Well, it’s official. I’m knocked up.

In a testament to either patience or stubbornness, I managed to hold off on taking the pregnancy test and waited until my annual doctor’s visit to find out for sure.

My gynecologist’s office is in SoHo, in the building across the street from the Prada store, a building perhaps best known as the site of one of the city’s hardest-to-book day spas, the kind with its own product line and numerous endorsements from celebrities. As I rode up on the elevator, I decided that if I wasn’t pregnant, I’d storm the spa and, Uma Thurman be damned, demand a cheer-me-up pedicure.

I passed the longest 10 minutes of my life in the doctor’s loft like waiting room, looking at the artsy but feminine framed black-and-white photos on the walls and at the hip but feminine outfits on my fellow patients. Everyone here was my demographic: youngish, hip-ish, New York-ish, and – I couldn’t help but notice – pregnant.

I took note of the varying maternity fashions. One woman with a large diamond was in head-to-toe black stretch material, the kind of wear-anywhere, dress-up-or down outfit you find in those Bloomingdale’s “pregnancy survival kits.” Another, with little girl barrettes in her hair, wore a luau dancer T-shirt and a striped nylon skirt, full-on exposing her way pregnant midriff. A third, in stretch pants and an embroidered Indian tunic, was sporting what could be best described as the prenatal yoga look.

I wondered what my pregnancy style would be, and thanked the gods of fashion that ponchos were in this season.

But, wait a minute, I didn’t know if I was pregnant. Was I jinxing myself with my fashion fantasies? I headed for the Poland Spring cooler. Maybe the water was lucky around here.

Soon enough, I found myself being escorted to my doctor’s office for the usual pre-check-up chat on the other side of her desk.

“So, what’s new?” my doctor asked. She was about five years older than me. Every gynecologist I’ve ever had has been the curly-haired, wide smiled, Jewish, Dansko clogs wearing type: the earnest big sister.

“I think I’m pregnant,” I announced as I sat down.

“And that would be … a good thing?” the doctor asked. “Oh, yes, a very good thing! Definitely,” I said, practically hopping back out of my chair. Any traces of my former ambivalence were suddenly gone.

“Well, then, let’s do a test,” she said, smiling. A few minutes later, seated in an examining room in a gown, I had Andy on the cell phone, giving him the good news. Once we’d rejoiced a bit, I told Andy I’d call him back.

The doctor was beaming. “This is so exciting,” she said. “Usually people come in knowing whether or not they’re pregnant. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten to break the news the old-fashioned way before.”

“Really?” I said, closing my cell phone and placing it in my bag.

After a quick exam, I scheduled my first officially pre-natal prenatal for a couple weeks later. I exited the office and hit Broadway, dazed and giddy. Throngs of people passed by me. Horns honked. I found myself happy to be right where I was. Much as I have come to love Brooklyn, there is nothing like Manhattan bustle to match a hopped-up mood. I wouldn’t share my news with friends and family for weeks, but I could share it right now with the city.

A few blocks later, I realized my mind was running away with thoughts and interfering with my walking. If I had a more regular relationship with organized religion, I would have gone somewhere to pray. Instead I headed to another kind of New York temple: an ultra-luxe designer baby boutique in NoLita. Since I was still too superstitious – and probably too cheap – to actually buy anything, it wouldn’t quite be worshipping at the altar of consumerism. But a girl can still look, drool, and dream.

The clothes were so cute, so sweet and soft, you could almost forget that babies drool and poop – and I chose to, preferring the fantasy spawned by luxury fabrics that growing inside me was my own little angel who I could surely swaddle in a cloudlike cashmere receiving blanket, safe in the knowledge that he or she would never soil it. The $100 booties struck me as precious rather than over-the-top ridiculous. I was going to have a baby!

But a moment later, I was knocked off cloud nine.

“I know what you’re doing here, Eve,” a voice from behind me said. I turned to find Courtney, wife of my childhood friend Matthew and my nemesis, standing behind me, sporting her trademark faintly smug grin. She was also wearing what appeared to be a maternity top. Courtney was about five months pregnant. But she looked more blurry and blobby than pregnant, which I noted happily.

For months, Courtney had been acting as if she knew we were “trying,” dropping gloaty looks and comments into otherwise innocuous conversations. Now could she possibly tell I was pregnant? Maybe pregnancy heightened one’s pregnansense. Or maybe Courtney was literally a witch. I decided to employ my time-worn dealing-with-Courtney tactic: Deflect and avoid.

“You look great!” I lied. “How are you feeling?”

“A lot better now that I’m in the second trimester,” she said. “Morning sickness can be a real killer.”

I couldn’t tell if this was gloaty or insinuate-y or both, so I nodded and said, “Mmmm … I can imagine.”

“So, cashmere baby blankets,” she said, gesturing towards the one I was holding. “Pretty extravagant.”

I started to nod, thinking I was busted, but then Courtney continued, “It’s a great gift for them. I’m sure it’s something Allison would never buy herself.”

Of course! She thought I was here buying a gift for our mutual friends Dave and Allison. A co-ed cocktail party cum baby shower was being thrown for them by our Gatsby like loft-dwelling friend Alejandro. We’d received the invitation in the mail last week, but I’d been so preoccupied with my own pregnancy news that I’d totally forgotten it. So much for Courtney’s pregnansense. (The jury was still out on her other qualities.) “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Cashmere does seem sort-of impractical for a baby.”

“Mm-hmm,” she said. “But I guess there’s no harm in looking.” The maybe gloaty, maybe insinuate-y look was back in her eye.

“We’ll probably just end up getting something from their registry,” I said, deflecting her ambiguous implications with a shrug and heading for the sweater table.

The Brooklyn Chronicles appears each Friday. The author can be reached at kschwartz@nysun.com.