Pregs of Society

hello there :)  i’ve neglected this blog for far too long.

i actually created a new Tumblr a few months back, as i did not want some family members finding out about the existence of this one.  in my haste to assure that my new blog was ‘family friendly’, i seemed to have forgotten about this one.  the short of it:  we had our baby girl close to midnight on may 20, 2010.  we are so in love and we are actively attempting to cope with 3 hours-per-day sleep sessions.  when you receive a new follower in the next few hours, it’s me.  feel free to follow me back, or not - i’m sorry to have been such a stranger, but i’m attempting to right that wrong now!

i’m now at http://ourgirl.tumblr.com

did you know that society has come so far since the advent of western civilization that now you can purchase a designer bogus pee gender test from CVS?  so that you can pee in a cup containing magic crystals and in ten minutes the color will tell you if your fetus has lady or man parts?  ancient greece had the school of athens, ancient egypt pinned down a working 365 day calendar, colonial america discovered the merits of innoculation at a time when people still went to the bathroom ouside.  even the dubious 1950s had people like orson welles.  and me, what does my lifetime get?  i get waterproof make-up and pee gender tests.

since when did 2010 ten descend back into a voodoo shaman culture of pee crystals?  i’ll bet that the ancient egyptians had a more successful method of determining baby gender.  i’m gonna research and then i’m going to make my own dubious kit.  except i won’t bilk expectant mothers out of $$ serious cash ($40!) i’ll charge upwards of $4.99 and that will only be on account of production costs.  having a scientist for a husband has to help me out in some capacity, here.

out of all the words that one could use to describe the procress of growing so exponentially about one’s midsection, humbling is the word that i most often use.  growing a human has been incredible, thus far, no complaints what so ever.  the little lady who has made my uterus the size of a soccer ball has been a very pleasant tenant.  i still want to bawl with happiness every time she kicks hard enough to bump my hand a centimeter into the air.

still, watching oneself grow so dramatically has been a blow about the ego.  people like to use the “cute” word.  the moms of all my students at school, especially.  “you look so cute!”  this is what you say to someone when you really mean that you are glad that it is not you looking like a circus sideshow.  i try to take it in stride.

that photograph for five weeks, i remember being so diappointed by.  that was taken at the height of our running career, matt and i running 4 times a week, at least 5 miles a pop.  i quit running in my eight week of pregnancy after i spotted and was sure that i was about to miscarry.  i remember looking at that 5 week picture of my stomach and being horrified by that pudge that i had been unable to run into submission.  that pudge wasn’t baby pudge.  it was food pudge.  i’d hated that i’d never achieved the flattest stomach that i could.  i look at it now and i think “ohmagah” to myself.  i would kill to look that way again.

still, put things in freaking perspective, hilarie.  remember pain and strife?  remember all the people who try for years to have children and never do?  remember your australian bender of double-proof rum and thinking it would take at least 3 months to even begin to ovulate off the pill?  i am very lucky.  i will take this belly on.  i am trying so hard never to forget how it feels and how in love i am with these kicks.  bring on the belly because i know that it’ll bring on the arrival of the best little lady ever.

i haven’t had a haircut in 5 months.. when i go into the salon, will they KNOW that?  they always know that.  i hate that.

i want to stay out of the cold in the hotel room and admire the baby treats that i purchased for baby, but i’ve really got to pull myself up by the boot straps here.

i never told this to tumblr, but baby-in-the-belly is a girl!

we found out at 17 weeks and a few days.  we went to one of those ‘boutique’ places, which really just meant that they paint the walls lime green and sell teddy bears implanted with a recording of your baby’s heartbeat (better believe that we were suckers & grabbed us up one).

i wish that i’d had the willpower to wait until my official anatomy scan this week, but patience is not my bag.  the technician in the boutique pretty much hated her job but she tolerated us well enough.  at least until matt took one look at the screen and immediately pronounced the baby to be a girl.  i think that she wanted to work her doppler magic for a while and leave us hanging!!  he robbed her of that.

i love this baby so much and find it very difficult to pass a store that sells polka dot leg warmers and robot jammies without buying them all up.  the best feeling in the world is getting that fluttery feeling that signifies somersaults and karate chops and whatever fun she’s getting up to in there.

matt and i are currently in athens, georgia.  he is interviewing for a job as a professor here.  their mascot is the ‘dawg’.  i shudder at the spelling, yet delight in the prospect of seeing a chubby white canine strolling down an errant southern sidewalk.

