Blah Blah Blah Pregnancy Blah Conversation Hearts

I really need to get over this whole Not Wanting to Blah Blah Blah About the Pregnancy on This Blog thing. Because you know what? When you're pregnant, the only thing you can think about is the pregnancy. Even if you try not to. Even if you're hell-bent on not being That Woman. Because the second your mind rests (if it rests), the baby kicks you. Or rolls onto a nerve and gives you sciatica. Or you drop something onto the floor and you spend 10 minutes staring at it, hoping it will levitate because you can no longer bend over to pick it up. Or you get an e-mail reminding you that your fetus is the size of a rutabaga or, oh yeah, now's the time to find a pediatrician, and then you completely freak out because Oh my god, how did I get to the point in my life when I have to find a pediatrician?!? Because I haven't wanted to be That Woman Who Only Talks About the Baby, just like how I didn't want to be That Woman Who Only Talks About Her Wedding, I haven't been writing, and I don't want to do that either. So I'm just going to get it out of the way.

This whole experience is just weird.

About eight weeks ago or so, Josh and I were lying in bed. I looked up and asked him:

"How do you think I'll handle labor? Be honest."

He paused, his face desperately trying to go blank.

"Be honest."

He sucked in a breath. "Honestly? I see you wigging."

"Wigging!"

"You told me to be honest!"

"OK, OK. Wigging."

"You know, you're not always very good with stress. I really think you should get the epidural."

"Well, how do you think you're going to be when I'm in labor?"

"I'll be supportive and I'll be there for you."

WHATever.

So I vowed at that moment that I would show him. I would labor in a calm, stoic way, utilizing all my strength and womanly power, using my body in the way only a woman can (or, women and the Pregnant Man can) to bring my child into the world.

And then a week later, I found out that (TMI alert!) the placenta was covering the top of my cervix, thereby leaving no way for the baby to get out, and not only would I need a c-section, I wouldn't even be allowed to go into labor at all because contractions would cause excessive bleeding.

And there I'd been, thinking I had any control over any of this science project. Silly, naive little girl.

I was distraught. I really wanted to know what labor felt like, even if I did end up taking the epidural. And complications from the condition, called placenta previa, range from mild bleeding to hemorrhaging, which can lead to bed rest and early delivery. I was told I couldn't lift anything heavy, stress my body in any way with too much physical or emotional activity, or have sex.

"It sucks," my doctor told me. "I know, it sucks."

"You're not kidding," said my vagina.

And then five weeks after the diagnosis — after I'd accepted what was happening in my innards and that, hey, scheduling a c-section is pretty convenient because I'll know when my last day of work will be and I can get my nails done and have dinner with my husband and then walk into the hospital where they'll remove my baby and boom! I'll become a mother — I went in for another ultrasound, and it looks like the placenta moved away from the cervix and I'm no longer at-risk and can have a natural delivery. This is actually rather common, the placenta does move in most cases, but my doctor didn't think mine would and I was told pretty much not to hold my breath. So I was shocked and thrilled. But, of course, after a moment of, "Yay! I can go into labor!" I have since felt, "Oh, shit, I have to go into labor."

I am terrified.

Josh and I took a childbirthing class. It was great, but oh my gosh, I am freaking out. Wigging, as my dear husband would say. My dear husband who was right. I'm wigging.

It's all part and parcel of all the things that have been occupying my time for the past three months. See, when you find out you're gestating, you don't do anything. You can't believe it's happening, you can't feel anything, you don't look different, you just sort get really annoyed that the apple you just ate made you puke on the subway platform (I don't want to talk about it). And then, all of a sudden, it's your third trimester and you panic because you have no idea how to shop for a crib and you swear you're so unprepared that your newborn is going to end up sleeping in the sink.

So you research.

And research.

And research.

Because you have no idea what you're doing. And you want to make sure that whatever you're doing, you're doing it right, because you think that doing it wrong could be the difference between a beautiful bonding experience and a Consumer Product Safety Commission recall.

