Mumbling Madly

After living in CO for 5 years, I think my heat tolerance is a little higher then the average northwesterner. In CO, we survived weeks of 100 plus temps without air conditioning–although the evenings were much cooler and easier going then the hot nights of late. I feel thankful, daily, that I am not in my third trimester nor do I have squalling, brand new, infant. In fact, the more I think about it, the happier I am that my kid is showing up in November…despite the hassle birthday parties will be for this kid (as a summer baby, my celebrations were always held outside).

The hood is strangely quiet, most likely due to the shock of high temperatures and the muffling of outside noise with our fans. A large bust went down last Friday where 15 high level gang members were rounded up along with all their weapons and drugs. This cheered me. Like sea turtles hatching from eggs, everyone in the south end seems to be flocking to the water. If you drive down Lake Washington Blvd, scores of cars line the various parking lots and streets as badly bikini clad women and shirtless men crowd the various shores. Inflatable rafts, smalls boats, and a handful of flustered geese fill the water. I noticed that all of the playgrounds are empty…

‘Baby Schlag’ or ‘Wolfgang’ as we alternately call him has rewarded me with a series of bizarre visuals: I can see him move beneath my skin. This occurs mostly when I lay on my back. My entire navel shifts briefly as a swimming foot splashes by or a fist juts out. Last Friday my husband felt him for the first time. (It’s true: My yoga teacher says this visual stimulation is largely for the partner’s benefit). I’ve experimented with poking my stomach to get a response, which works only occasionally. Usually Wolfgang will respond twice to my pokings before lying still, a swift kick in the nearby vicinity before growing bored with my antics. “He’s just like you,” I told Josh, “He refuses to perform on command…like when I try to get you to dance the Robot and you say, ‘not by request.’” As with all the latest and greatest perks of pregnancy my response to fetal movement was at first shock, awe, and now resignation. Sometimes Baby Schlag kicks so hard I interrupt my own sentence to exclaim, “Wow! Dang…”

Despite the 100 degree temps I still went to my prenatal yoga class last night. It turned into some sort of bizarre Bikram Yoga (or ‘Sweaty Yoga’) experience. Only four of us turned out and the teacher gave us wet towels to wrap around our necks. I removed my shirt and shamelessly practiced my asanas in a sports bra and shorts. It was nice to feel uninhibited around other pregnant ladies about my belly. Later that night I went to a ‘Welcome Back From Grad School in London” party for Rachel at a painfully hot bar. Our legs were sticking to the unbreathable vinyl seats and I quickly sucked down glass after glass of cold water. I became the star of the Pregnant Show a few times, entertaining the ladies with the secrets and humors of pregnancy. A celebrity in a totally different and remarkable way. One gal tried to compare the awe of pregnancy with the awe of performance and I quickly shut her down (not even comparable, honey). After escaping the bar, a handful of lady friends surrounded me and placed their hands on my belly. Underneath 3 pairs of hands, Wolfgang immediately responded and rewarded everyone with a series of artful flips and kicks…it was really nice.

Recently reclined while feeling sad and felt a little thump under my navel. Ah…so maybe the yet-to-be-named baby boy can tell I am sad. Maybe he knows that I was moved to alumni status at the theater, simply because when I’m so tired my bones hurt and the baby weighs so heavy the last thing I could ever imagine doing is getting into my car and driving to the city for Theatersports at 10:00pm. And so, with this obvious lack of commitment I must resign myself to second class…and my picture removed from the theater wall.

I am resigned. But I’m also rallying a bit of insight here and there from other theatrical mothers. After all, isn’t there such a thing as maternity leave? Pregnancy leave? Understanding? Maybe not, but I know that there is a fierce strength with women in the theater world who are mothers.

“It’s weird,” I said to Josh, “But my life is changing rapidly and yours isn’t changing AT ALL!” I know this will be the mantra for years ahead. But then I always try and pull back and look at the BIG PICTURE: there are only so many years that one can pull this pregnancy stunt off. So many years before your time is up and you become one of those 50 year olds on Oprah weeping because you thought you had all the time in the world (“Really?” I want to say, incredulously, “Has modern science really made us believe we still have a shot at 50?”). And so, I’m taking the world up on its limited offer and trying out the whole parenting, pro-creating, birth thing. (Because I think I would be good at it…not because I’m an ego maniac and want a kid who looks like me). I’m doing a noble thing! And yet, I’ve really had to talk myself back into it lately…even going as far as reading some of my desperate journal entries from a year ago. How concerned I was! How terrified that I would be childless! How ready I was to sign up and throw away everything else that mattered!

