Toeing the Gender Line

I had just helped a coworker find her online email so that she could find an order which was placed before Christmas and never arrived (not exactly a work-related question) and was about to leave my office to check up on some real work that was going on, when she asked me: "So, do you know what you're having?"

"Yes," I replied, with a smile, "We're having a baby."

When I came back into the office a little later, my male office mate, who has been present at many of these inane conversations, was still laughing.

When I ask people why they need to know the gender of my impending child, they tell me it is because it makes it much easier to buy something for the kid. Even after several explanations, I fail to understand why. A stuffed teddy bear is a stuffed teddy bear. A bottle is a bottle. As for clothes, I myself do not recall what I was wearing much before the age of two, and at the age of two I recall being so uninterested in the idea of wearing clothes that I spent most of my time trying to get out of them. (This was the era of Super Me, who leaped over tall leggos in nothing but a towel tied around the neck. Super Me could get out of her street clothes and into her superhero costume in 5 seconds flat.)

One person tried to entice the gender out of me by painting a tantalizing story of a woman who, by virtue of knowing the gender of her child, was able to decorate the nursery in an "airplane" theme, with the logo of an airline stenciled on the wall, and elements of flying scattered about the room. I will leave it to the gentle reader to determine which gender was entitled to this sort of design concept, but my immediate thought was: a bedroom full of airplanes! I would have loved that!!

At some point we will no longer be able to keep Stanley's gender a secret (although, I suppose if we named him/her Pat and dressed him/her in yellow all the time, the secret could be prolonged for an indefinite period of time), and at that point I can imagine gender related presents being steered towards Stanley's perceived best interests; train pajamas if Stanley is a boy, Cinderella pajamas if Stanley is a girl. But I hope Stanley can determine his/her own interests without outside interference. If Stanley my son wants to be a ballerina when he grows up, then ballerina he shall play. If Stanley my daughter wants to be a car mechanic when she's older, I'll get her to change the oil on my car. If Stanley my child wants to be things which fall within the artificial gender divide, that's okay too.

Don't know what to buy for Stanley before Stanley meets the world? Buy Stanley something you'd have liked as a baby. Stanley will like these things too. Stanley will like everything that goes on-- it'll be so much more interesting than where s/he is now.

Cleave Land

I was, after all, prepared to gain amusingly large amounts of weight. I was prepared to suddenly be unable to see my toes, and to look in the mirror in profile and wonder whose soccer ball I had accidentally swallowed. I was prepared for a lot of things, even, in a vague way, larger breasts; but I was not prepared for cleavage.

I've always been happily small breasted, meaning that not only was I small in the chest, but I was proud of this fact. Breasts are nice in that they define the female body, but large ones make one look top heavy and ditzy, and furthermore are like overlong hair; in the way of almost every thing. I've always liked the size mine got to be. Enough to prove to everyone that I am female. But not big enough to need major structural support 24-7.

Until now. I've outgrown almost all of my upper body underwear. My shirts are straining not only at the belly but at the chest as well. And yesterday I happened to look down at myself wearing a fairly low-cut shirt and noticed for the first time that I have grown cleavage.

"Holy Shit!" I yelled out. "Shit! Shit!" This was enough cursing for my husband to come running into the bedroom, where I was staring at myself in the mirror.

"What's wrong?" he asked, concerned.

"I have....cleavage," I gasped, holding the last word out like a dirty diaper. My husband's concerned look collapsed into a relieved smile.

"It's okay," he said, "It's only temporary."

Any man who can confidently reassure his wife that her cleavage is temporary is definitely someone worth keeping. God, I love this man.

Stereotypes and Kilroy

A coworker asked me, with a downright gleam in her eye, whether I was "finally" getting tired.

"No," I said. I have been having some trouble sleeping but I'm not going to divulge these personal details just to satisfy that hungry gleam. In any event, all in all I feel just as perky as I always have, restless even, now that I've been grounded from certain activities such as racquetball or soccer. The gleam disappeared and the woman actually said, "dang."

This hunger of my fellow female acquaintances to share in what they feel should be my discomfort is disconcerting. A woman who works downstairs and fancies herself in charge of parking took it upon herself to insist to the new HR person that one parking space is "always" reserved for people who are pregnant. "The last girl who was pregnant," she told the straight faced HR woman, "was so huge she could barely get out of her car." The HR person couldn't help smiling as she offered me the space; she knew I would turn it down. If I didn't play the Disability Card when I was one leg short of a working pair after ACL surgery while still in college, hobbling around like a madwoman from class to class across a 135-acre campus, there's no way I am going to play it when I have two perfectly good legs and a sudden aching desire to play tackle football. Talk about weird cravings.

