Mumbling Madly

Baby is slowly running out room. I felt his feet for the first time–meaning, I could tell they were feet instead of something mysteriously unidentifiable. I poked and prodded the place where I felt his feet; I made Josh reach over me in the car to feel them and then I made my stomach muscles a little sore. “Stop poking him!” Josh protested the next day after I complained of soreness but continued the search for the mysterious feet.

Hiccups from baby also amuse me–except the night I was trying to sleep. For the first time, I felt genuine annoyance over something as cute as prenatal hiccups. So distracting! Can’t he tell I’m beyond tired? Birth and Delivery classes are coming up this Saturday…I expect we’ll be studying pain management techniques by holding ice cubes and chanting numbers. I think it will help both Josh and I but it will also be weird.

Up until recently, I was always able to lie on my back. In fact, I rejected the whole notion that pregnant women should only sleep on their left sides–bullshit, really. As the months wore on I found myself able to sleep on my back if my knees were bolstered and my back was stuffed with pillows. I created a mini-recliner in my bed. This worked really well. When lying on my side, my stomach kind of flops over and becomes really uncomfortable–despite the body pillow. (I tried naming the body pillow “Enrico” but Josh adamantly discouraged this). Two nights in a row, my beloved sleeping position has been compromised. When I lay on my back I can almost feel Baby Schlag sink back into my spine, wriggling in protest, no matter how many pillows I use. This is terrible. This makes sleeping really limited. This makes me want to throw a tiny temper tantrum.

Of course, sleeping has always been weird–it goes hand in hand with pregnancy. On any given night you might find me eating a bowl of cereal at 4am. Or you might find me reading a book to try and fall back to sleep at 5:30am. Expect several trips to the bathroom–usually at 12am, 3am, and 6am. I try snuggling Josh, but the body pillow is too bulky. He tries snuggling me and the body pillow is somehow tangled in his legs. I try and snuggle Josh without the pillow and my stomach lurches and protests. One night Josh could feel Baby Schlag kicking him in the back, protesting the side sleeping position we had found ourselves in.

With each week during the third trimester, it seems that something is taken away. My belly button’s good looks one week, my chin last week, next week I expect to lose something else…but dang, did sleeping my back really need to be taken away?

A few days ago, Josh told me about a co-worker whose cat was mauled by a pit bull in their neighborhood. The woman came home to find a note on her door. Apparently, her neighbor chased away the pit bull, rescued the cat, and took it to the vet. The note had the number of the vet but when the neighbor called the cat was in bad shape. She ended up putting the cat down. I was impressed with the quality of this woman’s neighbors and horrified by the story. I thought of my crotchety old kitty, Hobbes, and how sad it would be if she died. And then I recalled a few weeks ago when I somehow ended up watching ‘Animal Rescue:Miami’ on Animal Planet for hours and hours. Some woman called in to report someone dumping ‘boxes and boxes filled with cats’ out of a van. The visual image this conjured was both hilarious and terrifying. Tragically, a bunch of stray dogs stumbled onto the multiple boxes of cats and went nuts. One of the cats died, but in typical Animal Planet fashion, many of the cats survived and went up for adoption. I ended up balling the whole time, caught up in all the random stories of emaciated horses, puppy farms, and trapped crocodiles. Finally, I turned the TV off.

The day Josh told me the pit bull story was the same day I picked up my sister to help me paint the spare room/baby’s future room. It was also the third day of a string of nice sunny days. Our neighbors have taken it upon themselves to fix up a beat up old car on the sidewalk across the street. These self-proclaimed mechanics enjoy loud music and beer while tinkering with this car. After a full weekend of this, my nerves were shot and images of ditching this neighborhood for good danced in my head. I was complaining to my sister about this when I pulled up to the parking pad of my house. That’s when we noticed a pit bull standing on our back porch, ghostly and illuminated by our porch light. She was saggy and baggy, no collar, udders hanging down from her body, a look of expectation on her face. “What..?” I said. And my sister laughed at the audacity of it. The dog stared us down, not barking or wagging her tail, simply waiting by the door. While I dialed Josh’s cell phone number, the dog suddenly hopped down the porch stairs and disappeared down the alley way. She was casual and efficient, disappearing into the night as randomly as she came. By the time Josh came outside, she was completely gone. He roamed around with a flash light to make sure she hadn’t left behind a litter of puppies but found nothing.

With the pit bull mauling story fresh in my head, the entire scene really creeped me out. My sister ardently defended the mama pit bull but images of my cat stumbling outside at dusk into the waiting jaws of a dog on the back porch haunted me. “There was no aggression and we all know pit bulls have bad reputations,” Gina reminded me. The only comfort I took was the eerie feeling of camaraderie: this pit bull was pregnant or maybe just had her litter. I could vouch for that. Maybe she just went to the wrong back door, expectant and hopeful that her family was there. Perhaps she had been turned out, collar-less into the world, and all she needed was a hand out for her puppies. Or maybe she had been accidentally let out, wandered a long way from home, and instinctively sniffed out a house where someone else was pregnant too. At any rate, I half expect to see her every time I open the back door. But, as it stands, I haven’t seen the mama pit bull since…

It seems every pregnant woman I know has had a moment when they realize that they have gotten larger, which leads to the realization that, wow, they’re gonna get even bigger, and then freak out about it. I’m sure this is part of being ushered into the third trimester; the final stretch and the biggest you’re ever going to get.

The panic came when I realized I was having a very hard time walking. I was downtown, I was in over my head and I debated taking a cab back to my parked car. I had already done three hours of childcare, a meeting with one of my bosses, and then decided I needed to go to the Gap, Old Navy, and Pea in the Pod, because, well, I was already downtown and I needed pants. Oh, and a stop to the bank’s atm too. This was all in a time span of two hours because that’s all I paid for on my parking meter. Surprise! I just can’t move the way I used to. Walking was something I use to take for granted, I suppose. Suddenly I felt panic: how am I going to make it for the last few months? Images of me stranded on the side of the road and having to walk miles for gas and being unable to do so filled my head. Fantasies of having to (God Forbid) try and run my way out of situation and failing worried me. Thoughts of just trying to get around and being unable, simply unable, filled me with a sense of sinking doom. When Josh came home I started crying about my lack of mobility, the downtown experience, and how I needed pizza.

No surprise that Baby Schlag seemed to double in size over the last few days, as the trademark nausea, fatigue, and difficulty walking seemed to indicate. Josh gently reassured me but reminded me that, well, I had overdone it. “But you’re doing a really good job,” he said, which, while it sounds like pet behavior training, made me feel a lot better. For me it has been a lot harder to throw in the physical towel and roll over to the whims of my belly.

I had to laugh because I went to the doctor and had my first weight gain surprise: Woah! That’s a lot of pounds! When I complained about cramps my doctor offered to check the position of my cervix. I eagerly hopped up on the table, ready to go in 30 seconds flat. Everything checked out fine, which means all the discomfort is ‘within the realm of normal.’ I was actually dismayed, hoping that she would find a fixable problem instead of the usual, well, ailment of pregnancy. Why else would I eagerly hop up on the table for an internal exam?

Tis’ the time to turn my body over to the little guy, whether it’s comfortable or not.