So
the next four days are the last four days of my life I can guarantee
not having a baby. And even that guarantee is a little shaky, and
what I mean is that at thirty-six weeks they'd still give me drugs
to try to keep him in me, but after this coming Sunday I'll be thirty-seven
and his emerging from my body is fair game and considered full term.
This makes me pretty nervous and a little anxious. I'm starting
to think I'm maybe overprepared, what with all the book reading
and the three-hour-long childbirth classes on Sunday nights for
the past ten weeks (and set to go for three more) and the appointments
with the midwife and then the doula. I'm starting to wonder if I
shouldn't think about it more like how I thought about my wedding:
It's one night. It's one party. It's special but you don't have
to go crazy over it. And I know it's different than a wedding (I
wasn't showing my vagina to the whole world at my wedding, for starters)
but maybe it's not smart to overthink it or be too all-consumed.
Things like this have a way of taking their own course, anyway.
Birth could and likely will go nothing as expected.
There's
this exercise we do at the end of each childbirth class that's meant
to simulate a contraction, which is that you hold an ice cube to
the inside of your wrist for sixty seconds and then you do deep
breathing to take your mind off the pain. And the first time we
did it I was like crap, man, if this is what a contraction feels
like i'm aces because this doesn't bother me at all. But then last
night (we went Tuesday instead of Sunday because of the Superbowl,
stupid Bears) as Gray was holding it to my wrist and I was breathing
I was all, dang, that stings. Dang, that's really uncomfortable.
Dang, motherfucking ouch! So maybe not quite as easy as I initially
thought. (You moms out there right now are like "HA HA HAHHAHAHAAAAaa,
just you wait, stupid.")
Yesterday
I had a non-baby shower baby shower, which means I met my mom and
three of her close friends who I grew up with halfway between here
and my hometown for lunch. It was nice, and I haven't seen my mom
in three weeks which is a long time not to see her right now with
my belly growing and all, and she cried like three times over the
course of two hours. What will she do when the baby comes? It'll
be constant waterworks, I tell you. At the beginning of my pregnancy
when she first started in with the tears, I said, "Come on,
mom, don't cry," and she stopped crying, and on the way out
of town after visiting them, Gray said, "Are you going to do
that with the baby when he wants to cry? Tell him to stop crying?"
And I thought, Jesus, I'm like a mean football father who won't
let his child show any emotion. So then I told my mom to cry all
she wants and believe me she has.
The
other day I bought diapers at the store and it was a bizarre experience.
Not only because it was a total super-granola healthfood store and
when I went up to the owner and said, "Which would you recommend
I buy, Seventh Generation diapers or Tushies?" (both are chemical-free
and the hippy-est disposables you can get), he goes, "Um, neither
one of them really work and we liked Pampers." Some hippy you
are, man. But then I'm checking out and I'm like "Why am I
buying diapers? I don't have a baby." Much the same way Gray
freaked out over the high chair in the Babies R Us shopping cart.
To think that these diapers will be wrapped around a little bottom
in less than a month is really, really, really weird.
It's
just, you know, how do you really prepare yourself for this?
A
couple came to childbirth class last night to talk about their birth
experience six weeks ago, and it turned out they'd gone to the same
midwifery birthing place we'll be going to, and they had a really
good story about it. They passed around pictures and talked about
how she was 10 cm dialated when she got there and spent 45 minutes
in the tub before the baby came (this is crazy if you ask me and
maybe there's such a thing as TOO short a labor) but all Gray could
do was stare at one of the birth photos which showed her boob hanging
out. Boys. His wife (me) is sitting next to him big as a house and
he's staring at some other lady's boob, nice. But this lady's birth
was easy and the midwife (also my midwife) was apparently great
and everything went really easily and it sounded pretty ideal. Now
that I think of it it's probably why they were chosen to speak to
the class, rather than getting someone who was like, "It all
went to hell and I had an emergency C-section!"
See?
God, I'm obsessed. I need to step back. Next week, provided there's
no real-life baby here, I'll talk about something else. Like my
newfound love for Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. Or how JC Penney makes
a nice tall maternity pant. Crap, it's no use, I can't talk about
anything else. Just tune in for a dissertation on stretch marks
and nursing bras, how about that?
Oh,
and P.S., the baby turned. YAY. No breech c-section required now,
which is awesome. And no more $75 for three minutes voodoo chiropractor!
YAY.
===
January
music:
1.4.07
: Keane - A Bad Dream
1.8.07 : Mat Kearney - Where We Gonna Go From Here
1.17.07 : John Legend - Show Me
1.29.07 : Massive Attack - What Your Soul Sings
