Mumbling Madly

Here’s the thing, with all this white flour and cheese I’m sure you’re wondering about, ah, bowel movements. And it’s widely known that constipation is a symptom of the first trimester. In the beginning the reason is pretty simple: You’re subconsciously afraid you’re going to push out the baby. You see, when trying to wrap my mind around the idea of having something growing inside me, I had all sorts of weird visuals in my head: a pumpkin seed attached to a stem, a seahorse with a baby in his pouch, and a grape attached to a stem. All of these ideas reflect a fragility, an impossible idea that such delicate systems could sustain the pressure of bodily functions. Sitting on the toilet, suddenly there’s a ridiculous thought: “What if the baby isn’t properly attached and poof! Out it goes!” And so the body clams up, releasing nothing for hours and hours. No baby is coming out of me! Well, not for a long long time anyway…

I think, ill-fully, about the Metamusil in my bathroom closet. We seem to always have a few cans of the stuff lying around. My dad swears by it–it’s how I learned about the fibrous powder you stir into water and drink. I don’t think it’s every been really successful in our household and is usually abandoned for ‘harder stuff,’ (i.e. the occasional laxative). I also recall my mother treating my baby sister with prune juice, a fact I bring up from time to time to embarrass her. She always had this little bottle of prune juice and back then I thought it was cute. (I still do). Now, I wonder: is it my turn for the prune juice? I compromise…I buy a big bottle of unsugared cherry juice instead.

At the beginning, the very beginning, during the zygote phase, the baby liked pizza. I was dreaming about pizza, thinking about it, craving it, watching it on tv and thinking: “That looks amazing.” Then the craving dropped and what was replaced was a strange sinking sick feeling. Even hunger was masked by this bizarre feeling of nausea and sea sickness–as if at any moment I was going to face a shipwreck. There were no cravings, only hopes…maybe, MAYBE, the baby likes spinach (it has so much folic acid which is good for baby’s brain!) And the baby did like spinach…for about a week. And then slowly, one by one, vegetables were rejected. I remember trying to choke down a vegetarian taco, all beautiful and yummy with beans, guac, and four different salsas from the bar. It was the tomatoes in the salsa fresca that did me in…I couldn’t bare them. And so, Mexican food was pulled out from under me…as was Italian and then slowly Thai. Foods I had always celebrated became bizarre and abstract. Trips to the grocery store became sad little forays with me averting my eyes at almost everything. Fruit barely clung, with bananas in my cereal in the morning and oranges making a miraculous sticking point. Ah! The baby likes tuna fish, I realized during week 7. Sort of.

And then I reached Week 8 and existed almost entirely on white flour and cheese. This was particularly fitting since the weekend prior I had gone to Le Pichet for the first time. Notoriously French, Le Pichet is full of baguettes, cheese, and glass bottles of water on each table. My brother claims it as his new favorite restaurant and since he was in town, this was where we went. I initially went into the restaurant certain I wasn’t going to make it: an array of uappetizing smells from the menu assaulted me.“Curley endive tossed with warm confit of duck gizzards, sweet pickled onions and aged Gouda” and “Radishes, herbed butter, wine marinated hard boiled egg and pistachio-pork sausage” smelled particularly alarming. Luckily, Josh picked the cheese plate and with non-stop baguettes delivered to our table, I ate with wild abandon. I even ate the cheese rinds. I was so satisfied, that I made a mental note to myself: the baby likes carbs. By Monday I had settled into my new diet: cheese quasadillas, bagels and cream cheese, mustard and cheese sandwiches, and bowls of the whitest cereal you can imagine.

Protein as I know it has disappeared. Chicken was tried and abandoned weeks ago. Slowly, I found myself on a carbohydrate only diet. It was against every fiber in my body to bypass the whole wheat bagels for the white and the 8 grams of fiber per serving cereal for Puffins. Doctor Oz from Oprah would certainly give me a free pass, right? I was eating the exact opposite of everything I’ve ever read up on. At one point, I visited two separate coffee shops in one day in order to stuff an overpriced white bagel with cream cheese in my mouth.

