Chapter Eighteen

Mason

When we got back in our room, I threw myself onto my bed and didn’t speak for a while, like two hours, actually. Thoughts kept going on a loop through my head. I was part female. I had a baby in me. But did I want to have a baby? What would everyone think? Was it some kind of cruel joke? Could I raise a baby? Did Conrad want to raise a baby with me? What if he didn’t want to be a father? I was part girl. My brain kept going back to that. And I was so much of a girl that I was going to have a baby. Conrad lay next to me the whole time, neither of us saying a word. He rested his chin on my shoulder.

And the thing was, I had already started to think of it as my baby which left me quite perplexed. I wanted to lay there a couple more hours, but I had to get up to pee. When I got back, I threw myself onto my bed again. “This so surreal.”

Conrad sat on the bed with his legs crossed.

I sat up and faced him. “What am I going to do?”

“I guess you have a lot to think about. Would you want to keep the baby or give it up?”

I looked down at my abdomen. “I know this all seems so impossible, but it’s my baby. I heard its heartbeat. There’s a person growing inside me. And it’s not just about me. It’s your baby, too.”

Conrad let out a laugh. “We’re going to have a baby. We’re going to be dads. It’s so obvious now,” he said, cupping his hands under my stomach.

“Yeah, now. Before there was no way I would ever think it’s because I was pregnant.”

Conrad rubbed his hands up the sides of my abdomen and lay his palm on the front.

“Look at that. It’s amazing, Mason.”

“Even though I’m a freak of nature?” I asked, my lip quivering.

“You’re not. You’re perfect. That’s our baby in there. Holy shit. We made a baby.”

“It’s so unbelievable.” I blinked back my tears. My life had changed overnight.

Conrad’s face fell. “It’s all my fault.”

“What? No. I chose to have unprotected sex with you. It never once crossed my mind that I’d get pregnant from it. I trusted you when you said you got tested.”

“But like the doctor said, your partner breached you. I pretty much totally missed.”

I wiped away some of my tears that escaped with the heel of my hand. “Dude, I impaled myself on your penis, over and over. It could’ve been just as much me. It takes two for this to happen.”

He took a deep inhale and slowly let it out.

“The two of us mistakenly did this together,” I said.

Conrad scratched his head. “Do you think that’s why we’ve had so much sex?”

“Had lots of sex because I have female reproductive organs?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at Conrad.

“I don’t know. Maybe your clock was ticking. Isn’t that a thing?” He bit his thumb and bounced his knee. I had rarely seen him nervous.

“I don’t think people’s clock tick at nineteen. And I sure hope you had lots of sex with me because you wanted to.”

“Of course, I did. I didn’t mean it like that. I love having sex with you,” Conrad said, pulling me into a hug.

“But I guess that’s it for all of the sex.”

“We can have plenty more sex.”

“How could you say that after everything you learned today?”

He took hold of my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “You’re still the same Mason Donnelly. And now the father of my child.”

I wiped away some more tears that rolled down my face.

“Come here.” Conrad pulled me onto his lap, wrapping his arms around me, and I cried into his chest. He started crying, too, and after an hour of weeping, we fell asleep in each other’s arms.

***

Conrad and I sat side by side in the OBGYN’s office, and when the nurse called my name, all eyes were on me.

“C’mon,” I said, and Conrad followed me back with the nurse.

Once I got weighed and peed in a cup, which seemed silly to me because there was no denying there was a baby in me, the nurse took my vitals. Then we waited for the doctor, and I shook from the cold. They make you wear a gown but then keep the office the same temperature as the North Pole.

“It’s freezing in here.”

“I’ll keep you warm,” Conrad said, wrapping me in a hug. The doctor knocked on the door.

“Hello, gentleman. I’m Dr. Rosen. So, I hear you’re pregnant, Mason.” She offered a gentle smile and pushed her wire-framed glasses up on her nose.

“That’s the word on the street.”

“And you didn’t know you were experiencing menarche?”

“No.”

“So then you won’t know the date of your last period or when you were ovulating.” She pulled up a stool and sat across from me.

I shook my head. “Nope.”

“And what day do you believe you conceived?”

“Um, probably that one week through the weekend or maybe a few weeks after that. God, I don’t know. We’ve um...” How to word that we had been going at it like mad.

“Do you recall the date of the beginning of that one week?” she asked, sounding like she was saying a riddle.

That was a date I’d never forget. I gave her the exact date we started our sexathon.

She pulled out her phone and typed something in. “So, if that date is correct, you are right around three months pregnant and should be due about … October 15th.”

“Um, I was, oh God,” I sputtered out, putting my hands over my face.

“What were you going to say? Don’t be scared. Feel free to tell me anything.”

“I was super horny those days,” I said, somehow knowing it wasn’t any of the other times we had sex that got me pregnant.

“Probably the peak of your ovulation and also good to know.”

I exhaled. “That, wow, makes it even more real.”

“Do you have any questions before I begin my examination?” she asked, putting her phone on the counter.

“Like ten million.”

“Shoot away.”

