How to Reveal a Pregnancy Over Facebook Chat

by Catherine Mejia

It doesn’t help to remind myself that it all worked out okay for Katherine Heigl.

I still want to throw up.

I’ve only known I’m pregnant for three days, but I’ve already had the conversation a dozen times in my head.

“Heeey, so. I know we haven’t been going out long, but…” “Remember how we promised each other that we were just going to have fun, and the only rules were no diseases or babies? FUNNY STORY.” “I’m pregnant. It’s yours. Fuck you.”

Nothing seems quite right. Sometimes, lying on my bed staring at the ceiling, I think obsessively about greeting cards for the knocked up and inarticulate. It keeps me from thinking about my job, my bank account, tiny feet, my body, my mother, every glass of wine I’ve drunk in the last month, my grandfather, stretch marks, my friends, Roe vs. Wade, restaurants, bars, travel, romance, Planned Parenthood, weight gain, interior decorating, mommy issues, daddy issues, protestors, my long-neglected Catholic upbringing, WIC, diapers, adoption, Fisher Price, breastfeeding, abortion, chubby cheeks, the father.

It’s not supposed to happen like this. I’ve just started my dream job at a nonprofit. I’m about to leave my overcrowded student slum apartment and get my own place, a small one-bedroom with wood floors and great light, the first apartment I’ve ever lived in on my own. I’m 25, finally done with grad school and three years in a disastrous on and off relationship that’s left me more misanthropic and dysfunctional than all of the Bronte sisters combined. For the past few weeks I’ve been casually seeing a funny, brilliant, 21-year-old musician. He’s not a long-term prospect, my friends remind me, but he’s the most handsome man I’d ever seen up close. Sometimes I still can’t believe he wants to hang around with me. After years of being broke, miserable, at loose ends, adrift, everything is finally coming together.

Including, apparently, a fertilized egg and the wall of my uterus.

What the fuck. What the FUCK.

It’s not supposed to happen like this.

I don’t know who to tell, or what to say.

That’s not true. I told my friend over the phone, sitting in the car in a parking lot with my head on the steering wheel.

I told my coworker, who I’d known slightly in grad school and who now has the desk next to mine. I wrote it on a Post-It note. “Holy shit. I am pregnant!!!!”

I’ve told my bedroom ceiling.

I’ve told the inside of my car.

I’ve told the boxes I’m packing and the sidewalk between my house and my favorite coffee shop. I’ve told my computer screen as I watch Juno and Knocked Up on Amazon, wondering why there aren’t any quirky movies about girls who have abortions. I wonder what happened to Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl after Louden Wainwright stopped singing and their big-headed baby went to sleep. What do they talk about when they aren’t watching Porky’s? How do they afford daycare? What do they tell their daughter about how they met?

I hate talking on the phone, I always have. I’m all awkward pauses and nasal inflection. I joke that texts and Facebook are my preferred communication style because I hate human interaction, but really it’s just that I hate my voice on the phone, and how I never know what to say.

Every time I try to imagine the phone call, my tone, the words I’ll use, my imagination falls flat and my stomach rolls. Nothing in my straight-laced, goody two shoes, over-achiever life has prepared me for this moment.

I’m on Facebook at work, mindlessly scrolling through my friend’s party pictures. Her sister really needs to rethink her hair color. I’m pretty sure I’ve been to that bar. There’s a green dot next to his name and I don’t know what to do.

Maybe I don’t have to tell him. I don’t want to tell him like this. This might be the most important thing I ever tell anyone. I don’t want it to be punctuated with fucking emoticons.

I have to tell him. I don’t want it to happen this way.

“Hey.”

“Yo.”

“So, uh, I hate to do this via facebook but I’m pregnant. And it’s yours.”

He’s typing.
He’s typing.

This is going to happen. This is happening.

Catherine Mejia is still working on a strongly worded letter of complaint to everyone involved in the making of Knocked Up. She lives in California with her daughter and her boyfriend, who is still the most handsome man she’s ever seen up close.