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I'm pregnant.
Everyone around me - my family, my friends, my spouse, the overzealous girls on the online forums who are trying to conceive - are gleaming with excitement for me. For them, it's all sunshine and lollipops and nursery rhymes and comparing maternity bras.
But I am terrified that this thing growing inside me will never let me be alone.
Right now it looks like a mutant seahorse, a character Tim Burton would have dreamed up. And I know I'm supposed to be excited, but it's frightening to think there's a human inside of me.
This little creature is literally stealing my blood supply and rarely gives me a moment's peace. So far, it has caused cramps, insomnia, frequent urination, nausea, and has cost a small fortune. And it's only been a few weeks! I haven't even heard it cry, and I'm already stressed.
Most of all, I'm worried that having a child means I will never again be alone. Those quiet moments when I enjoy a long, hot shower, or have the apartment all to myself for the day are forever gone. Soon there will be a wriggly helpless being, and I will be responsible for keeping it alive.
My wife is incredibly independent, and we do plenty of things on our own. Even when we're in the same space, we're often content while not interacting much. Once the baby is born, even if I'm physically separated, I know my mummy brain will always be umbilically attached, even when the kid can grow facial hair and earn a paycheck.
I know I should be grateful - even floored - by the miracle of biology. But now I'm just incredibly freaked out thinking about how this freight train has left the station and is barrelling ahead at 110 miles per hour.
This wasn't unplanned. I didn't get knocked up after a night of drinking on the town. I wasn't some man's wife who forgot to take her birth control. I'm a lesbian who cannot easily create another human being on my own, so I turned my body over to science: A fertility doctor poked and prodded and injected and inseminated in the hopes of making a baby for my wife and I to coo over and care for.
I never felt the pressure to have a baby because I've been an out lesbian since age 17. When I came out in the 1990s, marriage wasn't an option - and no lesbian I knew was having babies. I thought I might become an aunt, but never a mother. One would think that would make it all the more gratifying that I'm becoming a parent, but now I just feel petrified.
When I started trying to conceive, my head felt like it was in the right place. My wife and I had tossed around the idea for several years with increasing seriousness. For most of my life, my biological clock whispered "go play sports" and "sun bathe on tropical islands with a frozen drink and a hot lady". Now it had finally changed course and was screaming "make a baby!"
I watched other ladies waddle down the street with their baby bumps proudly displayed as a symbol of accomplishment and joy. I immediately felt jealous. I wanted to be pregnant, and I wanted to give me and my wife a baby that was ours.
But so far, the reality has not matched the fantasy.
Being pregnant reminds me of the deception of a first kiss. As a teenager, I fantasised for years about what my first kiss would be like, all while looking at teen heartthrob posters in my bedroom. I knew just what I'd be wearing and how perfectly moisturised their lips will be, how it would be the most perfect moment. Then when the real thing happens, it was some gross boy with halitosis slobbering all over my face!
At some point, I found the right person to kiss and it's been every bit as magical as I imagined. I pray that that will happen with this baby. I'm waiting for those happy hormones to kick in that make pregnant women so excited to have a little bugger kicking them from inside.
I'm hoping the sheer panic becomes a blissful codependency, or at least a dull acceptance.
Washington Post