(Or How My Pregnancy Nightmares Came True at a Very Manageable Level Two Out of Five)
A follow up nobody asked for but here we are.
When you are nine months pregnant your brain does things. Unwelcome things.
Things that arrive at 2am as fully produced nightmare scenarios with no off switch.
My nightmare was not the usual stuff. It was not labor complications or whether I’d
be a good mom or any of the reasonable fears a person might have when they are
about to be responsible for an entire human.
My nightmare was flash floods.
Specifically, the Texas flash floods that were all over the news at the time. People in
boats. Animals on second floors with food left out hoping they’d still be alive when
the water receded. Helicopters. Chaos. The whole thing.
And every night my pregnancy brain would run the same scenario.
Flash floods hit.
A helicopter comes.
We must go.
We have kiddo. We have Chubbs. What is the plan?
I want you to know I had a plan.
Dad wears a Baby Bjorn with kiddo. I wear a Baby Bjorn with Chubbs. We walked to
the helicopter as a complete unit. Nobody gets left behind. The helicopter people
do not get to have opinions about this. We are leaving together or we are not leaving.
Dad did not know he had been assigned this role. I did not tell him at the time
because I was nine months pregnant and running nightmare evacuation drills in
my own head and some things you just keep to yourself.
The flash floods did not come. We were fine. Kiddo was born. Chubbs met him and
was unimpressed.
My other nightmare was the allergy.
I was so scared kiddo would be allergic to Chubbs. Chubbs was my girl. My
shadow. My ride or die. She had been in my bed since we brought her home and
she was not going anywhere, and I knew in my bones that if my child was allergic to
my dog I would be faced with a choice I was not prepared to make.
I had already made the choice in my head. I am not proud of it. The choice was me
and Chubbs on one side of the house and dad and kiddo on the other side living
their normal family life while I lived in the Chubbs wing. Irrational fears and
modest square footage has never stopped anyone from having grand architectural
ambitions. Rehoming was not on the table. The Chubbs wing was the compromise I had
landed on before the baby was even born. Kiddo arrived. Chubbs sniffed him.
Life continued. No hives. No wheezing. No allergy.
I exhaled. Chubbs continued shedding on everything we owned. We moved on.
Kiddo had been dealing with asthma for years. The pediatrician did what
pediatricians do — generic inhaler, take some Claritin, see you next time. Except
we kept coming back for steroid treatments because the generic inhaler wasn’t
doing much of anything. Eventually someone suggested we try a specialist who
might have more insight.
Thanks so much for that suggestion. After years of Claritin and an inhaler that
wasn’t working. Really appreciate the escalation.
Dad said allergy specialist. I agreed. They said allergy panel. I looked at kiddo —
the same kid who had a complete breakdown at a routine finger prick blood test
and still asked every doctor he saw afterward if they were going to steal his blood —
and I said absolutely not.
Give him an inhaler and a nose spray and we will call it a day.
The nice doctor did exactly that. I called it a win.
Dad did not call it a win. Dad made his own appointment. Dad took kiddo to get the
full allergy panel.
Dad called me from the appointment.
He’s allergic to dogs.
I want you to understand the silence that followed that sentence.
Nine years. Chubbs has been in this house for nine years. She has been in his
vicinity for his entire life. She sheds on everything in a five-mile radius. She has been
on every surface, in every room, breathing her little Chubbs breath into the
general atmosphere of this home for nine years and his face has never once fallen off.
He’s allergic to dogs.
Dad started listing things we needed to do. Wash the sheets more. Vacuum more.
Run the Roomba on an extra session. Basically, just don’t live like Agnes the Junk
Lady from Labyrinth. I said yes to everything. We have Roombas. We just push a button.
We are not Agnes. We can do this.
Chubbs stays. That was never in question. I called it a day.
They came home. Kiddo walked in looking like a person who had survived something.
Mom. They stabbed me. They stabbed me a lot. It hurt so bad.
I know buddy. I’m sorry. That really sucks.
And I’m allergic to dogs. I can’t be around Chubbs.
Here is where it gets complicated.
I looked at the sheet. Fifty things on this panel. Scale of zero to five. Zero means
You’re fine. Five means carry an EpiPen and have a plan.
Dog was a two.
A two.
I looked at dad. What the fuck. It’s a two. He’s fine.
Dad said he’s still allergic. Technically. The doctor said so.
And now my kid goes everywhere announcing his dog allergy like he’s presenting
medical documentation at a checkpoint. Do you have dogs here? I’m allergic to
dogs.
Every house.
Every location.
And I’m standing there doing the math. Eight years. Level two out of five.
Zero incidents.
I can’t correct him because he just got stabbed a million times by people he now
refers to as vampires and the doctor did in fact tell him he was allergic to dogs and
I don’t want to gaslight a child who went through a certified trauma to get that
information.
But also. It’s a two.
Chubbs does not know any of this. She doesn’t know kiddo got tested. She doesn’t
know kiddo scored a two. It didn’t interrupt her day one bit as long as she got her
snackies and pets. What she does know is that the bath situation has escalated recently
and nobody has explained why. She is pissed about it. She has lodged a formal complaint.
It has been noted and ignored.
She still sheds on everything. She still follows me from room to room like I might
disappear if she takes her eyes off me for thirty seconds.
My pregnancy nightmare came true eight years later at a level two out of five.
Chubbs remains in the home. Fully exonerated. Slightly cleaner than she’d prefer.
Not bad for a Tuesday.