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Thirty-eight weeks: Science
Today marks thirty-eight weeks of pregnancy. Oddly, what that number means is the number of weeks since I began my last period; the fetus itself, and therefore, technically, the pregnancy, is about thirty-six weeks old.
Oh, sorry, should I have put a TMI warning there? Well, you read this regularly — you should really know by now.
But that’s what the number means. It drives Matt crazy, that numbering system. If we’re talking about how far along I am, he has to pause to do mathematical gymnastics to figure out how old the baby actually is. To him, that precision is Important; I just want to flick his forehead. I’m not the one who made this system; it’s Science. (Normally I’m the one who rolls my eyes when that authority is flung in my face, but it is kind of sweet vengeance to be able to do it to him. Also, when your pregnant wife yells at you and bursts into tears during what shall henceforth be referred to as The Noodle Incident, that’s Science, too.)
At any rate — or rather, at the Scientific rate of thirty-eight weeks, twenty-one hours and some minutes — we’re pretty much ready to go. The carseat is in the car (trunk, actually), the baby’s room is relatively set up, the birth plan is filled out, the goes-to-hospital pile intact; most important, we have diapers and blankets and family with cell phones next to beds on standby, so, yeah, I think we’re ready.
[This is where all you Established Parents are welcome to snort with laughter at our naivete; go on. You know you want to.]
Except…the snow and my doctor’s vacation plans are putting a mild kink in my plans: I had originally intended to begin exercising and the consumption of spicy foods in the hopes of ejecting the 38-week-old parasite (“36,” Matt would say after a calculating pause), but since my doctor has the audacity to go, like, on vacation, I find myself taking it easy instead. Probably because it’s hard to work up the energy to exercise or cook spicy food WHEN I HAVEN’T BLOODY SLEPT IN A WEEK.
Oh, have I mentioned the Insomnia?
Internets, this last week was hell. No longer do I think sleep deprivation is an ethically acceptable form of torture or coercion; the fact is, it sucks and it makes you want to give up on everything you could possibly care about. Add that sense of utter desolation to a patient whose doctor won’t give her sleeping medication and you end up with a raging, inconsolable, unbalanced lunatic who realizes, through her hazy perception of reality, that hurrying the baby’s arrival will only prolong the insomnia.
So I apologize for any unnecessary moodiness or snappishness to those who may have encountered me this past week; I apologize to Lucy for the lack of walks, my in-laws for the unclean house they’re soon to arrive at, my sister for my lethargic phone conversations, and Matt for The Noodle Incident. It’s not any one of you; no, I blame Science.
Fear
As the end of the pregnancy approaches, there’s not room for a whole lot in my mind. It’s like Patrick McManus’s worry box theory — you have a box with only enough room for so many worries, so when a big one comes along, it scatters all others and makes itself at home until you find some way of ousting it. These days, my worry is labor. I haven’t even gotten to the much larger and beastier worry of Raising a Child, or even the worry of Letting My Husband Touch Me Ever Again; no, for now I’m stuck on Getting a Person out of My Person.
Now, my idea of a perfect labor is a natural, medication-free experience where I spend most of my time in a jetted tub with cooling compresses and sips of apple juice, joking with my husband and awing the nurses with my cool, calm, collected nature until my perfect baby makes its pain-free appearance with one or two light pushes. I may make a low moan, but only once.
However, simply knowing that this is a fantasy stirs up my fear, which is much closer to reality, and that is that labor is going to involve me screaming, writhing, begging for it all to be over, and yelling at people to JUST GET IT OUT ALREADY, FOR THE LOVE OF DONKEYS. And as much as I do spend my Sundays yelling at the television (yesterday’s Broncos game is certainly no exception, although I did blush a little when I mistook a Chiefs player for a Broncos player and my screaming was something along the lines of, “Run, run, run! …Wait, no…break his leg! His leg! BREAK HIS FUCKING LEG!”), I rarely yell at other people, especially people like nurses who are there to help, or my doctor, a master of various Looks that are the most concise way of answering stupid pregnant-woman questions (Me: “Braxton-Hicks contractions don’t really hurt; will the real ones feel different?” Her: The Look. Me: “Um, that’s what I thought. Mega pain. Right-o.”), or even my husband, although that’s just ’cause he’s perfected the puppy-dog eyes and fuck all if that doesn’t still work on me even after lo these nine years. Suffice it to say, I worry that the god-awful pain is going to turn me into a person I have never been and that everyone is going to hate me and I’ll end up delivering this child by myself onto a cold, concrete floor, and then some brave rescuer-type will come into the room and snatch the baby to be raised with Humans and not the depraved soul who gave birth to it, who has finally lost her voice from all the yelling and whose limp form is now being circled by wild dogs….
Procrastiblogging returns; limited time only
Have been grading papers all day — only four left, so I was browsing the Interwebs for Shit the Baby or I Might Need, and I found this:
Holy hellballs, people. Knowing what these were for would have kept my virginity intact a good ten, fifteen years more.
Reuse and recycle, except for the baby
So this may be weird, but it’s my goal to buy/get/obtain baby equipment without having to get it new. Yes, that does make me something of a freeloader/moocher (speaking of which, special thanks to my sister for all her maternity clothes!), but it also conforms to my philosophy of Not Buying Crap and Reducing My Carbon Footprint. And anyway, if someone’s not using it, I might as well.
Today’s find: a white Pottery Barn crib from the consignment store here in town for only $75! (And yes, I double-checked to be sure it hadn’t been recalled.) Here’s to hoping we can completely stock and furnish the baby’s room with reused and recycled stuff. And that the crib came with the appropriate hardware. Hmm.