The car ride was full of loud music from the radio to break the awkwardness trying to form around us. No on one talked the whole ride except for occasionally small talk between all three of us. We finally arrived to the clinic after what seemed to be the longest car ride and we made our way to the waiting area. Both my mom and I went up to the front desk to check in while Troy made his way to one of the chairs and picked up a baby magazine. The receptionist was an older woman, probably in her mid 50s. She had blonde wiry hair, too much cover up on her face, and a small mole above the right side of her lip.
"Hello, how may I help you?"
"We're here for an ultrasound appointment." I was so relieved that my mom was doing all the speaking. But even with her speaking, anxiety was starting to creep in.
"Name?"
"Gabriella Montez."
She started typing with her freakishly long nails, filling the room with the obnoxious sound of clicking. "Oh today's the first time you're going to be seeing you baby. How exciting!" She turned over to me, "And are you the big sister?"
"Uh," I opened my mouth, but couldn't form the words to tell her that I was the one that was pregnant.
My mom spoke up, "Actually, this appointment is for her. She's the soon to be mom."
The receptionist smile faded away as she directed her attention to me. "Oh, I'm sorry!" She hesitated, "Not about you being pregnant! I mean about confusing the both of you." She was starting to become more nervous. She let out a little laugh as if that were going to make things better. I started turning red and looked down. I crossed my arms and just waited for her to say that the doctor will be with us in a couple of minutes.
As we were walking back to the chairs where Troy was seated, the receptionist called out. "Congrats on the baby!" She flashed one of the fakest smiles I had ever seen in my 17 years of life. I could tell she was secretly judging me. I just directed my view to Troy. As I sat down, Troy put down the magazine. He seemed to notice my sudden change of mood.
"What happened up there?"
"She thought that my mom was the pregnant one and that I was going to be the big sister." I rolled my eyes, and crossed my arms again.
"Are you serious?"
"Yeah. And then she fucking tried to make it seem like she was happy for me and tell me 'Congrats'. I would've rather preferred being punched in the throat than having to witness her smug ass smile."
"Trust me, no you wouldn't. Being punched in the throat sucks. My friend did it to me once and I couldn't breathe right for a full 5 minutes." Troy tried to lighten up the mood, but I ignored him.
"I bet she's gonna go and tell all the nurses that there is a pregnant teen like if I was the first one to be pregnant at this age."
"Gabs, calm down, " Troy chuckled.
"How? I'm honestly so sick and tired of getting stares from people and judgment looks from adults. I bet crackheads don't even get that many stares." And with that, the ultrasound technician called my name. She was a lot younger than the receptionist and had long, dark hair.
As we were walking to the ultrasound room, there were other nurses that were in the hallway. They were all staring at me. I guess the receptionist had opened her big mouth and told them already. I felt myself get red again and make my way to Troy. He always made me feel better.
We finally arrived to a small, dark room filled with unfamiliar machines. The doctor introduced herself.
"Hi, I'm Dr. Garcia and I'll be your ultrasound technician."
"I'm Gabriella. Nice to meet you." I shook her hand. Something about her youthfulness brought the sense of relief that was originally taken from the receptionist.
"And how far along are you?"
"About 8 weeks."
She whipped out her clipboard and started asking all sorts of health questions. Mostly about whether or not I do drugs and if I drink booze often. Afterwards, she finally asked me to lay back of the clinic bed and lift up my shirt. Troy made his way over to my side.
"I'm going to put this blue gel on your belly. And just to give you a little warning, it's going to be cold." The doctor said as she put a weird paper towel looking thing in between my jeans and skin. She wasn't kidding when she said that it was going to be cold. I flinched a little when the gel first hit my skin. She grabbed the transducer and used it to smear all of the gel around my belly.
"And who is this fine young man?"
"I'm Troy," he smiled and reached his hand over to shake her hand, "I'm the dad." He said it as if we had been married for several years and were finally ready to start a family. I didn't understand how he could just blab it out so matter-of-factly. It always took me several seconds before I could even open my mouth to admit that I was pregnant.
"Well, nice to meet you," she genuinely smiled, unlike the rest of the adults in my life. "Are you two excited to be parents?"
I cringed at the sound of "excited", but luckily she was too busy smearing the blue gel on my belly and didn't see my reaction. "Nervous, for the most part," I replied.
"Don't worry. Everyone is nervous when they're pregnant with their first child, regardless of the age." I smiled at her. She grabbed another little machine and put it on my lap.
"So, first we're going to use a fetal doppler. It lets us hear the baby's heart to see if it's beating right." She took the handle-like piece and placed on my belly, then turned up the volume on the machine. Rapid thumping noises filled the room. "That's your baby's heart beat. I know it sounds freaky and everything, but it is supposed to be that fast. We could also hear your heartbeat in the background."
"Whoa," Troy said in pure fascination at the sound. He looked down at me grinned. I returned it.
