Pregnant politeness.

My job takes me to some interesting places. 

Recently, I spent half a day with a homicide detective inside the top secret Toronto police property unit. It's this massive storage facility another reporter has termed the "Indiana Jones warehouse" because it seems straight out of  the  Raiders of the Lost Ark movie. There, police store seized weapons, seized marijuana, other nutty items seized during investigations and raids, such as patio furniture and bubble gum machines, and rows and rows and rows of boxes containing files from thousands of different crimes. 

A Star photographer came to take pictures and asked me to mind one of his tripods. It was light, though a bit awkward. Still I had no problem carrying it around.

But every time someone saw it in my hand, they'd say "let me take that from you!" 

There are big stairs leading to the Star's bureau at police headquarters on College St., where I work. I run up and down them every day. But if I'm hiking to the office with an officer or a colleague they look at me and say: "Poor thing. Is there an elevator for you?"

And when my husband and I sit down to dinner and I find myself with food envy, he doesn't say a bad word when I plunge my fork into a morsel on his plate. "Here," he says, happily shifting his food in my direction. "The baby likes this."

And in countless other situations - except on the subway, where I have yet to be offered a seat by anyone - people go out of their way to be kind and courteous to this pregnant woman.

This makes me wonder: What is it going to be like after I give birth? Will people cease to be nice and polite? 

It's amazing how responsible others feel for the well-being of an expectant mom. At the same time, in my life before Lentil, I don't remember feeling that warm and fuzzy about the general public.

I'll just enjoy the little perks of pregnancy while they last, I suppose. There are few of them! All too soon, I'll be that woman wheeling a massive stroller into a restaurant only to be sneered at. 

Boys can like pink too!

When I was a kid one of my favorite albums was Free To Be You and Me - that Marlo Thomas and Friends LP that busted stereotypes! touted women's lib! and pretty much advocated for an open society by appealing to as yet un-programmed minds through quirky songs and funny spoken vignettes. 

I took my cues from Carol Channing, Mel Brooks and Diana Ross as they joked and crooned: boys could be waitresses! Girls could be engineers and astronauts! cuz "you and me are free to be you and me!"

And those messages have stayed with me my whole life. 

So when it came time to designing a nursery, it never occurred to me that it should either be blue or pink, masculine or feminine, strong or soft.

It would just be colourful and fun!

And that would have been the case even if I knew whether I was having a boy or a girl - at this point it's anybody's guess. 

But when the fuchsia rocking chair I ordered arrived (yup, it's big and soft and electric pink) at our home recently, my husband had a fit.

"It's pink! It's pink! What if we have a boy??" he sputtered.

"I don't think he'll care," I said. "And he'll learn to like pink."

This was not the end of the "discussion."

Boys like blue. They like rough sports and to play with toy cars, my husband said. 

Kids like colours, I shot back. They like to play with whatever you give them! And actually, they like to horse around with cardboard boxes the best, I think. At least I did when I was growing up - the creative potential in those things is endless!

"Besides," I said, "you wear pink shirts!!"

We live in a society where boys don't have fuchsia chairs in their rooms so that other little boys don't make fun of them. "I don't want the baby mocked by its peers," my husband said.

Neither do I. Obviously. 

But I do want a child who has a mind of his or her own, is strong both physically and mentally regardless of whether it's a girl or a boy. Our child, I hope, will understand that colours by themselves don't mean one thing or another (we'll teach this to him or her). It's society that heaps on those determinations.

There is a clear message in Free to be You and Me and it is the hope that society can be changed one child at a time. 

Society has come a long way since I listened to that "silly" album 30 years ago. But apparently, it hasn't come far enough.

Any by the way Ted, go look at that Free To Be You and Me album we have in our house - the one you like to listen to all the time these days: It's pink!!!

Well actually. It's fuchsia. 

 

Ah! I lost my feet!

It's official!

My stomach has finally eclipsed my feet! 

Bending down has become impossible. And when I tried - in vain - to shave my legs in the shower a few days ago, I unwittingly cut myself. I fell on the razor while trying to reach my calf, but didn't notice for a half hour (I screamed when I saw blood on the towel and didn't calm down until I found the source two whole minutes later).