I did however have the common experience recently of dreaming that we had the kid. Stanley was fine, although pretty old to be a newborn, and the main thrust of the dream was that I had completely blanked out the whole process of giving birth, which, on the one hand, was just fine with me, but on the other hand was disturbing, because apparently I had been awake and aware during the process and Stanley somehow ended up with the name Kilroy. "Kilroy?" I kept asking my husband, "Why Kilroy?" "I don't know," he replied in the dream, "You kept insisting that it had to be Kilroy, so that's what I did."

Stanley Kilroy Hilarius. At least the name is anything but stereotypical.

Limited Time Offer! Get Your Doula Now!

Our last prenatal appointment, which was ostensibly to check my weight, blood pressure, urine, and make sure that Stanley is still in there, was supposed to last 15 minutes. But the woman who came in to greet us was a midwife, and she was clearly drugged to the teeth with thoughts of Baby. "Glorious!" was one of the first things she said, outside of introducing herself to me and to my husband (the first time he has actually been acknowledged without prompting--admittedly a point in her favor). The dialogue went downhill from there.
"Fantastic!"
"Isn't it wondrous?"
"Oh joy!" were all interjected into the conversation, which she carried on mostly by herself, needing only small amounts of prompting ("No problems, just a small problem sleeping, but I hear that's norm-") to tell me all about breathing techniques and homeopathy and how badly she slept when she was pregnant and whatever else came to mind before she ran out of air and had to breathe in more. Both my husband and I were now late for work, and so I tried to shorten my answers to monosyllabic yeses and nos, until finally, 45 minutes later, we were let go.
Please god, shoot me now.

That was a few days ago. Since then it's been mostly quiet on the baby front, to my infinite relief, but today a woman sauntered into my office on another pretense and asked that tired old question: When are you due? Distracted, I told her, which she used as an opening to introduce herself as a doula, and did I know about the doula program and here was all this information about doulas, and she would be happy to answer any questions I had about the doula program-
Please, please go away now.

But wait! There's more to giving birth than just midwives and doulas, not to mention registered nurses, doctors and... oh yeah, the woman actually giving birth... in case you were worried if you were going to be able to keep it all straight in your mind, we've introduced...

wait for it...

wait for it....

the prenatal coordinator.

We get to see the prenatal coordinator next month, where she will most likely ask us if we've given any thought to a birth plan.
Yes, I expect I'll say. I plan to give birth.

Belly Dances

"When are you due?" As usual, I am being questioned about something irrelevant to the problem at hand, this time a scanner which randomly refuses to email the recipient his/her documents after being asked to do so. Nevertheless, because I am at work and wish to maintain a polite facade, I answer the question absentmindedly, "April 10th."

I look up to see her staring at my belly, which, after five months, has finally expanded enough to display to the world that I am, indeed, pregnant, not merely chowing down too many hamburgers.

"Are you carrying more than one in there?"

"No," I say shortly, and get back to what I was doing, subtly trying to get through to her that this is not an appropriate conversation.

She's not socially adept at picking up other people's don't-wanna-talk signals, so she barges on, "Are you sure?"

Am I sure? See, there's these things called doctors and blood tests and the all-knowing ultrasound, which gave ample evidence to all sorts of things, including that there's just one Stanley Hilarius. "Yes," I said, "I'm positive."

"Uh oh," she says, meaning to convey that she thinks I am larger than I should be, and walks away.

Since I actually know, from having seen many a picture of women at the same gestational period as I am, that the amount one shows is not indicative of anything except individual body type, and that, on average, I'm actually on the lower side of the "showing" scale, which suits me just fine. Apparently this type of comment about twins is actually fairly common, it seems, and the only explanation I can think of is that people are surprised that when someone is pregnant, their belly gets larger. You wouldn't think this would surprise people, but obviously it must. What gets me is that, on seeing an obviously pregnant belly, people's brains turn off entirely. I am arguably the only thinking person in a room full of other people now, simply because of this paradox of pregnancy that has only been going on for 300 million years.

Insult to Injury

I've never been too keen on having to buy clothing but in the last few years the chore has gotten even worse; ever since the teeny-bopper-Britney-Spears-look-a-like-contest has spilled over into office wear and what passes for "jeans" in the women's section of the department stores I try to breeze through. I've gotten away with bypassing the women's sections all together for many things, and going for the men's apparel which, thank god, doesn't bend with the fashion wind, but now that I am confined to the maternity ward my choices have gotten very, very narrow. With this ever diminishing choice of clothing has come the following two observations:

1) All pregnant women are ten feet tall.
2) All pregnant women aspire to look like Britney Spears. No, not this one. This one.