“Did I develop breasts because I’m pregnant?” My gut knew that wasn’t why, but maybe if she said yes perhaps, it would somehow make me feel better about having female anatomy. Maybe it was only on the inside and not the out.

“I think you’ve always had slight breasts, but your pregnancy hormones increased their size, and they might get larger. And since it seems you went through puberty at an older age, I’m going to say late in high school, they start out small. Just mosquito bites and sometimes, they’ll be tender, and then they grow larger over time.” So pretty much the exact opposite of what I wanted to hear.

“Oh, great.”

“That doesn’t mean always.”

“My brain is on overload. I need to know so much, but all I keep thinking is I’m pregnant. How stupid was I to let it go this long? I mean look at my stomach. Thank God it wasn’t really a tumor or something because I’d probably be dead in a few days.”

“Your stomach is quite pronounced for only being just over twelve weeks, but you didn’t know. I’m sure the thought never crossed your mind. But you should take better care of yourself health wise.” Now she sounded like Conrad.

“Yeah, I got that now. But you pretty much said my stomach is ginormous for how far along I am.” It now felt like this huge weight. Carrying around how different I was than everyone else right there on the front of my body.

“Ginormous isn’t quite the proper term. Some people carry their babies differently. And you have a small frame, so sometimes, it becomes much more apparent.” The past couple of days it kept coming back to my smallness: my small penis, my small frame, my small boobs.

“Now, I want you to lay back and scoot your butt to the edge of the table.”

“Okay,” I said, lying back.

Then she pulled out the stirrups. “I want you to put your feet up in these. I might have to do some adjusting once you get them in there.”

I put my feet up in them, and I felt so exposed and began to tremble. It kept getting more real and scarier. Conrad took my hand and squeezed his fingers between mine.

“I’m going to raise them up and push them back. I want to make sure I have good access to your anus.”

“Is it like this for everyone?” I asked.

“I need your legs a bit further back than my regular patients because the area I need to examine is lower. If these aren’t comfortable for you, you can hold your legs back if you’d like.”

“I think this is okay.” I really didn’t think it was. It was kind of uncomfortable and a whole lot of awkward.

She started her exam. Finger up my ass once more. “I am feeling for your cervix and you might feel some pressure. I’m going to take a little culture sample and do a pap smear, too.”

Conrad smiled down at me and petted my hair. Down below I felt some weird pressure and a bit of stinging.

“How are your breasts feeling? I was informed you said they were quite sore,” she said while still with things in my ass.

“Yeah,” I said, wincing as I felt a weird scraping feeling inside me.

“Unfortunately, they’ll be like that until after you deliver. You might want to get a nice lined bra or sports bra. It might help with that.” She sat up and placed the instruments she used on a tray and pulled off her gloves.

“Oh, God.”

“It’s normal. Even after the baby is delivered, they’ll be sore for a while, and if you decide to breastfeed, you might experience some nipple pain in the beginning,” she said, helping me take my feet down from the stirrups.

“I’ll be able to breastfeed?”

“Yes, I believe so.” She held out her hand and helped pull me up to sitting.

“I know this sounds awful, but I’ll look like such a woman.”

“You don’t have to breastfeed. I know you have a lot on your plate with this. But it’s good to decide these things early on sometimes.”

“Like what else?” I asked. There was too much to think and do. My brain was sure to have some sort of meltdown soon if I didn’t have one first.

“Where you want to deliver, birthing classes.”

“But I thought I couldn’t deliver the baby.”

“You’ll need a cesarean, but it’s still a delivery.”

“So why do I need birthing classes then?” I asked.

“If you go into labor before your scheduled cesarean, it’ll be a good idea to become familiar with breathing techniques.”

 My heart thudded hard. “This all sounds so scary.”

“You have no reason to be scared. You’ll be great. Okay, now I’m going to write you a couple prescriptions. One for prenatal vitamins and one for some antibiotics. These aren’t harmful during pregnancy or to the baby.”

“What do I need antibiotics for?” I asked.

“Since your vaginal canal is off of your rectum, we need to be aware of bacteria. Your prescription should be ready to pick up in about twenty minutes.” Well, that went and made everything sound even worse.

“When you leave, check in with the front desk so they can schedule your next appointment. And congrats. If you think of any more questions, just call the office.”

“Okay, thanks.”

I made my next appointment, and we headed to the store to pick up my prescriptions. “I have to call my mom. What is she going to think?” The thought made bile rise in the back of my throat. I had to tell my mom that her nineteen-year-old son was pregnant.

“First thing, she might mention is that you had unprotected sex.”

“It shouldn’t have resulted in this, though.”

“Do you feel happy at all about this?” Conrad asked.

“I’m still in a bit of shock, but I don’t know, it’s kind of amazing in a way, too,” I said. That’s if I pushed away all the fear, anxiety, the what if’s, and thought about the fact that I was a pregnant man, and then yes, it was kind of amazing.

“It’s very amazing, Mason.”

And I started crying again because even though it was amazing, I was still pregnant, so very really pregnant.