Put on stockings? Can I hire someone to get me dressed in the morning?

Just like in the first trimester - when the fatigue and nausea were debilitating - being pregnant has once again taken a turn for the difficult-to-live-through.

And my body just won't listen to reason.

"Come on! Let me sit in that bucket seat! Please just for one night, let me sleep on my back! I promise to buy you nice clothes once the baby takes up residence somewhere else!!"

My pleas fall on deaf ears. My deaf ears!!!

To add insult to injury, the fetus feels enormous and my stomach now lurches from side to side as it moves. I see tiny feet pushing through my skin. And it hurts!!

Why must tiny fetuses torture women so?

  

Is this a Jewish thing?

Tell me other people feel this way - please.

To get the baby's room ready, we had to recarpet, repaint and put in new lights. The previous owners of our home left it in pretty bad shape. 

But now it looks great even without any furniture.  A small pile of "things" we've accumulated so far sits in the middle of the room. There's a heap of second-hand plush and squeaky toys.  A stack of one-month sized onesies in plain unisex white. About 12 thick cardboard babybooks. And a blue stuffed octapus that calls out Spanish words when you squeeze any one of its tentacles. 

Sometimes when I'm alone in the house I flick on the lights in the room and just sit there on the carpet. 

If I'm feeling inspired I'll pick up a onesie and marvel at how in less than two months I'll be fastening its tiny snaps around the legs of a wriggly infant. 

And that amazes me. 

Then I get nervous and walk out of the room and shut the door behind me. Maybe it's me, but I'm scared to get too excited about the reality of what's to come before it actually gets here.

Many of my friends have refused to set up the baby's room at all before they've given birth. And among my closest peer group we all reject pre-birth showers. It's bad luck, we think. 

Instead, we throw post-natal parties. 

Maybe it's just a Jewish thing, but once the crib arrives I may have to cover it with a big sheet to be lifted off by my husband only right before we bring the baby home.

Is this superstition mine alone?

Yes! M Coat! Yes!

I broke down and bought the M coat several weeks ago. On sale. And, I have to say, I love it. Truly.

It has been some time since I've fallen so hard for an article of clothing. Crazy high-heeled shoes and empire-waisted dresses did it for me before pregnancy, but now, I'm smitten by my big, puffy, massively-pocketed, fake-fur lined maternity ski-jacket.

That's right. I'm a total loser.

But a loser who doesn't feel like she's ten pounds of sugar in a five pound sack. A loser who doesn't look like a tightly-packed sausage (even though I do sort of resemble a sausage). A loser who doesn't seem like a balloon about to burst. A loser who can safely laugh at MIA's Grammy night polka dot freak costume because I have a better cover-up. (seriously, she looked ridiculous, right? Like, a giant ladybug about to sprout another giant ladybug, right?)

And the M coat is warm - deceptively so, considering it is so lightweight. 

But the best part about the M coat is that it doesn't make me look or feel like a schlep. It's a ski jacket with a bit of cool, even if it does have an "m" for "mom" stitched onto it's front. 

And even though I haven't felt like shaving my legs for the last while because bending over has gotten far too difficult, I know that no one will notice them when I'm wearing my M coat. 

Best purchase ever. 

No time for a babymoon!

"So, what are you going to do before the baby comes?" a good friend asked me recently.

"Uhm, work?" I answered back. '"Try not to think about how drastically my life will change?" 

Not what she meant. My friend was talking about taking a "babymoon." Honeymoons come after the wedding. But babymoons come before the kid screams into our lives.

It's a word I have never heard before. 

People I know have taken romantic jaunts to spas and gone to warm climates, but I can't seem to wrap my head around taking a vacation now. My husband and I need every penny we're earning to support ourselves and the Lentil in the next year. And I feel like this is my last chance, for a long time to come, to be in the working world.

And I'll admit, I have not yet completely come to terms with my departure from my job (so, I won't be writing stories or showing up at Toronto police headquarters daily to work my crime beat? I don't get it. Explain this to me again?!) 