During Week 8, I tried to trick the baby by sneaking beans and guac into a cheese quasadilla–rationalizing that it’s mushy and therefore texturally acceptable. The baby punched up the nausea button right in the middle of my creative movement class for autistic children. It was already a bad day; the kids were angry and bored, the whims of movement class were lost on them–even though I brought musical instruments for them to dance with. The teachers are usually stressed and unsupportive. Most of them are desperate for a respite and will often disappear. It would serve them right if I vomited all over them–especially on the really unlikable kid who screams my name as if I’m beating him, “Miss. Maaaaarrrrraaaa, I don’t want to do ANY OF THIS!” (For starters, when will this school realize that I’m not a “Miss.” I’m a “Ms.” and always will be).

But I never vomiedt. Not once. A few times my throat closed in and threatened–a gag. A pathetic little choking sound came out and maybe a little saliva. A cough. A whiff of something strong–like Chinese food wafting through the University district–sent me into confusion: “Ooooh, Chinese food…oh, no, that smells AWFUL.” And thus the churning of the first trimester continued as one ethnic food group is knocked down after another….except for the French.

For starters, I’ve always bragged about having an iron stomach. I’ve thrown up a total of 6 times in my life–and my Mom was at my side for all of them. Even when I was 25 and came down with the stomach flu I managed to time it during a visit to my parent’s house. As if I were a little girl again, Mom was right beside me as I yakked into a waste basket in her bathroom. I’ve never succumb to so much alcohol that I’ve thrown up–although there were probably times when I should have. I would rather suffer through a really terrible meal or a case of over-eating then endure sore stomach muscles and bad barf breath. I certainly am not one of those women who constantly finds a reason to throw up because of, say, a head cold or stress or something silly. So, as you can imagine, this new round nausea is a strange beast to tame.

The only real time my nausea leaves me is when I’m stuffed full…like when we went to a pub in Georgetown and I decided, YES, I’m pregnant and should really pack it in. This was a few hours before the dreaded hospital tour at Swedish. Josh was going because he was a champ, (although the idea of hanging around a bunch of nervous pregnant couples while traipsing around a hospital did sound a bit like hell to me too). Josh needed a beer or two before the tour. I was still riding high on my secret baby news and an enormous bub-style bacon cheese burger sounded like just the ticket (this was also only at 5 weeks along). After my burger arrived it was so sensational that a friend of Josh’s stopped by our table to admire my enormous dinner. “I just hate it when skinny people eat whatever they want!” She joked. “Har har,” I chimed, secretly agreeing with her, (and to my credit I did sub the fries for a garden salad…it’s just that the burger was so BIG).

I spent the tour in a bloated state of burger, bacon, and benevolence. Five couples attended the tour with us. One woman was so deathly afraid of hospitals she almost fainted (I know this because she was on my UW Hospital tour with me two days later and confided that Swedish almost did her in). I suppose I’m spoiled with my adequate experience with hospitals. You know, a surgery here, a surgery there…I’ve been visiting hospitals since I was 5 (tubes were put in my eardrums). I’ve had my tonsils removed (do they even do that anymore?). I’ve had tissue grafts (2 of them) on my right ear drum and finally a cartilage graft. I’ve been lucky: no experiences with malpractice, no terrible cases of mis-communication or wrong prescriptions filled. For the most part, my hospital experiences were efficient and fast. Oh sure, during my last hospital stint, my otologist was kind of an asshole and removed a keloid scar even when I assured him he didn’t have to. The anesthesiologist added a certain kind of medicine too soon to my blood stream causing me to gasp for air before finally going under. And I have never, ever, been able to accept an I.V needle gracefully. However, all this experience has provided a fairly healthy view of hospitals.

However, when you look at what’s a fairly natural phenomena: pregnancy, birth, infant, etc. and mix it up with the medical industry, I can see how some anxiety might build.