You just go mental. But now we're through with the "stuff" stuff. We've done the class and put ourselves on day-care wait lists and registered for all the doodads and picked out Comfy's stroller. All we have left to do, really, is wait — wait for the furniture to arrive, wait for the baby to arrive, and hope we calm down in the process. Of course, while all of this has been happening, we've had contractors in the apartment painting the joint, replacing the bathroom ceiling, hanging fans and a patched-up kitchen cabinet door, regrouting the tub, blah blah blah. The apartment is completely torn apart and everything is coated in dust, but man, is this cathartic. The paint is fabulous! We're reorganizing everything! For years, I've been visualizing all porn-like the revamping of this place, and man, I am sa. tis. fied. Although I did have a moment last week when Josh and I went to sleep in our freshly painted blue bedroom and I looked at the walls, all dreamy and undersea, and said, "In eight weeks, a baby is going to be in here. What are we going to do with this baby?"

My problem is is that I've had too much time to think about all of this. Ultimately, there's no way to know how things will go. There's no way to know what we'll really need. There's no way to know who this baby is going to be and how we'll all relate to each other. And painting the bedroom walls blue isn't going to make for a well-adjusted child, and spending a month researching organic mattresses won't make my baby sleep through the night any sooner. We just have to go with it. So I've just been sitting back and feeling the kicks and the hiccups and watching my sweaters thump back and forth with the motions of my occupant. In the past couple days, Comfy has taken up residence in my ribs, which is not the most comfortable feeling but it's kind of amazing to think, "That thing that's preventing me from hunching over? That's a foot." When I tried to move Comfy the other day, I felt a body part for the first time — an elbow or a knee — and it was so little, and for the first time, I really felt excited more than scared or overwhelmed. Also, since you have to do everything they do in movies because movies are always an accurate portrayal of major life changes, I put some headphones on my belly and let my iPod shuffle do some magic. The result? The kid loves the Supremes. Which makes sense, being half-Detroit and all. Makin' mama proud.

(That said, I have not recharged my iPod in three weeks because I only remember to do it at work, and the electrical outlet for my charger is under my desk, and I can no longer bend over to reach it.)

The one thing that has totally, completely, knock-me-over-with-a-boulder shocked me is that I'm now eight months pregnant and I haven't gained a single pound. Not one. I only bought my first maternity clothes last week. I've been heavy my entire life and I was certain I would be the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man by the fourth month. I have had no food cravings, I get full in two seconds, and so as I've been losing weight, Comfy is gaining nicely and I'm just evening out. My body is literally converting into baby. It's not that I'm not eating; it's just different. My body is making all these decisions for me. And this is without extra exercise because I'd stopped doing everything when I was diagnosed with previa; Josh would barely even let me lift my toothbrush. And now I'm just too tired to move. But who the hell gets pregnant and it ends up being the best weight-loss plan they ever knew? So weird. My body long ago ceased to be my own, but this is ridiculous.

(That said, the cleaning lady at work on Monday night asked me how I was feeling, then told me that she couldn't tell from the front I was pregnant, "but I could tell from the back. You have nice, big baby!" I'm sure in some Eastern Bloc countries this is a compliment, and I'm going to choose to take it that way. Even though right now, Comfy's weight is at the 52nd percentile. I have a perfectly average-sized little chicken in there.)

In other news (what? there's other news?), I ate a box of Conversation Hearts the other day that were all misstamped, with whatever legible letters there were hanging onto the bottoms and along the sides of the candy. One said UL TE and another said PPY VE. Such mixed messages, in a box of what is meant to be a sure-thing expression of affection, were so unsettling. Love, you offer no clarity. CK FF.

Here are some things that happened when I went to Michigan for Thanksgiving.

1. My youngest sister, Lauren, picked me up from the airport. She is 25 and a newlywed; I am 35 and pregnant with my first occupant. Realizing I'd forgotten to pack my prenatal vitamins, I asked her if we could stop by Trader Joe's so I could buy some. We went inside, I found what I was looking for, and we headed for the checkout line. We were kidding around about some such thing and Lauren said, "Ugh, I am so embarrassed." The cashier (male) said this:

"Oh, MOM, are you embarrassing her?"

!!!

"Mom?" I asked.

"Uh ... big sister?"

"That's better."

Trying to recover, he said, "So! Are you excited for Thanksgiving?!?"