I am so out of it. Plus, I'm way too short.

Still I've tried to make the best of it, buying clothing which ill-fit me when I was normal proportions and now is even worse, and buying iron-on hemming material because there is no way I am wasting my time sewing anything on these monstrosities. I had a moment of pause as I contemplated the damage I might do by ironing two different height cuffs by accident; then shrugged and remembered that whatever I did was bound to be better than my recent alternative: balled up pieces of cloth held up by paper clips.

I must be looking a lot younger though, in my new Britney Spears style and roughly hemmed jeans; today I was carded at the checkout counter.

For non-alcoholic beer. I can't win.

Sharing the joy

My husband and I were attending a surprise 50th birthday party for my brother-in-law, and we were in a small hole-in-the-wall New York City eating establishment. We didn't know these people very well, and I had expressed some distaste at being in a group of people who would inevitably find out our current state of affairs. On the other hand, I told my husband, this was a rare opportunity for him to experience the Baby Button Phenomenon that I had repeatedly complained to him about.

We finally found someone to chat with, having successfully steered her away from Baby, and were deep in conversation about her sheep dogs, when the woman beside me, whom I will identify only as Peroxide Blonde, interrupted the three of us to interject the following:

"Epidural, all the way."
"Epidural?" my husband repeated, staring at her blankly.
"Yes," she said, "I don't believe in natural childbirth."
"We were talking about dogs," my husband said.
"I know; I'm just saying, it's all about the epidural."
"....We'd rather talk about dogs."

Maybe she figured out that she'd been overly rude, or maybe she thought we were exceptionally unfriendly. In any event she didn't say another word to us for the rest of the evening, thank god.

The Sounding

We were scheduled to have an ultrasound this week so as instructed I drank an entire quart of water before 7:15. The ultrasound was scheduled for 8:15. This meant I had to wait in agony for an hour. My mother informed me that lo those long thirty years ago they had made her drink huge amounts of water also. This effectively means that ultrasound technology hasn't advanced anywhere since the middle of the last century. That's comforting.

We were supposed to stop by the lab for blood work first, but upon trying to check in they informed me I had to have a piece of paper which I definitely didn't have, so we went upstairs to get said piece of paper and the receptionists just stared at me. "What piece of paper?" they said. That was my thought. Don't we live in a paperless society now?

Finally we were ushered into the Ultrasound Room, the big event, with the ultrasound technician greeting me with a smile. A small silence ensued, and then my husband introduced himself. This is our irony: I get more attention than I really want, while he gets completely ignored.

It turns out the water torture was really just to get a good look at my cervix (and did anybody ask me if they could go snooping around my private parts from the inside??) and then I was allowed to become normal again. Finally we got to the part we were really interested in: getting a good first look at Stanley Hilarius.

Stanley's looking pretty good! Stanley has a head, two arms, two legs, a brain and a four chambered heart, all of which we got to see. More importantly, Stanley really is in there, swimming around, a fact we knew, of course, but couldn't really imagine until now.

And we did, in the end, find out Stanley's gender. And for those of you who are dying to know, it turns out Stanley Hilarius is..........


either a boy or a girl. You'll find out soon enough.

Make it so, Number One

I, a male co-worker, a female vice president and two more female co-workers were sitting in the cafeteria eating lunch, when all of a sudden the female vice president launched into what she must have thought was a riveting tale involving the potty-training of her newest grandchild. This conversation was hardly lunchtime material, nor was it particularly interesting or entertaining, so I drifted off to think of more important things; items still outstanding on my desk, what we might have for dinner that night...how come the Starship Enterprise is able to make whooshing noises in the vacuum of space...then my male co-worker, apparently noticing my sudden non-attentiveness to the conversation at hand, commented wryly that I would be participating in these conversations in the future.

Cautiously I looked around. Of the five of us, three of us were indeed engaged in the toilet discussion. The only two who weren't were him and me. I was just barely in the minority and had to tread carefully at this point. But I forged ahead anyway.

"I'm pretty sure," I said slowly, "that I will never find the subject of potty-training, or any other bodily function, to be an acceptable conversation topic at lunch time." Whereupon three people stopped talking and left my male co-worker and I arguing about whether eating could be considered a "bodily function" and whether it was an acceptable mealtime conversation piece. We happily decided it was and then continued eating our lunches in peace, having shut out the potty-train for the duration.

Sometimes you need help with your behavior modification project. Thank god I'm not the only sane person at the lunch table.

