Was it real?

So, a very good friend of mine is pregnant. She's going to be a mother in - I believe she said April. Regardless, it's close. She's got a baby belly, and wonders if the kid's practicing for soccer with all the kicking it does.

She's going to be a good mom, I know.

But at one point, not all that long ago, she was frustrated with her husband, and I pointed out to her that while it's very real to her, with swinging moods, missing punctuaton :) and hormones gone wild... for him it may not be.

I couldn't help but think of my ex. And that I doubt now that she was *ever* pregnant. We never actually got her to a doctor - she went by a cheap indicator from wal mart. And she came back from visiting her mom... well, no longer pregnant. I don't remember ever seeing any hospital bills come up from a miscarriage, though she said she went to the hospital... and for me, the whole thing just wasn't real. (No, I learned over the years not to trust her, even without her disease messing with her mind.)

But this isn't about trusting her, it's why it didn't seem real to me. See, I wanted kids. My "ideal" life was to go to college, settle in a career and make enough money that my wife would only have to work if she *wanted* to (heh, yeah, long before this economy.) Raise a couple kids, drive a minivan, the whole nine yards. So this was something I wanted, something I'd thought of. I'd hoped I'd be as good a parent as my own were.

When she told me, my reaction was a bit of excitement, and a bit of "ok... now what?" OK, a lot of the second. Don't recall seeing the test. And of course we had months to worry about all the baby stuff.

But all the stuff, stereotypical and biological, that men expect from a pregnancy... well, it never got far enough along, if it existed, to happen. So it exists somewhere in the same realm as "Getting the winning lottery ticket" and "Having a knockout blonde parachute into your lap with a few million dollars and a twelve pack of beer." (OK, redhead for me, but I digress.)

I wish I could trust her, but I can't help thinking that it was her mother manipulating the fact she was just *late* to get her to jerk me around.