Waiting for my luck to turn

I’m currently enjoying the state of not being pregnant, and the fun of losing 10 pounds a week while keeping up my rigorous donut regimen. The postpartum period is a lot more pleasant than the 41st week of pregnancy.

Other than the fact that it dragged on for a week too long, my pregnancy was pretty easy. I had no significant discomfort or any of the nasty side effects or secondary symptoms, except for a few small stretch marks. Since I’d had such an easy time, I was worried that I hadn’t been mentally toughened up enough to handle birth, and I braced myself for a comparatively unpleasant childbirth process. But the birth itself was also easy and not too uncomfortable, as these things go.

So, having certainly used up all my good karma on the birth, I figured the newborn period would be a pain in the butt. Again, not so much. JB the Baby acts like she’s competing in some “World’s Mellowest Baby” competition. I’m getting 8 hours of sleep a night (albeit in 3- and 4- hour chunks), and on the rare occasions she cries she can be quieted in a few minutes by cuddling. Mostly she just sleeps or looks around with big googly eyes and makes funny faces. Sometimes she pokes herself in the face. I sit around and keep myself entertained with books and TV while I wait for her to wake up and need something. It’s nowhere near as difficult or as stressful as I was expecting.

I assume that this is some temporary newborn state, and that sooner or later JB will perk up and start giving me trouble. I’ll try to enjoy this while it lasts.

40 weeks and counting

Dear everyone who is calling me twice a day,

The reason I haven’t called or emailed to tell you about the baby being born is not because I am overwhelmed with new motherhood, laying on the floor incapacitated by contractions unable to reach a phone, or using your new grandchild/niece as a pawn in a strange mindgame.

It is because the baby has not been born. Yes, I know it’s supposed to be any day now. Yes, I am getting pretty tired of being pregnant. That’s why I’m ignoring you and everything else that reminds me of said pregnancy. When the baby is born, I will let you know.

love, Clare

How to tell if you are nine months pregnant

If you are licking clean a bowl of tiramisu as your spouse gets up from the couch, and you hand him the bowl and say “Honey, if you’re going in the kitchen could you get me some tiramisu or a piece of cake or a donut?”, you might be nine months pregnant.

***

Like a belly massage from the inside

This will sound pretty weird, and you’ll want to skip this if uterine parasites gross you out, but when Wiggly the Enormous Nine-month-old Fetus stretches her legs and pushes against my abdominal wall with her butt, it feels good.

But when she does the same thing with one foot wedged against an ovary? Not so good at all.

Carry on.

***

If you fail the paternity test you’re getting the silent treatment

Sidekick: [annoying comment about animated commercial on TV].
Me: [insightful witty comment about art in general totally refuting his lame point].
Sidekick: Art shmart
Me: I don’t know why I bother talking to you.
Sidekick: Because I am the father of your child!
Me: Dammit.
Sidekick, in Nelson Muntz voice: Ha-ha!

***

Conversation with a five-year-old

Does it look like I’ve had the baby? Do you see a baby anywhere around here?

***

Nature vs nurture vs the universe’s sense of humor

Since we found out we’re having a girl, the sidekick and I have been more interested in the next-door-neighbor children. They’re fraternal twin girls, 4 years old, and unlike the twins I’ve met who seem to match, between them they cover a spectrum of female characteristics.

The other day the twins proudly showed off t-shirts they’d picked out for the first day of preschool. One twin’s said “Princess” and the other twin’s said “Soccer”. This sums up each of their personalities. One of them, Girly Twin, always wears dresses and enjoys drama and all things princessy. Sporty Twin, on the other hand, always wears shorts and t-shirts and loves being athletic. She’s making decent progress with the whiffle ball and bat.

They have pretty much the same genes and are being raised in the same environment, so how are they so different? Did each of them have the innate potential for certain interests when they were born?

This is why the sidekick and I fear that in spite of our introverted geek dork personalities and a fairly gender-role-balanced home environment we’ll end up with an extroverted princess daughter who wants to wear short skirts and cheer for boys.

D-Day minus 100

There’s 100 days to go until my due date, so it’s a good time for a brief pregnancy recap.

The worst things that happened when I was pregnant:

• Weeks 9 – 13: Ravenous crazy hunger, combined with all food suddenly tasting terrible. It was like one of those ironic punishment afterlives from greek mythology. I subsisted on banana bread and oatmeal for weeks.
• Week 14: I throw up so violently that all the capillaries in my face burst and I have blood-red eyelids and red spots all over my face like a plague victim. It takes 3 days to fade.
• Week 17: My feet swell up like sausages with toes on the end. I have to buy men’s flipflops because I can’t get my own shoes on my already very large feet.

The best things about being pregnant:

• New big boobs! Cleavage is fun.
• Hormones + prenatal vitamins + no alcohol for months = thick hair, strong nails, and perfect skin. If it wasn’t for the belly I’d be totally hot.
• Having an excuse for everything. No one gets offended if I don’t want to go somewhere, refuse food someone’s made for me, or suddenly decide to take a nap. And I can’t lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk without straining an ab, so all manual labor is out. I can indulge all my latent princessy whims without guilt.

So far my pregnancy experience has been totally normal: first trimester a nightmare of discomfort and fatigue, second trimester comfortable and kind of fun. Now all I have to do is eat like a horse, gain 20 more pounds, and not let my giant belly tip me over.

Operating Instructions

Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year Anne Lamott, 1993.

Being more pregnant than I’m used to (i.e. at all), I’ve been taking a break from reading fiction to cram as much prenatal information into my brain as will fit. I’ve read Pregnancy for Dummies, Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy, Buff Moms-to-be, Your Pregnancy Week by Week, and a small portion of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists website. So, brain full of impersonal and occasionally conflicting health information, I wanted a non-medical professional writer’s perspective on the mental and emotional impact of having a newborn. I have a mental fetish that goes “acquiring information = everything will work out fine”. Anne Lamott kept a journal in her son’s first year, and I figured it would give me the insight into the brain-rewiring process that I hear new motherhood is.

The book turned out to be very entertaining, but not something I could really identify with. I’m having a baby, but I’m not a single, broke, churchgoing, recovering alcoholic. Fortunately. Unfortunately, I’m also neither an insanely hilarious writer nor living in a redwood grove in northern California. I didn’t feel like I had much in common with Lamott, but I was still mesmerized by the book and read it twice. The narrator’s very personal voice and her witty self-awareness were compelling.

One of the most interesting parts of the book was the mental tricks and habits Lamott uses to manage her emotions. Since giving up alcohol she had to learn how to deal with her feelings without artificially dulling them. I’m not an emotional person and haven’t felt much rage and confusion since my early 20’s, so it was interesting to follow along with the mental workings of an intelligent articulate woman trying to sort out her own emotional extremes. It didn’t sound at all like my internal monologue, but it was interesting reading and maybe when the hormones kick in I’ll feel just like she did.

My favorite phrase of Lamott’s is “I’m on a bullshit-free diet”. I’ve been thinking that to myself occasionally since I read the book – seems like a good way to approach life.