Athleticism runs in the family

Speaking of the tango.... Stanley seems to be practicing one.
"They say.." that around 17 or 18 weeks you may start to feel the wriggling and kicking that's been going on for at least 10 weeks now, otherwise known as "quickening", aka "feeling the baby." "They say" it may feel like gas or butterflies or popcorn popping. In other words it's kind of hard to describe. Whatever Stanley's doing in there, it manifests itself as little bumps in the night, giving me the mental image of a fish in a fishbowl bumping up against the glass, or the antics of a would-be gold medal gymnast using my insides as a trampoline.

A miracle? Not really; just basic physics and common sense. A blessing? I don't think so--who really wants to be kicked? Weird? Yes, I'd agree with that.

So far the antics have been too few and far between to get an accurate feeling of just when to call my husband over to feel my jumping belly, but I'm sure the time will come. And just as surely I'm betting that this fairly new sensation's interesting-ness will begin to pale as Stanley grows bigger and kicks much harder. But for now it's an interesting distraction which marks the next stage of this game. We've cleared another base. Though sometimes it seems like time stands still... things are coming along.

Two to Tango

I have mentioned just once in the company of my fellow man that I am pregnant and so far I have been given or offered two books, a bunch of magazines, a bag of maternity clothes and tons of unsolicited and mostly conflicting advice.

My husband has mentioned that I am pregnant to just about all of creation and no one has offered him a thing. That just doesn't seem right.

It takes two to tango, after all, and he's in the same boat as I am. I seem to be doing most of the rowing at the moment, that's true. But his job as navigator is just as important. And since I'm the one who is clearly busy at the moment you'd think all these offers and gifts would be directed at the one whose hands are free. But no, they look right through him. He's just a guy. None of the parenting books and magazines are even really geared towards him. Because, you know, he's going to be the father. Fathers bring home the bacon. They don't cook it. Fathers coach Little League. They don't change diapers. And fathers hold the newborn after it's born. They don't have anything to do with the nine months it took to bear it.

I don't buy it. I would never have embarked on this adventure at all if my husband had not only agreed but reassured me time and time again that I wouldn't be in the boat alone. I don't feel that I am pregnant, all by myself, with the guy who started it waiting on the sidelines while I bask in the glow of pregnancy and soak in all the sudden attention. I feel that we are pregnant, as much as that is biologically impossible, and I don't think it's right or fair for people to pass over him and focus solely on my rounding belly. I am more than a vessel with a fetus, and my husband is more than just the sperm which got us here. Treat me like a person, treat him like pregnant partner, and stop, for godsake, offering me random manuals on child care. Children don't come with off buttons, you can't set their time, and they certainly don't come with manuals which neatly describe every possible behavior with an easy to use troubleshooting guide at the end.

There's no map for the navigator either, and no instructions on how to efficiently row this boat. We're just going where it seems best.

The Nosey Narrow Minded

"So," says a perfect stranger, "have you had an ultrasound yet?"
"What?" I'm trying to get my lunch together, and was not expecting conversation not related to passing the salt and pepper.
"Have you had an ultrasound yet?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Um..."(None of your business?)
"Too early?"
"Okay." (Can I make it any more clear that this is none of your business?)
"My daughter's pregnant too."
"That's....great." (That is none of my business.)

I told my husband about this conversation and he came out with this gem:
"Yeah, I just had the ultrasound yesterday and it turns out that the baby has 60 fingers and no head. I've been crying about it for the past 24 hours and finally managed to think about something else until you brought it up just now. Thanks for asking."

The same person accosted me later in the kitchen and asked me about whether I know about "belly bands" because her daughter has some. I told her I had, and that I had it "all under control." She finally got an inkling that I wasn't really appreciating these conversations, since she said "I'm going to ask alot of questions" to which I replied, "Well I might not answer, I feel this is my thing." To which she finally replied "Okay, I won't ask." Which implies I finally got through her thick head.

Or maybe I should have stared at her and said: Are you trying to tell me I'm fat??

I am treading on thin ice because I want to be known as the competent, professional, well-adjusted career woman, but instead my co-workers, especially the female ones, want to drag me down into the realm of un-reasonable, tempermental, rude pregnant woman. I don't think they do this intentionally, but they remember their experiences as the pregnant woman at work and they've read too many pregnancy guides and somehow they have bought into the idea that everything that a pregnant woman does is related to pregnancy. And that every pregnant woman wants to talk about ultrasounds and sore breasts at lunchtime and stretch marks and maternity clothes at break. That I don't find these topics of interest or something I want to discuss with people outside my immediate family is a source of frustration and mystery to them. My male colleagues do not have the same reference point, and so even though they are prone to making dumb comments they do not have the same intensity of feeling or the force of opinion or the need to say anything at all unless I bring it up. Is it any wonder, then, that I have few female friends?

