week in review, 20 weeks, 5 days

Week in review. It's like the New York Times but with more fetus. 
Without further adieu, here is the last week[1] in my very own, narcissistic, pregnancy related news[2]:

Thursday, 8/1

As if I haven’t suffered enough pregnancy related indignities[3] – (I barely told you about the DIAPER RASH[4] that enveloped my boobs basically forever) – on this day I had to endure another atrocity: hemorrhoids that-which-shall-not-be-named. Now. I try to be real on this blog. Like, real real[5]. But a long time ago, when I was young and naïve and thought of when I would have kids and never if, after reading a particularly “compelling” and “eye opening” and “utterly disgusting” first person account of pregnancy article in that venerable, hard hitting journalistic masterpiece, SELF magazine, I made a profound and steadfast decision: when I got pregnant, I would do so without getting hemorrhoids that-which-shall-not-be-named. Because, honestly, who needs that? NOT THIS GIRL. Needless to say, I was very disappointed in my body and it’s impaired decision making stick-to-it-tive-ness. Yes, friends, Thursday was a rough day.

But instead of perseverating, I spent the next several hours determined to blow my entire paycheck on all-the-pretty-baby-clothes (like these hipster threads and these, some of which C says are too gender-neutralizing-burlap-sack but which i say are gimme-those-overalls!).

Friday, 8/2

Oh, Friday. You were a good day. We had dinner (smitten kitchen charred corn crepes with grilled veggies, some fish that C caught, fresh guacamole and mango salsa, none of which I took pictures of because HUNGRY) with friends (only one of whom affectionately inquired about the alien growing in my belly). The weather was perfect, the food was fresh and for the first time in a long time, I really just wanted a beer. *rubs beer belly baby belly*

Saturday, 8/3

With C on call at the hospital, I visited a friend and her 3 month old son. While pleasantly mesmerized by his baby fingernails and dissipating male pattern baldness, I was woken from my reverie and spontaneously reminded by my dear friend that – wait for it – baby boys have "huge balls." *Duly noted*. Also, both our sons will probably go into therapy because their mothers had such a conversation.

Moving right along. I spent the afternoon determined to find not-ill-fitting professional maternity pants and to consume frozen yogurt – but not in that order and the latter was really just as a vehicle for unrestrained candy consumption. BECAUSE I CAN.

Sunday, 8/4

C and I venture forth into baby-store-landia where we encounter various breeds of expectant parents. Brutish dads (“SHE (referring to his wife) WILL BE WALKING EVERYWHERE. SHE WILL NEED THIS STROLLER!”), aggressive moms (one friendly mother-to-be literally yanked a stroller out of my hands and shoved me aside, such was her passion for parenthood), the parents weighed down by incomprehensible data they aggregated from consumer reports magazine (seriously, how is that even still a thing that anyone but my father uses?). We didn’t buy anything but we did amuse ourselves by placing stuffed alligators in Ergo carriers and throwing around faux baby sacks from stroller to stroller. Because, you know, MATURE ADULTS TOTALLY READY TO PARENT.

Monday, 8/5

It’s Monday morning and the fetus-child is unhappy to be in court by 8 am. I know because while I wait for my client’s case to be called, he (baby, not client) is pummeling me from the inside. At which point I have this moment like um, hey, can everyone see what’s happening here? Or is that just me? MMMkay.

Late in the day – when I’m looking especially round and glowing with pregnancy bloated-ness – a grizzly middle aged man at a furniture store greeted me with thickly accented eastern European English, "a blessing is coming!" (Mark this as the first time a stranger has pointed out that I am pregnant. So, umm…everybody wins?).

Tuesday, 8/6

Ohhai, Tuesday. What the hell is that? OH RIGHT. NAUSEA. Because, you know, I was getting used to not keeping a Ziploc of cheerios on my bedside table to ward off the early morning queasiness.

Today I think serious thoughts about work life balance and my role as lawyer-mother (which is not to be confused with earth-mother). Being a walking uterus, there’s no downplaying that like, you know, other shit is going on in my life. I have some really deep thoughts that are presently escaping me. Mostly I read this and the take away is something like, this would be more compelling if the author wasn’t a professor at Harvard and also, balance! (Okay, truthfully, I have a lot of feelings on this. But I’ll save them for not-a-week-in-review-shortcut-of-a-post, pleaseandthankyou).

Wednesday, 8/7

Oh Wednesday, I thought you’d never come. Wednesday is when I prove to you guys that I actually do have a bump (see below). And that I put it under a black dress pretty much on the regular.

Also: YOGA! Which was especially super tonight because (1) the woman to my right was “41 week and a few days pregnant”; (2) someone always offers Tums; and (3) my teacher instructed us to “allow the flower to open at the base of your pelvic floor[6]!”

 

(Keeping it classy by replacing my face with my iPhone.)