Anyway, I don’t have much energy to fight the good fight…yet. Maybe it will take a few months or a year or two but internally I’m taking a stand: I will shake off my alumni status and return to the goddamn stage eventually. (Or at least when my maternal clock has run out).

I went from not showing at all to: “You’re 22 weeks pregnant? Huh….you’re really small.” I know that even writing about this I am dooming myself to karmactic justice. Storms of women will immediately tell me that it isn’t until your 6th month that you really start popping out, that it takes a while for your stomach muscles to give in, and that your 2nd pregnancy will be entirely different (that in fact you will start showing the second you conceive). Many people can’t wait to crow, “Just wait! You’re going to get huge!” And if I don’t hear all of this, then I get the incredulous and definitive statement: “You’re really small.” To which I babble on about my height, my long torso, etc.

None of this really matters, other then it’s slightly uncomfortable having people rate you. As someone who is usually pretty comfortable being stared at, directing attention to myself has always been a talent of mine. This, however, is a whole new ball game. This is probably why I haven’t been able to set foot on a stage in quite some time, or take a dance class confidently, or even walk down the street without feeling like my belly button might pop at any moment. All this speculation is nice, but it’s also making me kind of shy…

Usually, I am the only pregnant woman around. This means at even given moment, out in public, I’m the only visible woman pregnant in the near vicinity. People have started to stare.

On the rare occasions that I am around another pregnant woman, it really is like we’re secretly high-fiving ourselves into a secret club. As an empathetic person by nature, I immediately fall into some sort of question and answer session. However, this wasn’t really kicked off until the sub for Wednesday’s prenatal class was 1/2 hour late. 10 of us, all at various stages of pregnancy, sat in the stairwell of the yoga center and waited. We kicked around the usual questions (everyone, pregnant or not, wants to know when you are due and if it is a boy or a girl). Then the questions got more personal; some started talking about midwives, obstetrics, and the merits of home birth–which made one woman next to me cringe (“I would never do home birth,”she whispered. “My first birth was so messy”). Because the studio is located on Rainier Ave. a car vibrated by with teeth chattering bass. “Is anyone else’s baby moving?” I asked. “Your baby is bumpin it!” One sassy pregnant Asian lady from Beacon Hill shouted. The sub finally showed up, didn’t have keys to the studio, and asked if we wanted to do yoga in the park. Out of the 10 of us, 10 agreed.

So, then you have to imagine 10 pregnant ladies walking down Rainier Avenue in Columbia City during rush hour. One woman was four days from her due date and hoping the yoga would jump start labor. She huffed and puffed across the street. Three of us ended up in the restroom at the public library before joining the others. We sat in a large, hippie circle, surrounded by clover. The traffic was merciless as it raced by, the sounds of the Farmer’s market festive, a pack of kids loitered and watched on a picnic table (you know you’re in Seattle when a bunch of 7 year olds recognize and use the word ‘yoga’). We breathed, stretched, and downward dogged our way through a full hour. People stared, birds called, cars slowed down; I noticed that the mothers walking by, their arms filled with farmer’s market produce, smiled.

The sub was continually apologetic about the wet grass, about the noise, about not having props. But none of the students cared. It’s cheesy, really, but all that mattered was that we were stretched, sore, puffy, and with child…together.

So far I’ve received a nice sampling of pregnancy aches and pains. I say ’sampling’ because many of these ailments have not been chronic and many are very fleeting. For instance: I’ve had one bloody nose. Common in pregnancy, my bloody nose lasted about 3 minutes while teaching preschool in the presence of a fellow teacher who is also pregnant. I think it was a sympathy bloody nose because the day prior she had regaled me with tales of her many pregnancy induced bloody noses–so massive, so surprising, and so very ,very bloody. My body responded, in kind, by giving me a single solitary bloody nose the next day.

I had one day of heartburn. I didn’t even recognize it as heartburn until about 11pm when I wondered what that weird burning in my chest cavity was. How strange. How odd. Oh wait! This must be what heartburn feels like…ow. So, I amped myself up for my new preggo heartburn only to never face it again.

I’ve had two emotional outbursts. The kind that are funny later in their audacity. The kind that are fueled strictly from the huge amount of hormones coursing through my body. The kind that my husband has repeated as really funny jokes to friends and family. I don’t mind this…in fact I’m kind of surprised I haven’t lived day in and day out as a crying hormonal mess. My temperament has always been peppered with mild hysterics, crying jags, and emotional instability so I fully planned for the waterworks to really kick in. The day after I learned I was pregnant I was listening to Pearl Jam’s remake of the song “Last Kiss” on the radio and I started bawling. “Oh boy, this is it,” I thought to myself while blubbering. “I’m in for an emotional ride.” But this hasn’t been the case. Instead it’s been more subtle…like stubbing my toe badly on the front door and it totally ruining my day. Sort of like a slow burn, a stewing, a simmering pot of emotion. It wasn’t until I found myself sobbing during prenatal yoga that I realized I was still sad over stubbing my toe earlier that day.