he interviewed all day and i walked the campus.  it was soothing because the foliage was some hearty, winter-resistant type stuff.  the southern girls didn’t care for my marshmallow northface look, nor for the fact that i had myself a sweet little ice cream run in the sub-zero weather.  i don’t care, i’m preg.

it took us twenty minutes in this town to hear an REM song.  that’s deep.  matt doesn’t care for them, but i really do.  i imagine that michael stipe and i would be the kind of friends who watched french movies from the sixties while trying on elaborate hats.

i have major flight anxiety.  i want to take the flying without fear course offered by my dream homeboy, richard branson.  unfortch, this course is only offer to fine fellows across the pond.  the best i could find in america is an online course followed up by a two hour phone conference with a man named “captain chuck”.  captain chuck, i hate to tell you this but there is no way that you could get a handle on my flight neuroses.  especially now that i’m preg and can no longer self-medicate/drug overdose on planes to feel better.  my neuroses are as unwieldy and panic-inducing as an asteroid.  it would be really fun to talk to captain chuck on the phone, though.

love from athens, ga!

this is my belly, as of 19 weeks and 4 days.

i have no idea where i am on the Preg Bell Curve with this.  All I have to go by is Google Image Search, which I try to abstain from, because I don’t know if you are aware of this but looking at other people’s stomachs is kind of revolting.

My belly button is still an innie, but its innie status is looking as grim as the last hours of the Alamo, here.

This is Matt.  He is the sexy culprit responsible for my evaporating belly button.

Matt and I went to Australia (his homeland) this summer.  I am so, so grateful (tearfully grateful, even) that I was not Preg in Australia.  Everything about Australia centers around the drink.  This is a beautiful and blessed thing.  When we arrived home from our trip, I was ready for detox AND baby.  I nixed the birth control in early August, thinking that it would take at least 3 months for my cycles to regulate after their decade-long dance with Ortho-Cyclen.  Silly old me!  We were standing around a posi pregnant test about 32 days later.

Matt, I guess, takes after his dad in certain regards that I don’t care to think about.  Matt has got himself some Olympian-caliber swimmers.  Matt was a mistake/surprise to his Mom and Dad back in the late 70s.  His brother, Chris, was due to a birth control malfunction.  His next sister was a Planned Baby.  His last sister was conceived AFTER Matt’s Dad received a vasectomy.

Where was I going with this?  Just that I love my husband, who probably has dangerously effective “boys”, and a month-long stint with a liver soaked in Bundaberg rum apparently does wonders for upcoming conception.

Stork Parking is rad.

I’ve only peeped this maternal affirmative action at Wegman’s Grocery store, but I was an immediate convert.  A special, designated spot for Pregs like me.  Immediately I set about worrying whether I showed enough to park in this space.  Would someone attempt to question this aggressive parking claim that I was making?  People are nosy and vengeful, especially when it’s cold.  I puffed out my little mighty gut as much as I could and made a beeline into the store.  Upon arriving inside I felt the type of rush I imagine an Olympic athlete or kleptomaniac might feel.

Stork Parking makes a Preg get too big for her britches, quickly.  Each time I visited Wegman’s I found myself scowling if any of the 4 Stork Parking spots was taken up by a vehicle.  I live in a small town.  Surely there can’t be this many pregnant ladies just sauntering up to Wegman’s whenever they feel like it.  Once Matt and I caught a geriatric man attempting to park in the only Stork Parking spot left.  His bald head caught a particularly dreamy bit of sunlight as he sat in his Chevy Cavalier, debating his moral integrity.  The cold temperature won the day, and he began his ignoble ascent into the parking space.  MY parking space.

“Beep at him,” I ordered Matt, Master & Commander style.

“But he’s an old man,” Matt hesitated.

“STORK parking!”  I screamed, as if those two mystical words held all of the magic wisdom in the universe.  “I’m pregnant - my spot!”

Matt offered a little half-hearted toot of the old horn.  Immediately, the old man swerved away and into the depths of the parking lot.

We felt pretty sheepish.  And shitty.  It was an old man, after all.  My child weighed no more than a dozen ounces inside my belly.

Still, it’s a principle.  It’s a beautiful principle.  I’ll continue to be a Stork Parking Warrior for all of my days.