Mumbling Madly

During the poundings of a very loud Beatle’s cover band at River Days in Detroit, MI, the baby started kicking spiritedly. I say ‘kicking’ but they were really ticklish flutters in what I soon recognized as tiny arms and legs thrashing about horizontally across my navel. Detroit spread out in festival form while I waddled around the various crowds, food stands, and rides. I ignored the need to go to the bathroom valiantly, but inevitably ended up in a porta-potta.

While waiting in line for the bathroom a teenage black girl looked me over and said, “You’re pregnant…and it’s a boy.” I was surprised and pleased that a stranger was recognizing my bump as baby instead of overeating. “Yes, it’s most likely a boy,” I said, thinking of the ultrasound tech’s speculation. “I can tell,” she said, “You’re carrying it very high…girls babies are really low,” she patted her pubic bone in demonstration. I smiled. Then I spent the rest of the night in strange contemplation: was this a definite sign? The baby is a boy? And why did that worry me? Maybe a boy baby won’t like me as much, won’t relate to me, won’t understand me because I’m a girl and I won’t understand him…foolish thoughts but concerning all the same.

When I went to the doctor’s office, I was all geared up to get on the scale. I am embracing weight for the first time in my life! I don’t own a scale and typically turn around when being weighed at the doctor’s office. Instead of bemoaning my tragic fate of preggo weight gain I am hugging it fiercely. So at my last appt I hop on the scale and….I have lost a pound since my first visit at 8 weeks pregnant. Here I am at four months and well, this puts the total weight gain at around five pounds. Lost a pound? Really? The doc seems mildly concerned and upon hearing that I am still nauseous after eating prescribes: Gatorade. Yup. It goes down better then water, contains calories, and is low in sugar. Wow…this is awesome! I don’t really like Gatorade but still, this is great!

Nothing is more incredible then hearing the baby’s heartbeat. It chimes in near my own, a steady and fast chug, chug, chug. Today I also learned that my uterus has reached just below my belly button (a far cry from the pubic bone) and that the baby now sits a few inches below the naval.

We continue to browse a gigantic baby name book for boy names. The funny and horrible names always shout at us first (Hershel, Folker, etc)…decent boy’s names are actually harder to find with hubbie’s last name. We have created a very short list containing several exotic names and two ‘old’ names from Josh’s side of the family. When I say ‘old,’ I mean that there isn’t a single person under fifty with these names…

We learned that “Michael” is probably THE most popular boy’s name in the country, spanning decades as the number one or two name on the list.

My dad jokingly suggested the name “Wolfgang” as a great partner to Josh’s last name. It’s pretty sensational and made the short list–if only to remind us of what we want: a name with an impact. While watching “Die Hard” we realized one of the bad guys was named “Wolfgang” (pronounced wolf-gong by the stereotypical villainous Europeans with the terrible hair). When rated on a baby name site, “Wolfgang” received low marks under “Friendly” and “Youthful.” Huh…

Before the conception I’ve been rambling on and on about was a bleak period of infertility. Within a year I had lost the cheery idea of conceiving on a whim, quickly, or before any deep thought about what I was actually doing. It is a dark, bizarre, and deeply painful period when one wonders if their supposedly God-given right to pro-create may be compromised. I spent many anguished nights writing in my journal questioning my purpose in life if I wasn’t able to conceive naturally. Sounds dramatic, I know, but infertility taps into a very primal and personal space inside a soul. Because, currently, I spent more time trying to conceive then actually pregnant and I still have a lot of insight about the topic of infertility. Insight and anecdotal input:

Written in January of 09:
Sitting in this rusty doctor’s office in a scrappy part of Renton. This is the clinic I go when I have to see someone the same day. It is a walk-in clinic with a kindly Indian doctor who is fast and efficient. His nurses tend to be round, homely, women in Disney print scrubs. This time around I’m there because I have horrible mouth sores due to (what is later diagnosed) as a bacterial infection in my throat. While the nurse takes my blood pressure she asks, “Are you on any medication?”
“No,” I say. “Oh, wait…I’m taking prenatal vitamins.”
“Are you PREGNANT?” the nurse is all bug-eyed.
“No,” I say, shortly. I pause, and if by explanation say, “It’s taking a long time.”
“Oh,” the nurse seems unsure of what to say. Then she bursts out: “Well…do you want one of mine? Heh, heh, I have two boys…”
Do I want one of hers? WTF?
“Ha heh,” I garble, awkwardly. My throat is killing me. The nurse trails off…first about her boys then about, what? I don’t know. Why does it offend me that she jokingly offered one of her offspring as a consolation for my infertility? I don’t know, but it does…

