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.