I still have visions of myself walking into work with a baby slung over my shoulder, ready to start my day. Anyway, airplanes will only let me board for a few more weeks, yet I have no plans to fly anywhere.

With my stomach getting in the way of, like, everything these days, I'm also not feeling up for romantic walks along a beach ("look dear," other beachgoers will say,"there's a blimp lying on the sand!").

But I feel like we should do something, like eat out more, or leave the house at midnight to go to a club just because we can!! 

But then I get tired and just want to go to bed. And eating's getting tough - what with my stomach and intestines stuffed into the tiny cavity behind my giant boobs.

So much for the babymoon. 

In lieu of a jaunt somewhere exotic however, I will accept a "push present."

It's another phrase  just learned and one I like a lot. 

 

I have beef with anti-epidurialism (a term I just made up)

Okay, here's my beef.

I'm a little upset about the epidural lesson in a recent prenatal class.

A quick preface before I get into it: I have nothing but the greatest respect for mothers who choose to have a medication-free, natural birth whether at home, in hospital or somewhere more exotic. I, on the other hand, decided long ago that pain meds are my friend. Epidural? Yes please!

Now, post preface: The class wasn't an unbiased look at ways to reduce labour pain. It was a thinly veiled anti-medication lecture given by a transparently anti-epidural nuse.

"There's a whole culture of epidural out there," she said, as if the same culture condoned eating babies. "And if you turn it down, doctors will whisper 'oh, my god, she turned it down' as if you're crazy."

This nurse described natural childbirth as a smooth road with few curves. She described childbirth with an epidural as a paved road with awkwardly angled turns. Something that produces "loss of control" for the mother (at least it did during the one labour she had with an epidural), it makes labour painfully longer and may cause your tiny newborn to be "unco-ordinated with breastfeeding" indefinitely after birth.

"There's crazy research out there," she said. But when probed didn't know any specifics. And when asked what "unco-ordinated" meant and for how long, she stammered. "Oh, not long and we don't really know," finally conceding it doesn't have any long term effects on the baby.

But to a roomful of frightened mothers and fathers-to-be, her lesson was enough to elicit anxious gasps.

What the nurse failed to mention was that labour is really, really painful - so I've heard - and mothers who can't properly control their pain, don't fare well during labour and that's no good for their emerging babies either. The hospital-produced labour and delivery manual says this.

Also, pain levels don't stay constant. They get worse. And there is nothing wrong with being made comfortable during labour by using safe medication administered by qualified doctors and nurses - if one so chooses.

True, painkillers, such as Demerol and epidural can be scary. They do affect the baby while they're affecting the mom. But that's why you can't get an epidural at home. Only in a hospital where they have all sorts of monitors and again, qualified medical staff.

So I was disappointed by the nurse and the prenatal class. It's each woman's choice about how to manage her pain. And she deserves to learn the unbiased facts before making such an important decision.

So, that's my beef.

Labour = Ice. Something tells me not so much.

I dunno for sure, but I have a sneaking suspicious contractions and ice have little in common.

For one, ice is cold. Contractions have been described to me as pain emanating from the depths of hell.

Ice is wet. Contractions - subtracting the membrane breakage and "waters" flowing - are dry and all consuming.

And lastly, ice is a relatively inert substance. Contractions are volatile. They're meant to be. Mean and ugly and forceful enough to expel a baby from a really small hole.

So, it was to my surprise that the nurse in prenatal class gave each expectant parent - mom and dad-to-be - a bag of ice to hold for one full minute, to see how we deal with pain.

I learned something very important about myself that day. And I'm pretty proud of it. I have no problem squeezing a bag of ice for more than a minute. No sweat. Literally.

But I fearmy stoic display in class - with the ice - will not predict how I'll fare in labour.

"Uhm, this can't be what a contraction feels like, for real," I said, gripping the ice and giving the nurse a "what the hell?!" look.

"Not really," she said. "But this is the only way we're allowed to simulate the pain. Ethically."

Right-o. So, in my first prenatal class I didn't really learn how to calm myself down when the hurt gets nutty. But, I did learn that I have no problem holding a bag of ice.

Good trick at parties, I reckon!