I feel sorry for these women, I really do. It must be so sad to live in a world so narrow.

It Takes a Village

I knew that pregnancy was an obvious condition, but I was unaware that most people consider it a community project.

I was working on something (I forget what, but the key is that I was working, because I was at work) and a co-worker came into my office to hand me a "hilarious" book which she found very helpful and very funny and even now, she was giggling as she handed it to me. It is called The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy: Or Everything Your Doctor Won't Tell You, and it is just that, everything you would discuss with your Girlfriends, if you had Girlfriends, which I don't. And, having glanced at this book, I'm glad that I don't. Nosey busybodies. But I accepted the book with good grace and thanked the woman profusely, who then proceeded to stand in my doorway for fifteen minutes and offer random bits of advice, from bottle feeding to the benefits of co-sleeping, all without my having to say a word. She ended by offering to give me her entire five year collection of Child Magazine. I asked her to let me borrow just one.

Having handled that burst of well-intended but unsolicited advice, I went about my work-day. An hour later I received a phone call from a nice but rather dull woman who works part-time downstairs. I hardly know her, but she was calling me from home to offer me her daughter's entire collection of maternity wear. "I know you've got a male colleague sitting with you there," she said, "So you can just say yes or no. We'll keep it low-key." Bewildered at both the offer and the secrecy, I said yes. When I hung up I started laughing hysterically, which got my (male) co-worker's attention. "What's funny?" he asked.

I tried to explain that I found all the generosity extremely funny, but he didn't really get it.

Clothing Issues

With a rapidly expanding midriff, getting dressed in the morning has become an issue. I should say "properly dressed": since most activities require something more substantial than sweatpants. The problem isn't that they don't make clothing for pregnant women, obviously they do, since pregnant women don't go around naked (we'd noticed this). It probably isn't even really a problem for most women, since by all accounts most women not only gamely wear their maternity wear, they are apparently eager to do so and get upset when they're not showing fast enough. But it is a problem for me, mostly because Carhartt doesn't make maternity clothes.

Neither does Orvis or Cabela's. What gives?

Where am I going to find a solid pair of work jeans? A truly warm jacket that covers my belly? Who's going to stack the wood and plow the driveway? And who says I can't go fishing while pregnant? Well, I can't... but only because I won't find waders that fit.

Clearly we all need to go back to the wrap around bearskin concept which was such a fad back in the Ice Age. Bearskins were the great equalizer. You can wear a bearskin however you'd like and call it acceptable clothing whether you're male, female or that other gender, pregnant. They were warm in the winter. In the summer, you'd wear it if you required protection from something, like bugs or the sun. Otherwise you'd just go around bearskinless. It didn't matter. Who would care? The fig hadn't been cultivated yet, and Adam and Eve hadn't been invented yet, so the whole must-wear-clothing thing was a long way off... things must have been simpler then.

Meantime, I'm making do with unzipped pants and various bands to hold them up, and hoping the clothing situation doesn't get too ridiculous. If I'm having trouble now, I can't imagine what it'll be like three months from now. Maybe by then I'll have procured a bearskin, and maybe a cave. I'll grunt at people who try to talk to me. They'll think it's just hormones and let me get away with it. I knew I could play that card someday.

Baby Business

We went to our next pre-natal appointment and the registered nurse confirmed the existence of the other being by finding the fetal heartbeat. It was pretty neat. WHANG! WHANG! WHANG WHang...whang.... WHANG! WHANG! WHANG WHang...whang.... the kid wouldn't hold still long enough, apparently, for the nurse to get an accurate count of the heartbeat. "It's the pressure," the nurse explained, "the fetus is trying to get away from." Thereby re-affirming the truth of the old adage like parent, like kid: Stanley Hilarius doesn't like all this attention any more than I do.

While we stood at the appointment desk to schedule the next visit, a chiming sounded and the women behind the glass, in a display of excessive sentimentalism which immediately made my hair stand on end, all sighed in unison. Apparently the father of the very new child gets to inform the world of his achievement by pushing a button which rings this chime. Great. As if enough perfect strangers didn't know all about the impending birth. What happened to a woman's right to privacy? Wasn't that the crux of Roe v. Wade?