I gave him a look and said, "Not anymore," and left. Please remember that as this whole thing went down, I was buying prenatals. And I was mistaken for my 25-year-old sister's mother. And that roughly 12 hours before, while I was waiting outside my office building for my car ride home from work at 1 a.m., a limo full of inebriated, hormonal bachelor partiers leaned out of the vehicle window and pleaded with me to join them at a bar called Johnny Utah's where we would all ride a mechanical bull. I sent the car full of (mostly) women behind the limo off to follow them and bull-ride away in the name of the old pregnant tired lady.

Look: I know that I don't look like I could have a 25-year-old daughter. I know I look younger than 35. And I also know that That Little Bitch Lauren never lost her baby skin and will forever look luminous and 18. But really. I normally roll over these things, but man, I felt ancient.

***

2. I immediately felt better during our next stop: the Franklin Cider Mill. This is a place I had not been to since probably before I was 12, but it almost never changes. The dirt parking lot looks exactly the same. The grounds smell exactly the same. The doughnuts and cider taste exactly the same. The ducks waddling around the stream quack exactly the same. And then there was the calypso band and hula-hooping. These were new. Because nothing says Michigan in November more than island music and hip gyrations.

***

3. Monday morning, I met my friend Amy, her husband, Todd, and their two sons for breakfast at a restaurant that used to be called The Village Place but is now called The Village Palace. Yeah, I don't know either. So after we finished eating, Todd left with the boys to give Amy and meself some time to chat. It was fabulous catching up with her, and when we were ready to head out, she popped into the loo and I stood in the lobby watching the same fish swim around the same tank that I believe were all there when I was in high school. She met up with me in the front of the restaurant and as we got ourselves together, two older men, probably in their late seventies or early eighties, a tall guy and a shorter guy, walked up behind her. Amy's back was to them so the tall oldster said to me, "Could you please ask this lady to —"

I looked at Amy and said, "Oh! Move over just a little so they can get by."

She looked back and said, "Oh! I'm sorry!" and scooted out of the way.

The tall oldster hadn't finished his sentence, though: "— to get the hell out of my way?!?"

Amy and I stood there, stunned. But the men started laughing, totally kidding, and Amy said to them, "Hey! That's what I could have said to you over by the bathrooms! You were in my way!"

And then:

Tall oldster: That's not what you said last night!

Amy, gaping: It's a good thing my husband's not here!

Short oldster: Hey, you got together last night? Why didn't you call me?!?

Me: Me too!

Short oldster, grabbing my left ring finger: Because you got these on!

Amy: Hey, I have them too!

Short oldster, WAVING THE STUMP OF HIS MISSING FINGER IN MY FACE: I used to have one but it fell off.

There is nowhere to go after that. Even after two men in or near their eighties make threesome jokes with you, there is nowhere for a conversation to go once someone brings their finger stump into the mix. End scene.

***

4. Tuesday night, I slept at Lauren's house. We made dinner, and then a dessert that was maybe the best idea we've ever had: pumpkin whoopie pies. (Instead of the cream-cheese icing filling, we used vanilla ice cream. When we bit into them, we just started laughing hysterically. There was no other appropriate response to the deliciousness.) Apparently, our genius ended right there, because we then played the most pathetic game of Trivial Pursuit. I was feeling cocky after my random blurting of "duck-billed platypus!" earned me a wedge, but that was pretty much the high point for both of us. See, when asked which gulf lent its name to the 1991 Gulf War, Lauren guessed "the Yemen Gulf," and when asked which impressionist often featured his wife, Camille (and then tuning out the rest of the question because I thought I was awesome), I shouted "Bill Cosby!" This was wrong on many levels, the least ridiculous being that one should always wait until hearing the end of a question before answering, and the most being that when one hears the word impressionist, one should think of an impressionist painter and not a comedian who does impressions of his wife, Camille.

The correct answer was Claude Monet.

Also, Lauren and I watched The 40-Year-Old Virgin with the closed captioning on, in case we missed anything.

***

5. On Wednesday night, I went to my cousin Michelle's for dinner. After two rounds of Memory with her 4- and 6-year-old sons (they totally cheated), she and I spent hours chatting, and then went upstairs to tuck in the boys, who were reluctant to go to sleep. I leaned over to kiss Noah, age 4, goodnight. He'd just gotten out of the bath, so I said, "Ooh, you smell good. You smell so clean." Without blinking, he said, "You smell dirty. When you go home, you need to take a shower."

