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M-O-O-N, that spells Tom Cullen!
| Saturday, August 20, 2005 In my last entry I joked that I was going to make JB watch a bunch of those Discovery Channel birthing shows with me as penance for the nine hour "Navy SEALs: All Penis, All The Time" documentary he clogged our Netflix queue with. Because the shows, with the babies coming out of the girly parts, they would freak him out! What a wuss! Ha ha ha! Except, um, I sort of watched back-to-back episodes of Maternity Ward, Babies: Special Delivery, and A Baby Story over the last two days, and...well...they totally freaked ME out. There was the woman whose labor progressed too quickly for an epidural who shrieked like a skinned cat the entire time, there was the I'm-going-au-natural lady who completely changed her mind during the pushing part, morphed into Nancy Spungen, and started barking "I want drugs! I want drugs!", and there was the baby whose shoulders got stuck and Dire Medical Voiceovers started talking about breaking his clavicle to get him out. Oh, and the baby who inhaled meconium and the woman who had experienced fourth-degree anal tears (JESUS) and the coated-with-fur preemie and you know what, I think it's time to rid my TiVo Season Pass section of anything related to gestation, thanks very much. Other than, you know, all the screaming and clavicles and whatnot, I'm really starting to look forward to the birth. For one thing, I have this near-constant sensation of being AT CAPACITY. Logically I know my belly can and most likely will get bigger, but I feel tight as a drum, my ribs sort of shoved out to the sides and my lungs wadded up into little pink balloons somewhere around the back of my throat. I don't know what's supposed to be more uncomfortable, this stage or the part where the baby "drops" and is then smashed down in my pelvis. A couple nights ago, I was lying in bed on my right side reading when I had the oddest feeling of localized pressure on the left slope of my belly, and looked down in time to see what was clearly a little sub-dermal foot protruding out a good three inches from my skin's normal surface. I'm not going to lie, it actually frightened me a little, in a "am I about to re-enact a scene from Alien?" kind of way. I called in JB, who stood saucer-eyed with wonder as the baby obligingly repeated the phenomenon two or three more times. It was like watching our unborn child move around under a stretched piece of Bubble Yum: freaky, and frustrating - he's just right there, millimeters away. I'm antsy to SEE him. Also, to breathe through my nose again without sounding like a diseased walrus. ::: All through this pregnancy, the one question I've heard more than any other is "do you have any weird cravings?". What a benign question (much preferable to "so, are you going to circumcise?", or "you're breastfeeding...right?"), and one I've often wished I had a truly marvelous answer for. Some exotic food combination that would simultaneously thrill and horrify people: "Well, just raw leeks dipped in peanut butter, but that's it." "Bananas spread with liverwurst." "Fettuccine with mushroom gravy and Orange Tic-Tacs." But no, I haven't had anything stick out as the One Food I Must Have or Die - until the last couple weeks. And I'm sorry to be so unoriginal, I wish it were tuna melts with raspberry jam, but it's...ice cream. "Man, you're really hitting it hard with the Ben & Jerry's," JB said the other day, observing me anxiously root through the freezer like a crazed truffle pig. Then he risked severe physical trauma by going on to loftily inform me that I "couldn't eat this way forever, you know". (Let me take a brief parenthetical to say that JB has been incredibly supportive, has told me I look wonderful on a daily basis, and even recently presented me with a beautiful necklace containing a sapphire - the September birthstone - however, he apparently missed the part of the no-shit-sherlock manual that says Thou Shalt Not Criticize Thy Wife's Pregnancy Eating Habits, Especially During The Last 5 Weeks.) I believe my answer may have been heard by dogs in South America, so shrill was my response, which included briefly channeling Catherine O'Hara's Beetlejuice character and shouting something about how if I couldn't have ice cream I would go crazy and I would take him with me. I actually Google mapped the nearest Dairy Queen last night, in order to go out at 9 PM and obtain a Heath bar/Butterfinger Blizzard. Which I lustily consumed in about four minutes. The only way I could be more of a walking (lumbering) cliché right now is if I would have dipped a pickle in the damn thing. The ice cream, it's a small comfort, and as long as my weight gain remains normal I refuse to feel bad about hoovering down a small vat of frozen creamy happiness on a daily basis right now. Besides, what else would I eat while watching Birth Stories: C-Sections Gone Wild? |