So there you have it. What about you guys, how was your week? 

(Has anyone else noticed that I waffled violently between using the past and present tense throughout this post? I know, my grammar is appalling. As is my decision-making ability, apparently.)

<End rant>.

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[1] I know what you’re thinking. But its just Wednesday. Just go with it, okay?

[2] By which I mean that I swear my entire life isn’t consumed by baby. For example, this exciting tour through my uterus does not include such storied events as the many episodes of Orange is the New Black which I have consumed in the last week or the totally-working! record player that our neighbors threw away and we now have on display in our living room and many other REALLY EXCITING PURSUITS.

[3] And by that I mean basically the same ones all pregnant ladies suffer – heartburn, having to pee all the time, hormones!, nausea, having to pee all the time, erratic sleeping habits, mostly related to having to pee all the time, etc. – except that mine included shingles so I win. (Also, on a related note, I actually really don’t mind all this <motions to aforementioned symptoms but mostly to the peeing, oh the everloving peeing!>. Being pregnant feels… good, even?)

[4] Because that is the official diagnosis. And the cure? More cow bell! Wear cotton bras, or better yet no bras (because, you know, nothing screams working, professional like that…), apply anti-fungal cream, rinse and repeat. I could not make this stuff up. Clearly the universe is PREPARING ME. It’s all so meta.

[5] Seriously, someone please filter me. I cannot help myself.

[6] I did not do this as instructed because I was pretty sure that I would just pee myself. Also, I don’t listen to direction very well.

pants-less wonder, 17 weeks, 2 days

Sometimes it’s the moments you least expect that let you know that yes, you really are, pregnant.

It’s not that I wake up at least 2-3 times a night to pee; it’s not that I now lean forward while peeing, with my torso roughly parallel to the tile floor, tilting my uterus to extract every last drop and per the musical medical wizardry of my doctor husband, sing the alphabet before I get up off the toilet JUST TO MAKE SURE THERE’S NO MORE PEE[1]; it’s not that my gums bled for a week and a half every time I lightly brushed my ever-loving-extra-sensitive-so-much-blood-rushing-to-every-vessel! teeth; it’s not that I could eat pad thai noodles or vegetarian sushi all day every day and, still, have only a mild and fleeting interest in chocolate; it’s not that my boobs are suddenly like ohhai!-we’re-no-longer-just-on-the-cusp-of-a-measly-b-cup-please-and-thank-you; it’s not that I’m in full on, beyond cliché, nauseatingly domestic nesting mode, transparently ogling the strollers of the neighborhood moms and practically giddy over a mint condition “arm’s reach co-sleeper” we scored for forty bucks at a yard sale; it’s not that I cried snotty, messy, sobs over my granola just one minute in to the latest StoryCorps and scrambled to turn off the radio while C, alternately flabbergasted and amused, looked on, mouth agape; it’s not that I returned to pre-natal yoga[2], where a series of wall-sits were compared to “each minute of a contraction!” or that during these wall sits our instructor, who clutches her vagina when demonstrating something involving the pelvic floor, allowed us to scream out in pain, as though in labor, and the woman two down from me took her word for it and belted out, in between some kind of part orgasm/part shriek, kinky mother fucker son of a bitch!; it’s not that I got pregnancy-shingles[3] and have now been blessed with a new mystery what’s-the-word-I’m-looking-for?-oh-right-SEXY rash that seems to be consuming my left boob[4]; it’s not that I heard the beating heart, with my own two ears, or saw a giant fetus head, with my own two eyes; and it's certainly not that I'm complaining about any of this because, hello-this-was-the-goal.

No. It’s not any of these things.

There is just one thing that strikes me as the real moment when I felt like, aww shucks, I really am pregnant. It was earlier this week, when it suddenly came over me that I am carrying a human fetus truly, deeply, sincerely and genuinely: COMPLETELY UNINTERESTED IN WEARING PANTS.

Oh sure, they all still kinda, sorta fit (ish). The bump is definitely, happening, emerging, present. But also intermittently concealable depending on the time of day and the amount of pad thai I’ve consumed in the last 24 hours. And sure, there’s one pair of stretchy black umm-could-these-possibly-pass-as-everyday-pants-in-a-professional-environment? J.Crew pajama pants that I could live in. But otherwise, I am just, well, 100% not interested. In fact, it’s more than disinterest – it’s an all consuming revulsion. And I’d like to say that it’s no big deal. That it’s summer. That I’ll just wear adorable, well fitting, pregnancy chic sundresses for the next five months. But we need to be honest with ourselves. We all know what’s coming: MUUMUU![5]

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[1] There’s always more. THERE IS ALWAYS MORE EFFING URINE.

[2] Which I secretly kind of love.

[3] Yeah. That’s definitely hyphenated.

[4] I know, I know, you’re on the edge of your seats. More soon.