An interesting note: Both boys have decided that not only am I having a boy, but that said boy should be named Carlos Book. Carlos Book Banks. These are also the boys who decided their sister, Arielle, age 15 months, should have been named Cindy Flowers.

***

6. A benefit of having a partner who is not from the city you are from is that that partner, no matter how sad your home town or city, is always playing tourist. My entire life, until I met Josh, I never knew that Hitsville U.S.A. was in Detroit. I am embarrassed to admit this, of course, but it's the truth, and another truth is that I know almost nobody from Detroit who has been there. It's the home Berry Gordy bought when he created Motown and where Aretha Franklin and Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder and the Jackson 5 and the Supremes and the Temptations all recorded their first hit records. Josh has been begging me for 10 years to take him, and after a change in plans in which my mom couldn't join us, we finally went.

First of all, let me say this: After 11 years of barely driving, I now drive like a grandma. My native city is embarrassed for me.

That said:

The museum was incredible. They start you off with a 17-minute film narrated mostly by Smokey Robinson. Josh cried — this all hit home because in college, he started his own record label out of his dorm room — and the rest of us were pretty much singing through the whole thing. Then you go upstairs into the gallery where they have rooms full of photos and time lines and gold records. They have one of Michael Jackson's sequin gloves and a black fedora from his personal collection. They have a set of dresses worn by the Supremes in the late '60s. They re-created the living quarters of the house to show how the Gordys lived.

Basically, Berry Gordy Jr.'s father was an entrepreneur. He had several businesses, and the rule was if you didn't go into a family business, you had to get a job. So the Gordy children all went into one of the many business and became part of the Ber-Berry Co-op, a legal financial institution they could borrow from to help run and build the businesses. (Black banks ran fairly independently because they were not allowed to be part of the stock exchange, and back then, black people were not often accepted at mainstream white banks, nor could they open businesses in storefronts. All along the stretch of West Grand Boulevard where the house stands are private homes with businesses on their ground floors. The building next door to the museum has a funeral home that's been open since the '20s.) So when Berry Gordy Jr. came up with the idea for Motown, his entire family had to vote on approving the loan. If even one of them had voted no, he would not have been allowed to do it. Over time, he bought eight houses along West Grand Boulevard and used them for the empire; I imagine that when he brought the Jackson 5 from Gary, Indiana, they probably stayed in one of the houses while they recorded in Studio A (which was the main house's converted garage). Another house was used as a finishing school for the artists so they could learn etiquette before going on tour.

For me, the high point was going into Studio A. All the original equipment and instruments were in there, and we were all singing together. The moment the tour guide told us the piano in the studio was the one Marvin Gaye used to compose "What's Going On?" I nearly lost it. I spent the whole time smiling like an asshole. It was extraordinary. When the tour was over, Josh wasn't ready to leave, so we hung back and the two of us stood alone in the studio with the tour guide, asking a million questions and just smelling the place. I stared at that piano like a freak.

***

7. Just as we got settled onto the plane to head back home to New York, the flight attendants announced the copilot called in sick and we were waiting for another one to show up. Hm. You'd think something like that would have been arranged before we boarded, but ...

***

RANDOM BABY STUFF

I don't know if Comfy was just out of sorts being away from New York or the baby missed Daddy, since Josh didn't fly to Detroit until Thursday morning, but the kid was kicking like Lloyd Dobler the whole time I was in Michigan. That is, until Thursday morning. And now, any time I try to feel around to sense if Josh can feel the kicks, the kicking stops. It's as if the baby is all, "MOM, stop testing me. I'll kick hard enough when I want to kick. Back. Off." There is no doubt this child is mine. And Comfy's father still has not felt a kick himself. What he does do is this: When I put his hand on my belly and press down, he waits a second and then says, "I don't feel anything." I think he hasn't quite put together that if the baby doesn't kick, I can pretty much figure that out too.

I am completely overwhelmed by the idea of registering for stuff. Interviewing daycare providers was less daunting. There's just so much, and I think I'm most irritated by how stupid the names of some of these products are. Just because they're for children doesn't mean the children will ever be aware of what they're called, so why name them things like Snugadoo and Bumblebooter and whatever else? Just call it a chair.

So, about that baby ...