The lowest of the low, written at 10 Weeks Along:

You see, it’s the fog. The interminable, bizarre, definitely pregnancy-related fog. It’s similar to the feel of a stiff ache that follows the flu, you know, when your body is still going back to its stretchy healthy shape? But at times this fog can be blissful, like the moment when you close your eyes while watching a movie on TV–I’m just going to listen to the movie with my ears, I think, not watch it with my eyes. The flickering of the TV blinks beneath closed lids until I’m floating on a narrow planet. I can’t imagine getting up, my body is so so so very very heavy.

I wander from room to room sometimes, alone, and unsure. This is usually after a full day of exertion, animation, children in classroom and in studios. There might be a glimmer of hunger, but it’s overwhelmed by a choking, suffocating, nausea in my throat. I pick up cans of food, listlessly, since my ability to prepare multiple ingredients in some sort of semblance of dinner has long been abandon. My husband comes home and looks around. I’ve placed a can of chili and a can opener on the kitchen counter. In the living room I reveal that I have eaten three russet potatoes, mashed. “That’s all I’m having for dinner,” I claim, still unsure if the potatoes will be ok…or maybe I will be haunted by them in the middle of the night. That is what happened with the pizza…the terrible, terrible, pizza from the place just down the block. So convenient! So close by! And yet the sauce was a travesty, the cheese scarce, and I don’t think peperoni was the right way to reintroduce meat into my diet. I woke up twice in the middle of night, the pizza lurking in the back of my throat, threateningly. I squeezed my eyes shut and willed myself back to sleep. I’m never eating that pizza again, I swear. Just one look at the pizza box the next morning sends me down.

Josh has gone down to Vancouver to tell his mother the news. I should be with him but a very important rehearsal takes precedent; my old life still hanging around like everything is normal. Without Josh, there’s no one to feel normal with. There is no one to keep an eye on me as I wander around the house trying to outrun my illness. I try and work in the garden but the wind makes me feel sick. The sun gives me a headache. I wonder when I’ll stop being an insufferable pregnant crank. The kid must be doing some serious growing this week, Week 10, the first week the fetus looks sorta like a baby instead of a tadpole. While taking modern class the other night I caught a glimpse of my profile in the mirror and panicked. ‘I don’t want to get bigger!’ ‘I’m going to get wide’! Mirrors and scales might need to be avoided–or at least only used as a necessity.

‘Whatever,’ I think, dreamily lying down in my car with the the driver’s seat pushed all the way back. I’m in the parking lot of a community center, early to teach by about 15 minutes. I’m stunned at how easy it is to curl up in a ball in my car seat and almost fall asleep. Normally I would be too paranoid about someone walking by and worrying that I had died in my car. Lately, it’s everything I can do to get OUT of my car. Sometimes I put my head on the steering wheel just to gain the strength to pull myself, my purse, my dance bag, my book bag, and my keys out of the vehicle. I’ll take any opportunity to just sit and space off out the windshield at the world outside. There have been moments when I’ve debated pulling over to the side of the road and taking a nap.

The fog has been pushed most likely by my abstaining of coffee. This is really adding insult to injury, I know. Coffee no longer smells or tastes good…what’s the point? Maybe I’ll pick it up again, maybe not. The headache withdrawal has been crushing, and sometimes I think I might be crazy to pass it up. Every since I’ve been producing more saliva I seem to forget my own thirst. When you’re constantly over salivating–and I mean really, like sometimes I have to spit some of it out because my mouth seems to fill up–you forget to drink! And would you believe that sometimes even water or even my own overabundant spit makes me feel queasy? What is going on? So, you can see why I would want to forget about coffee when even swallowing water has become an issue. Yeesh.