I had called ahead to confirm the time for the appointment and while the woman on the other end brought up the information, a soft bell could be heard in the background. "Oop!" the woman said, "A baby has just been born." "Really," I said, mostly to make polite conversation. Then a new mother and her newborn apparently stopped by the desk and the woman started cooing. She's beautiful, she said to the new mother. This of course is a complete lie. Babies are not beautiful. After they've been in the outside world long enough, they're cute in a funny looking way, but they're not beautiful. And newborns are just plain ugly. There's really no other way to describe them. They look like any other human who might have been sitting in water and in the dark for the past nine months and then squeezed through a small opening. It's just not the way we're supposed to live our natural lives, and while I admit that this is the way we all come into the world I rather think it's not so much the way it has to be as a matter of poorly thought out design on the part of some busy fertility deity who forgot to add the finishing touches. If newborns were meant to be beautiful, they wouldn't be waterlogged on delivery.

Still, the women who sit behind the glass at the OB are in the baby business, after all, and presumably they are in the baby business because they genuinely enjoy babies. Many of them probably think full grown humans leave something to be desired in the beauty arena. So perhaps I should forgive them for being more sentimental about this baby business than I could ever be.

Of course Stanley Hilarius will be a paragon of human beauty his/her entire life. That goes without saying.

Let the Games Begin

Knowing that at some point things would become obvious, I finally made an announcement to my co-workers during an all-staff meeting. Congratulations were extended, etc, and really, that should have been the end of it. Right?

Wrong.

Now every conversation I have is tinged with references to either pregnancy woes or to the headaches of having children. People don't like to impart good news, apparently, just the bad stuff:

Me: I slept pretty well last night, except the dog barked in the middle of the night.
Female Co-worker: Oh, that'll change. Just you wait a few months.
Male Co-worker: Yeah, and then you won't sleep for six months after the baby's born, heh heh heh!

Ha. Ha. Who asked you?

Or this exchange after a rather beligerent co-worker had an inappropriate outburst at another meeting I conducted:

Female Co-worker: I thought you handled that very well, you never got defensive and you never lost your cool.
Me: Thanks. I didn't see losing my temper as being very productive.
Female Co-worker: Of course, with the little one on the way your hormones will probably take over and you might not be able to keep your cool, so if you ever have to blow off steam you can come talk to me.

Oh, give me a break. Not the Hormone Defense again.....

And, my favorite, sudden scrutiny over my eating habits. I've been pregnant for almost four months with nobody the wiser, now all of sudden when I eat a late lunch they assume I must have eaten before and now I am "eating for two."

Male Co-worker: Oh, eating again, eh?
Me: Uh... no.... I've just managed to sit down for lunch now.
Male Co-worker, oblivious to previous statement: Well, once you have the kid, you won't have time to eat so you should eat all you can.

I'm sorry... what?

Given that I'm not even really showing yet, I can't wait until I do so I can get all sorts of inane comments regarding pregnancy, my personal appearance and what the future holds. Maybe I should start commenting on my overweight co-workers appearance too. Oh, eating for two, eh? Or how about the woman downstairs who has a noticeable limp? Maybe I should start commenting on that. Hey, can I touch your leg?

Or, maybe I should just keep my cool, raging hormones or no.

Spilling the beans

Having exhausted the excuse of only being in the first trimester, la de da, we finally broke the news to the assorted elongated Family this past weekend.

Our first call, to my husband's sisters, was relatively calm and orderly, since they had both already guessed what was up. One sister-in-law had come up to visit us and brought as a gift a bottle of wine. We love wine and it was a perfect gift, only; we had stopped drinking. My husband made up some story about how we were watching our weight and my sister-in-law let it pass, but the gig was up. Another sister-in-law was engaged in a genealogical discussion with my husband, when all of a sudden he wandered off subject to talk about prenatal genetic questionnaires. So she was understandably suspicious as well. When we finally all got on the phone together, they were prepared.

Then we had to call my assorted family. From this I can tell you that everyone asks the same questions:

1) Are you going to find out the sex?

2) How are you feeling?

3) When are you due?

and they say the same things:

1) You must be excited.

2) I thought this was never going to happen.

It's hard to maintain a sense of excitement over and over again, especially in my case; if I had my way no one would know until the whole thing was over. But this is the beginning of my getting to be a public figure. Everyone will think they have the right to ask me questions they would never ask anyone else. People will try to rub my belly. Strangers will ask me when I'm due. And I will have to grin, bear it, and resist the urge to kill them.

On the other hand if we don't tell anyone we can't have a baby shower; and I plan to tell everyone we're having a boy even if we're not so I get alot of Tonka Toys. Baby showers are supposed to be for the baby but I have to test out all this stuff first to make sure it's safe, right? Any responsible parent would do so.

Anonymous

So far my mother is the only one who knows the joyful news. We've wisely decided to wait until the high danger of miscarriage is over to tell our family members. Me, I'm waiting until I actually look pregnant to break the news, mostly to dispel notions that I am getting fat.