I've been racking my brain trying to figure out how I want to handle my knocked-uppedness on this blog. It's certainly something that's happening to me — this can be proven best by the human head floating around in my abdomen — and while I understand that women reproduce every day, sometimes ill-advisedly, it's pretty huge for me seeing that this is the first human head I've ever grown in my innards. There are plenty of mommy blogs out there and there are plenty of baby blogs out there and there are plenty of pregnancy blogs out there, and I read those and enjoy them for those purposes. But this blog has never been any of the three, and I kind of like that it's nice and random. I think I'm going to keep it that way. I started writing this whole shebang at a time when I was quite depressed and needed to remind myself that there were things in the world to notice and note other than my own misery, and now that I've come so far that I now have pregnancy-induced dementia and can think of nothing beyond that human head, I desperately need this blog to remind me that there's life going on beyond the belly.

So here's what I'm gonna do:

I'm going to continue the randomness. I will, however, be sharing pregnancy-related shenanigans, but I will be doing this under some sort of subhed, kind of like a spoiler alert, probably at the ends of posts — unless the dementia has taken over an entire post, in which case, this cannot be helped, for I will have succumbed. I know you guys are a diverse group age- and life-stage-wise, so for those of you who couldn't give a shit about procreation and some woman's tales of ankle-swelling, I shall not alienate you. For those of you who are into it, huzzah, welcome to my world of TMI: Pregnancy Makes You Fart a Lot.

OK.

That said:

As far as I can tell, these are the answers to the FAQs so far:

1. I'm due March 26.

2. The working in-vitro name is Comfy. This name is multi-tiered: We would like for our child to be comfortable with itself and others and its place in this world; we would like for our child to possess unsurpassed creativity and achieve success, much like, for example, Louis Comfort Tiffany; and we would like our child to be comfortable in its current location and stay there until at least term. I was brutally overruled when I pitched my preference for the in-vitro name, by the way: Josh would not agree to refer to the fetus as Awesome Banks. I'm still pissed.

3. We don't want to know the gender. I think it's sort of beside the point, really. This is making arguments about what to name the kid lengthy and hilarious, and also disturbing, because Josh has the worst taste in names ever. I would like to ensure that Comfy has rhythm, though, so if it's a boy, I'm voting for Carlton Banks.

4. I'm feeling good. The nausea was manageable, the fatigue was completely unmanageable, the massive zit cluster on my forehead is almost gone, and I've either been freezing cold or boiling hot every minute for 15 weeks. I'm not showing yet nor have I gained any weight (I don't think), but I woke up this morning feeling like someone had taken out the contents of my stomach and filled it with clay. The one thing that has truly surprised me is that my boobs have not yet taken over the planet. (Josh says they're not bigger, they're just more "buoyant," which I can get behind.) I think my body is sympathetic to the fact that all through middle and high school, I had to schlep around The Breasts That Ate Pittsburgh.

5. No, I will not tether a giant mylar balloon in my backyard and make my kid barf on national TV.

6. I have no food cravings. On the contrary, I've had zero appetite. Actually, my appetite is starting to come back, but I'm still never in the mood for anything, so I stand around hoping to feel inspired and then end up hating whatever I'm eating. I'm eating a lot of fruit and drinking a lot of juice, though, so I must be an independent vitamin C source at this point. When I had first trimester nausea, I was OK as long as I ate a carb before I ate anything else, but then my pee started smelling like crackers. I am so hot.

7. This whole experience is very, very surreal. I'm hoping for a kick soon so my brain can finally connect with what my body is doing. As if it's not enough my kid is going to be saddled with a Jewish mother, by not being able to fully connect with this science project I've become, I have guilt that I've failed Comfy and now feel like I have to overcompensate with an extravagant bar/bat mitzvah in which my child rides into the party on an elephant and we hire whatever the 2022 version of the Black Eyed Peas will be to sing whatever the 2022 version of "Let's Get It Started" will be.

8. Suddenly, I'm good at math. For instance:

people on the Internet are crazy + women are crazy x pregnant women are crazy = pregnant women on the Internet are crazy

9. I can smell absolutely everything. Therefore, people riding public transportation should refrain from using Vicks VapoRub. It's just mean.

10. Don't ask me about labor. Doing so will make me cry.

So there you have it. Comfy. Bloat. Zits. Crackers.

Insane.