"Your baby's heart is doing perfectly well from the sound of it," the doctor said as she cleaned off the part of the machine that was used to track down the heartbeat.
Next, she grabbed the transducer to the ultrasound machine again. I could feel my heart start to pound fast, like the baby's. Ever since I mentioned the adoption plan to Troy, I was almost certain that that's what I wanted to do. But then again, maybe looking at the baby on the screen, I might fall in love with it, and that's what I was afraid of. The doctor started moving the transducer around as if she was playing hide-and-seek with the baby.
"Ah, there it is," the doctor said with victory. I wanted nothing more then to turn the opposite direction of the screen and close my eyes, so that I wouldn't be able to see the baby. But sadly, with a room this small containing three other people, I wouldn't be able to get away with it without looking like I was full of hatred. I slowly turned my head to look up at the screen and saw what appeared to be a little bean. It was nothing like what I expected. Being a single child, I was never exposed to this type of stuff. I expected a little tiny human in there with tiny arms, leg, and microscopic fingers. I couldn't believe that it was supposed to be a little human. And yet, I was stuck looking at the screen in pure amazement. Troy grabbed my hand and gave it a little squeeze. I looked over at him and caught him smiling from cheek to cheek. I was jealous of the fact that he was so worry free about this whole thing. Meanwhile, I was slowly falling in love with the little bean in my belly and slowly becoming more anxious as to what my future was going to hold.
"Right there are the little arms and legs," she said, pointing to the screen. As she started labeling what was where on the little bean, I could finally start to make shape of it. At first it felt as if I were taking some sort of health class that explained pregnancy and how we all came to be. Then it hit me that the picture on the screen wasn't taken from some mid-30 year old woman who was pregnant. This was real life. A lump began to form in my throat as I saw the little child up on the screen. My child.
"How big is the baby?" Troy asked, curious as always.
"It's about the size of a kidney bean. At this stage, the baby does a lot of moving around, but mom can't feel it. Soon you will, hun." She looked over at me and winked. I smiled while envisioning the baby karate chopping me in the womb because it wants out.
"It's so tiny," Troy replied as he giggled.
I decided to look over at my mom and I could see that she was grinning. I even saw her eyes sparkle from the tears she was trying to hold back. She caught me staring at her.
"What? I'm not made of stone."
I just laughed and directed my attention to the doctor.
"Well, that's it for 'll schedule you back here once your 12 weeks. By then the baby will stop looking like a little bean and actually have the features of a person." I found it hard to envision such progression in four weeks. Stuck with the image of the baby being a bean, the only progression I imagined was it growing into a beanstalk.
She proceeded wiping off my stomach with some paper towels, then I sat up. She handed me a pamphlet.
"Here's this. It's just some of the basic information on pregnancy, what is and isn't normal, what to eat, things like that. If you ever have any questions or concerns, you can always call the clinic and ask for me. If I'm not available, someone else will answer the question, alright?"
"Alright."
She printed out the ultrasound pictures and we made our way out into the car.
"Oh my gosh that was incredible!" Troy said, still looking at the pictures. "I think it's safe to say that our baby has my eyes."
"You're such a dork. But I hope it does. We don't need anymore brown eyed people in this family," I said as I laughed.
We dropped Troy off at his place and made our way home.
"Are you going to show your father the ultrasound pictures?" My mom asked my, interrupting Ray J's One Wish song on the radio.
"I wasn't planning to. I feel like if I handed him the pictures, he would end up ripping them, and believe it or not, I want to keep them fully in tact."
"Are you going to put them in a baby book or something?"
"I don't think so."
"Why not? Baby books are incredible. They're so great to look at when the kids are all grown up. I'll have to show you yours sometime."
"I don't know if I'm keeping the baby. I was thinking of adoption." I looked out the window, laying my head back on the seat. There was a little bit of silence before my mom decided to break it.
"What does Troy think?"
"I only mentioned it to him once and he didn't seem too into the idea. I'm scared to tell him that that's the route I wanna take. I mean, you saw how happy he was in there. I just feel like he doesn't really grasp the idea that having a kid's going to be hard. But I also don't want to break his heart."
"Gabby, I honestly think it's up to you. Whatever you decide, I will support you. But, giving up your baby is a tough, tough choice. It's tougher than you can even imagine right now."
I remembered what Troy told me. "I guess only time will tell."
When we arrived home, I saw my dad sitting on the couch watching the news. I gathered all the courage up that I had and decided to greet him.
"Hey dad."
Nothing.
I walked to him and sat next to him with the ultrasound pictures.
"I got to see the baby today. Want to see it?"
I handed him the pictures and he looked at them. He grinned a tad bit, then handed them back. Maybe Troy was right. All I had to give him was time. With that, I decided to go up to my room and hang up the pictures on my wall. I thought back to what my mom said and what I was thinking in the ultrasound room. I did the one thing I was afraid that would happen. I fell in love with the little kidney bean inside of my belly, and I knew it was going to hurt like hell giving it away.