But, admittedly its nice to have someone to be able to confide in, especially since she's (obviously) done this before, and (obviously) all parties survived the experience. So we had dinner with her on Saturday and she handed us an Expectant Motherhood book with a 1940 copyright (which, by the by, tell us with confidence that having alcohol is completely harmless--see sentence about us all surviving the experience) and what she called the most important book of all: Name Your Baby.

Since we don't yet know what species of child we shall have as yet, we just flipped through it for a while and announced names at random. "Brunhilde" was rejected out of hand, as was "Gunther." But then I came across: Hilaria, which means, "always cheerful." I fell in love with it at once. What better name with which to command your offspring to be happy and prosperous? What name would roll better off the tongue? Meet Hilaria, my always cheerful daughter.

"Yes," my husband said, "but what if it's a boy?"

"Why then," I replied, "we would name him Hilarius." And to prove how wonderfully apt this name would prove to be, I then cracked up. Simply imagining the introductions brought tears of joy to my eyes.

"Hi everybody, this is Hilarius."
"What's hilarious?"
"He's Hilarius."
"He thinks he's hilarious?"
"No, he really is Hilarius."

My husband brought me back from my joyful reverie to ask me what I thought of the name Stanley. He was clearly trying to bring us back into the fold of normal society and I wasn't buying it. Besides.... Stanley?? But I agreed we could name the boy Stanley if I could choose his middle name.

Stanley Hilarius. I see a shining future ahead.

Sick of the Morning

They call it "morning sickness" like they expect it to go away after 11:59 am. But like most things this is a misnomer. Morning sickness can occur at any time during the day.

When we found out we were pregnant, we started reading up on things. It's hard to weed through the quacky material and get to sensible advice, so I ended up with the statistic that almost 80% of women experience some morning sickness, while my husband had read that only 50% did. We argued about this for a little while and then I finally said, "Well, I still think we should have saltines in the house. That way we'll be prepared."

So we bought saltines. This is basically the advice our knowledgeable, worldly pregnancy experts give. They don't know what causes it, they don't know what helps it, they don't know why it goes away. Here, dear, just eat some saltines.

It started at a worktime lunch where I was gamely munching on a chicken caesar salad. I have chicken caesar salad every day at lunchtime. I like chicken caesar salad. Normally. But this day the salad tasted like cardboard with dressing, and I ate less than half of it. I saved it for the next day, and around 10am (when I normally start thinking about the lunch I will have two hours from now) I thought about my perfectly good chicken caesar salad, and felt instantly nauseous.

This is what they mean by "morning sickness"?

I cast around in my head for something that was not insanely gross like chicken caesar salad, and settled on a local Mexican restaurants side order special called simply "rice and beans." It's rice, beans, and cheese, all nicely cooked up and melted together. Together with some chipotle sour cream, it's a delight. This odd concoction was okay for me to swallow, while lettuce and chicken had become utterly unpalatable, to the degree that the mere thought of it made me sick to my stomach.

This was my new relationship to food. The choices I had became extremely narrow, and quite specific. I asked my husband to bring home hot and sour soup from the chinese restaurant, and he, deciding on his own to be creative, brought home seafood hot and sour soup instead of regular. That sent me on a downward spiral. It wasn't really all that different, but it was not what my narrow palate could eat. And this wasn't the famous cravings of pregnancy, but rather my settling on a food which didn't make my stomach curl when it was thought of.

Also, about this saltines thing. Don't bother. Saltines have nothing to them which make them the miraculous morning sickness cure. The only things that got me out of this slump was real food, and by real I mean; meat and potatoes. Protein. Carbohydrates. Stuff you aren't supposed to eat on a regular, singular basis.

By now the morning sickness has faded. The narrow palate hasn't. And so far I think I've kept my secret pretty well. I've switched my lunchtime meal from chicken to steak tips, caesar dressing to italian, and though my lunch mates have noticed the change, they haven't gotten suspicious about the cause. They'll know, of course, soon enough. Sooner or later, it'll become obvious. If they have the hindsight to look back at my sudden change of eating habits, the women in the group might do a mental "Ohhhhh!" But by then the scenery will have changed, I suspect. We'll have other fun symptoms instead.

Be vewy vewy caheful...

I went to my first pre-natal appointment and was told by the registered nurse that I could not do the following:

1) Eat deli meat, hot dogs, soft cheeses, or tuna fish
2) Drink acohol
3) Touch a cat
4) Play softball
5) Drive a motorcycle

I pressed her on items 1,3, 4,5. We've already surrendered on item number 2.

