Here I am, nine months pregnant. It
doesn’t seem real. Me, pregnant, about to pop any second, with a human, that I
made on purpose. Well I guess it does seem a little real, that fart I just
ripped is real (there’s no containing it these days), my acid reflux is
real, that kick in my cervix is definitely really…unpleasant. I always thought
that if I were pregnant, I would be writing about every single magical or
horrifying day. I even bought two Kate Spade Journals to chronicle it all since
I have a bad habit of writing things and not finishing them or posting them.
Well, it appears my bad habit is just not writing these days at all. I have
maybe three entries in that cute little Kate Spade journal?
I wanted to give a real account of what
it was like to be pregnant, that was my original plan. You never hear a real
account anymore, or at least I felt like I never did. I find generally two
types of mothers who will tell me things. There are the horror story mothers,
who make up the majority of my mother-in-law and her six sisters. You hear
terrible shit like, “I rolled over too quickly in bed and pissed myself.” Or “I
felt like I had a bowling ball between my knees the last month.” My personal
favorite came from my sister in law (what is it with my husband’s family?) who
said she almost killed her husband when he commented the large laundry pile and
said that every time she bent to put clothes in the dryer, it felt like her
vagina was going to fall out. I think she also asked him how would he like to
have his dick hurt for nine months?
The other type of mother is the one
who must love her children so much she sees all this unpleasantness through
rose colored glasses. My mother is this type. She would tell me all the time
that “it wasn’t that bad” or “I don’t really remember” and that she wasn’t
really uncomfortable. I suspected her of being a dirty liar because I knew she
wanted grandchildren. I saw the pictures of when she had my sister, the ten
pound monster baby. Mom looked like she swallowed a beach ball. She still
looked beautiful, but not comfortable in the slightest.
I guess I went into my pregnancy
with the worst of expectations and I found myself pleasantly surprised. I got
nauseous in the afternoons but never threw up. I got a little tired but that’s
pretty much my default state anyway. I love a good nap. I thought giving up
alcohol would kill me, but it didn’t. I thought I would gain an enormous amount
of weight, another default setting of mine, but it’s been in check despite my efforts
to eat as much chips and chocolate as possible. I’m at 37 weeks and can still
pick up things off the floor with minimal discomfort. I just did some laundry
and my vagina is still in place, I’ve had no swelling in my hands or feet. I’m
still wearing my wedding rings and my already size ten feet did not grow
another size. Other than the heartburn and fatigue, I have to sometimes remind
myself that I’m pregnant. Except when I have to turn over in bed, then I feel
like a land monster.
So imagine my surprise at my last
appointment when my doctor said I likely wasn’t going to make it to October 2nd,
my due date, because the baby’s head was “very low.” I had mentally prepared
myself to go over by a week or so, meaning I would have about a month left. I
had heard it was common in first time pregnancies. I thought I would be one of
those women who would tell her friends, “I was like, get this baby out of me.”
And I still could be, the jury is still out on that. Selfishly, I just want to
make it past my hair appointment tomorrow. My roots are out of control. After
that, bring it on. I’m not in a huge hurry, I’m not miserable; I’m just kind of
bored with being pregnant. I’m tired of waiting.
So, I have made the decision that
I’m not going to drive myself crazy thinking I could go anytime. I’m not going
to be on pins and needles, I’m not going to sequester myself in to the house.
I’m not going to go and find a bumpy field and drive over the rows. I can’t do
that anyway, I would have to go too far to find a field around here and there
are still crops in them.
No, I’m not going to do any of
those things. I’m going to go about my business with the hospital bag packed.
I’m currently working from home,
because I feel the most pregnant and uncomfortable when I’m commuting into the
city. Especially in 90 degree heat and humidity. I saw that my favorite autumn
squash soup is back at Panera Bread so despite the weather, I decided to go
there for lunch today. While there, I got an email from my husband confirming
he’s going to have friends over for poker tonight. I’m totally good with that,
I tell him to golf and do all this stuff while he can. I asked him since I was
out and about, did he need me to pick anything up at the store for him? He
replied he would like some Baby Daddy beer at the liquor store down the street
from where I was. This aptly named beer is his new favorite.
I went to the liquor store and
walked the aisles. Before I was pregnant and even early on, I still did the
alcohol shopping after grocery shopping. But, in the past few months, Josh had
taken to making his own beer runs on his way home from work, so it had been a
while before I had been in a liquor store. I couldn’t find this damn beer. I
paced and paced down the cooler, remembering that my doctor told me that
walking could get my labor going. I stopped when I felt a twinge. Oh. Shit.
Nope, it’s gone. I think it was just a mild cramp, but then a thought occurred
to me, what if my water breaks in here? Oh god, wouldn’t that be the trashiest
birth story? The kind of story that would make my friends and family roll their
eyes and say, of course, her water would break there. And I will insist, “no, I
was getting beer for Josh, I haven’t been there in months!” And no one would
believe me. The only thing worse is if I was at a gun show, which is the first
thing my husband thought of a future father/son activity when he found out we
were having a boy.
I remembered that Josh said they
didn’t seem to restocking his favorite beers so I grabbed a backup brand he
liked and got the hell out of there. On my way home, I had a thought: at some
point, this thing is going to happen. The biggest thing in my life. And then it
will be the birth story, the story I tell my son and my family when they ask.
And it could have started in a freaking liquor store. And it’s a separate thing
in New Jersey, they don’t sell alcohol at grocery stores here. I can’t fudge my
way through it and say I was just there picking up pickles and ice cream or
some cute shit like that. Nope, I was buying my husband a beer called Baby
Daddy. A beer with an abnormally high alcohol content. That’s how our family
rolls, junior.
It’s a lot of pressure. I mean, my
son isn’t going to want to hear what could possibly happen. “Well honey, my
doctor told me your head was just behind my cervix, and she told me to go home,
walk around, and have sex. And I didn’t really feel like walking, but your dad
did a hell of a job.” Or, “I was trying for the second time to get skunk spray
smell off the dog and then my water broke as I was bending over the tub.” (Also
a true story, our dog got sprayed by a skunk last week and he still smells
pretty funky, and we are kind of “waiting it out”).
I mean, not that any child really
asks this, but it’s not like we got pregnant in a real classy way. “Well son,
it was a snowy weekend in January and we decided to go see the Revenant. I
really like Leonardo DiCaprio and your dad wanted to see what this bear attack
was all about. I snuck three little bottles of wine in the theater for your father
and I to share but he was so wrapped up in the movie that I drank all three.
Then we had you.”
I guess whatever way it happens
isn’t important, just that it happens and everything goes well. I’ll tell
myself that as my hair is in foils this weekend. It’s just interesting that
everything I think is going to happen never does. I always thought that my
water would break at some convenient time in the middle of the night, and I
would gently wake Josh and we would make a smooth, short drive to the hospital together.
But now I’m realizing it can happen anytime, anywhere, and we could be sitting
in rush hour traffic going into the city. Or I might have to shake Josh out of
one of his Baby Daddy induced deep sleeps and then I will have to explain the
bruises to the nurses…
Ok. Now I’m officially freaking
myself out. I’m going to go drink some iced tea and take a bath.
