by the way). I'll only cover one right now, though: I'm afraid there will be something wrong with the Beast.

"Something" could be anything. It could be apparent at birth, like mental retardation or an extra eye. It could manifest later, like slow speech development or deafness. Or it could even hide until the Beast's teenage years, like depression caused by a brain chemical imbalance. Anything.

I actually wouldn't be that upset about having a deaf kid, as I know sign language. I'd be worried about making the decision on whether to get a Cochlear implant or not; many in the deaf community don't consider deafness to be a malady, but rather a defining characteristic. Then again, if I could give my child the ability to hear... shouldn't I do that?

And being born with three eyes would practically guarantee a job in the circus, and in this economy, isn't having a guaranteed job something to be thankful for?

I never had any testing done to see if the Beast had any chromosomal abnormalities, because I didn't want to have to make the decision. You know the one I'm talking about. I also believe that things happen for a reason, and following that logic, I'd have the kid I'm going to have whether I did anything about it or not. The odds are that the Beast will be completely normal.

Well, as normal as a baby can be with Jake and I as parents. We both express the Weirdness gene, and I'm pretty sure we're both homozygous for it. Sorry, Beast, you're genetically doomed to be a weirdo!