Item number one: Why can't I eat these things that I love?

Answer: Bacteria accumulates on food which is left out for too long. Tuna has too much mercury.

Me: So it's not about the food itself, but where it is and how it's prepared or where it's taken from.

Answer: Well.... yes.

Me: So I can eat deli meat. I just have to be sure the deli hasn't left it out for longer than they're supposed to. And I can have tuna as long as it is certified to be mercury free. So really, these are not things I should just not do while pregnant, it's things that people should do in general. Right?

Answer: Well, yes, ideally...

Me: So why not tell me this important health news before I was pregnant?

Item number 3: So you just said that toxoplasmosis is bad for the fetus?

Answer: Yes. If you go to someone's house with a cat, just ask them to put the cat in another room.

Me: But you just said it was okay if I had a cat, just not to touch the litter.

Answer: Well, yes...

Me: Am I somehow more likely to get it from someone else's cat?

Answer: Well, no...

Me: And just how common is it for babies to be born with a defect caused by toxoplasmosis, anyway?

Answer: Well, actually... pretty rare.

Me: So it's really not an issue.

Answer: I guess not.

Item number 4: What do you have against softball?

Answer: You could get hit by the ball directly in the stomach, and that could cause miscarriage.

Me: I have never been hit directly in the stomach in my life. In fact, I'm more likely to get hit in the head; I'm the catcher. And I have softball tournament this weekend, and I intend to play in it.

Answer: Well at this stage it would have to be a hit the equivalent of a car crash to cause any harm, so I guess it's okay...

Me: You mean hard enough to cause internal damage?

Answer: Yes..

Me: Well in that case don't you think I'd have bigger things to worry about?

Answer: I guess....

Item number 5: I guess you noticed I rode my bike to this appointment.

Answer: Yes, I really think that you shouldn't drive a motorcycle while pregnant.

Me: Why not?

Answer: Well if you were to fall or be in a crash, it could cause a miscarriage.

Me: Well I certainly don't want to crash. Am I statistically more likely to get into a crash because I'm pregnant?

Answer: Well.... no...

Me: Then I guess we're okay then, aren't we?

And then there were three (one was very very small)

When I told the registered nurse at the OBGYN that I'd gone off the pill in order that my husband and I might get pregnant, she tried to reassure me by telling me that it often took 6 months to a year before one found oneself in such a state.

This is what my brain took from that statement: You will be pregnant in one year.

I could deal with that: it gave me plenty of time to prepare for the idea of being pregnant and, even more importantly, of being a parent for the rest of my life. Imagine my surprise one month later when it turned out that what she meant was: You have a chance of getting pregnant any one of the next 365 days.

I wish she'd been more clear.

Suspecting something was up, I went to the drugstore near the office after work in search for that which I'd never searched for before; a home pregnancy test. Consequently I didn't know where to look. This turned out to be a fortunate circumstance since a co-worker sidled up to me as I was aimlessly perusing what turned out to be the headache aisle.

"Whatcha buying?" he greeted me.

"Uh," I said. After he left I snuck out and went to the opposite side of town to another drugstore.


Home pregnancy tests are stored under "Family Planning," by the way. And you really can't miss them, because they are bright pink. That's right, an item that most people would probably want to buy discreetly is packaged in a color which screams BABY! BABY! BABY! all the way up to the counter. But they did do their thing; two lines showed up almost immediately.

I'm sure every expectant mother remembers with clarity the moment they learned they were pregnant. I believe my exact words were: Oh, fuck.

Which is how we came to be sitting there, after all, staring at a pink stick with lines on it. With apologies to those who have trouble conceiving, it was amazingly easy. I'd gone for years half-wondering if those organs even functioned, and three tries and one month later I had incontrovertible truth that I was fertile. Apparently quite so. Wham, bam. Thank you ma'am.

My husband, of course, was delighted. It was more his idea than mine anyway; in fact, if there'd been a way for him to be pregnant, he would have gladly done so. I wasn't so sure. I liked my life the way it was; why add somebody else to it? And I was definitely not on board with the whole nine months of pregnancy thing. I knew, for instance, that eventually it would be obvious to perfect strangers that I was pregnant, and all my actions would be scrutinized. (She's eating deli meat! Doesn't she know that's a no no??) The registered nurse had at one point tried to still these fears by pointing out that it was only for nine months.

"Nine months," I shot back, "is only three months shy of a year."

Still. After some doubts and some anger and some desperate tears, we've settled out some and we're ready for the long haul. Those wild hormones are no match for me. And though it seems like we've already been pregnant forever, we're only nine weeks along. Nine weeks is only three weeks shy of a trimester.