I am pregnant. Today I received word that my blood tests came back normal and my 14 week old in utero offspring appears to be healthy. I finally, finally, feel free to admit to the world that yes, this is happening: a baby in November (24 to be roughly exact). Not one to tell people the instant the home pregnancy test showed up positive, I stewed all through the first trimester in curious anticipation: Will it work? Conceiving was not a cheerful expedition–it took well over a year and was fraught with infertility fears. Thus my caution to broadcast the news too early and risk public devastation (something I thought had occurred at 8 weeks, sending me to the clinic, only to learn that thankfully everything was fine). I did, however, write multiple blog entries in anticipation of being open and out. I’m going to be frank about this, you guys….so here is the beginning of the this very strange chapter:
TRYING NOT TO BARF, Part 1

. A week or so before I found out, before everything became heightened, before my senses truly kicked in, I checked out “Eat This, No That” from the library. This is a well laid out book, straight from the talk show circuit, almost like a kid’s place mat at a restaurant: full color pictures of what to eat and what not to eat. Going to Ruby Tuesdays? Pick the steak, green beans, and sweet potatoes versus the Panko crusted chicken. (I admit: I took this book home largely because my husband is a visual learner).

“Eat This, Not That” is also totally barf-inducing if you’re a little bit pregnant. Just walking by the book sitting on my counter and catching a quick look at the glossy picture of a Big Mac versus a Whopper was enough to make me want to vomit. It got so bad, I had to turn the book cover-side down every time I ran across it. At some point, I tried to read it, through clinched teeth with the rational that it was library book…I needed to return it soon! How could I not educate myself (with large colored photos of sodas, sample bags of good and bad chips, and a lecture on corn syrup) if I couldn’t even get past the sensational cover?

“Ha ha,” I said, swallowing the urge to barf down, “This means our kid takes after me and doesn’t like Big Macs!” But even a quick look at the chapter on fruits and vegetables induced nausea. That day a sandwich made with raw yellow peppers went down horribly wrong, and now every time I look at yellow vegetables I want to slam the fridge closed. Am I really that sensitive? I haven’t actually VOMITED…just spent my days in a strange nauseous haze. Some women will tell you it’s because you’re hungry…that’s it. You’re hungry and instead of turning your hungry sensors on, you have your barf sensors turned up instead. But I’ve eaten, with wild hope, while nauseous and it leaves me about the same.

And yes, just writing about this damn book is making me feel queasy.

Spent the weekend in the yard…of course, right? The neglected southwest corner of our property lies in wait for a future shed. Originally we envisioned a handcrafted wooden shed with shingles and paint. Now we laugh at our naivete. Wood sheds are devoured in this weather by rain, rot, and the elements. They’re also a hell of a lot of work to build. While it isn’t the most attractive alternative, our research has shown: plastic is best.

So we rented a truck and hauled dirt and pea gravel from Sayers fuel. On Sunday we made a dump trip. In earnest attempt to carve out a place for a shed, we starting digging–only to find bags of garbage buried in the yard. Every now and then the cagey, dilapidated, history of our house sneaks into our lives. We know that at one point our little house was probably left for dead, pulled out of destruction by our neighbors who invested in it during a time when the market was good. We also know that whoever drove it to the state of abandon had a fondness for doritos, m&ms, and cans of shasta. Beneath the soil lies layers of waste, broken glass, wrappers, midst a secret stash of garbage bags hidden under the weeds. No wonder grass never grows on this side of the property! How were we to know we had a dump buried in our backyard?

“It’s as if our house is a cleaned up whore–nice and clean now but hidden away is a secret past,” I said. “Our house has baggage.” We can’t think of anything better then to dig out what we can, cover the ground with sand and pea gravel, and then plop a shed on top. But when we arrive at Costco, the shed we had finally settled on was gone. Sold out. I was devastated having rented the truck to haul it off and everything. With sadness, Josh and I left Costco with nothing but dinner: a hotdog, a piece of pizza, and a very berry sundae to split. We found a picnic table at the edge of the parking lot, right near the Costco Employee Evacuation Site, and ate our food in the fading sun.

These pictures are from a month ago and so desperately funny and sad. She turned out to be fine…