[5] Vast Waistband Salesman: “Many of our clients find pants confining, so we offer a range of alternatives for the ample gentleman: ponchos, muumuus, capes, jumpsuits, unisheets, muslin body rolls, academic and judicial robes.” 


Homer Simpson: “I don’t want to look like a weirdo.  I’ll just go with a muumuu.”

adventures in prenatal yoga or, what is a vaginal sphincter? 15 weeks, 2 days

I’m going to be honest. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to yoga. Which is surprising. Because in every other way, I’m a progressive stereotype; a liberal wet dream. I’m a vegetarian, NPR is always on in at least one room of our home, I drive a Subaru, I’m a human rights lawyer, YAWN. By all indications, I should be a full time practicing yogi; I should be on a silent retreat in India and combination juice fast at least monthly. And believe me, there’s part of me that wants to be. Part of me that really wishes I really liked yoga because, you know, all the cool kids are doing it.

So it was with great trepidation that I ventured[1] into my very first prenatal yoga class on Wednesday evening. A long, narrow room, lined on either side by proverbially glowing pregnant women, in various compilations of stretchy spandex tanks and leggings and a healthy dose of lululemon. All sitting serenely, with their hands on their massively-pregnant-bellies, mats before them, and what are those giant couch cushions doing behind them? And me, by far the smallest and least pregnant among them, at barely 15 weeks, scrambling nervously to pay cash and quietly explaining to “Bec” that it was hi, my first time, <incomprehensible>, I’ll just go to the back, <incomprehensible> mmmkay? I felt like a fraud. I felt inexplicably naked without proof of my pregnant-ness on full display.

Soon, after everyone had used the bathroom 18 times because ohmygoodness uterus! bladder! madness! pregnant stereotype! we began. If only I had known then what I know now – kegels-vaginal-sphincter-pelvic-floor-oh my!

First, we went around the room and everyone said how far along they were, how they were feeling and what they hoped to get out of their practice.

In sum:

More than half of the women casually mentioned they were between 35-39 weeks.[2]

Literally every single woman, when describing how she was feeling, offered – in a kind of devastating, terrifying, such-a-dark-place-harbinger-of-what’s-to-come! kind of way that belied her glowing face and beautifully rounded belly – I am so, so, tired. SOVERYTIRED.

Other such positivity included, “I feel fine, I’m just annoyed with the world” and “I’m just happy to be away from my other kids.”

VERY WELL THEN, SAFE SPACE, etc.

As I wondered distractedly whether this was what AA was like, it suddenly became my turn. Again regressing to some version of an insecure 7 year old on her first day in a new school, I mumbled my name, cheekily joked that I was just happy to be done with the first trimester, HAR HAR HAR – upon which time I realized that for many women in the room, the first trimester was, you know, approximately 45 weeks ago. If that wasn’t enough, I then proceeded to lie[3], closely followed by an attempt to brown nose? win points with women I hardly knew and might never see again? be totally deep and sincere because 10 minutes in and I was already feeling SERIOUSLY ZEN? offer some kind of olive branch by stating how impressed I was to see all of these full term women doing yoga and how I *cringe* hoped I would be like them one day! Everyone smiled, polite laughter, <buries face in hands.> (Or something like that. I’ve blacked it all out at this point.)

With that over with, we proceeded to the yoga. Let the estrogen roll!

If it wasn’t already apparent, this yoga class was different. The words “vaginal sphincter” were dropped at least half a dozen times – and yet I remain uncertain about what exactly I was supposed to be doing with my lady parts during those unexpectedly frequent moments? A lot of women took pee breaks[4]. And there was much discussion of Kegels[5] and “the pelvic floor”.  

There was also some deep ommm-ing and, admittedly, some legitimately difficult yoga poses. During one especially terrifying encounter, we were asked to partner up. Luckily!, I was paired with a woman who is clearly 39 weeks and carrying triplets. She was supposed to hold my wrists and lean back. And I was supposed to support her. Because, you know, I’m 5’7 5’3, 115 and we just met. The look of terror in her eyes as she slowly leaned back was, honestly, kind of priceless[6]. Also, TERROR!

90 minutes later it was all over and I was at peace with the world and all of humankind. I still don’t know where my vaginal sphincter is but I do plan to return to find out.

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[1] I chose this word carefully. Because the way I – the least pregnant among us – entered this yoga class was distinct: the other women –and I say this fully knowing that I am one of them ohmygodsoverysoon – waddled.

[2] You just take a moment to let that sink in. 37 weeks is full term, like ready to have a baby right this very minute.

[3] Truth: I said I was 15 weeks so I would sound cool. I was really 14 weeks, 5 days. <guilty look.>

[4] And I was one of them.

[5] Seriously though, please raise your hand if you’ve done Kegels. Did I just totally miss the boat on this?

[6] Update: mother and baby (babies?) are fine.