There have been other quirks that I’ve simply excused as pregnancy related; primarily the gnawing pain in my jaw. Prone to TMJ after over-wearing my headgear in 8th grade (I was really, really eager to get my braces off and overdid everything in an attempt to lessen my orthodontia), I hadn’t had any real jaw discomfort in almost 20 years. Suddenly I was rendered incapable of eating anything but soft foods for a few days. Yawning jags became painful and annoying as my jaw creaked and groaned under its obligation to open past a few centimeters. I’m visiting the dentist on Thursday for a regular cleaning (excited that I’ll be able to chirp, “No x-rays please, I’m pregnant!”), and I’m sure the dentist won’t have anything helpful to say. I can’t take any of the really great medication they recommend for jaw pain. I’m not a teeth grinder, so a night guard would be useless. It seems to be getting a little better lately, but the nuisance of chewing with pain is still there. I know that it is common for the joints to loosen up during pregnancy. Since I’m not giving birth through my mouth, I’m not sure why my jaw decided to slack off. I’m chalking it up to yet another ‘mystery of pregnancy.’

And so…it is a boy. With a boy came a rush of surprise, a concern, a curiosity…in my head since the beginning it was always a girl. Because I’m a girl? Because of the cute little dresses I adored as a girl? Because I had planned to take up the feminist crusade? At any rate, I will have to transfer all that energy to an upcoming boy instead. Confession time: Thinking about a boy in the doctor’s office spurned a sudden panic. My kid will be crazy. My son will be bonkers, hyper, unable to sit still at the grocery store. My boy will lash out and be aggressive and want to stab things with sticks. He’ll be a bully, a vandal, a kid destined for juvy. Every bad boy stereotype I could possible come up with flashed before my eyes as I stared vaguely at the ultrasound.

Two nights ago I had a dream that the ultrasound technician said, “It’s actually a girl,” and I thought, “Of course it is…now I know my intuition is correct.” But my dream was wrong along with a lot of other things: I’m carrying low not high. I didn’t crave junk food in the beginning the way you’re suppose to if you’re carrying a boy. I also didn’t crave sour things or have insightful dreams. So, I’m throwing out all the superstitions and assumptions. Perhaps I should be going off other people’s inklings: the girl in Detroit who said, “it’s a boy” and the oncologist mother of one of my students who said just yesterday, “I’m getting a boy vibe from you.” They were right…I was wrong.

I’m sorry I sound so morose…it’s not bad news at all, just different then what I had expected. Part of the news was realizing that ‘it’ is really a boy…not a blob or a tiny mystery. I am half way done with this pregnancy and learning the gender has kicked open the realization that the baby is real and, yes, he’s coming…

When I was a heartbroken mess at twenty, thrashed out and angry at all the mean guys jerking me around, I used to console myself by writing down all the nice men I had in my life. There were a couple of guys I had platonic friendships with who resided firmly in the theater department I would always think of, a handful of really excellent gay men, my brother (which is kind of cheating since he’s family), and, well, Josh. It’s true…even back when we barely new each other I would think: now there is a nice guy. There ARE decent, non-cheating, non-heartbreaking men out there…look at this little list I’ve made. I suppose this is what helped keep me relatively balanced and boy-crazy at the time (although, now it sounds a little dorky and immature).

No surprise that I immediately start cataloging all the cool little boys I’ve known. (Like Evan, age 2, who recently drew a really great picture of me and then cried on the last day of dance class). I realize that many of my most memorable students have been boys. I understand that boys typically have an easier adolescence, will earn higher salaries as men, and are typically nicer to their mothers then girls. It’s going to be entirely different when the kid comes out and becomes a person–gender probably won’t factor much. It’s just right now the kid is still an unknown, part of my imagination, almost like a theory I came up with, but now…now he’s a boy.

I’ve always loved shopping…loved it. But imagine that instead of an entire, wide, big store filled with choice after choice you are now relegated to a tiny corner behind the children’s section across from the bathroom. Hence the tragedy of maternity wear begins. OK, I know I’m lucky: fashion has never been this baggy, this unshapely, this ugly…peasant tops and empire waists abound. But pants are a no-win situation. They have to be bought specific for maternity and depending on the bells and whistles–many of them slide right down. Panels, drawstrings, all the usual trappings meant to accommodate are typically uncomfortable and slippery.

And I didn’t recieve the memo: Ugly, khaki, cargo capris seem to be the unspoken dress code for expecting mothers.