Fetuses are painful.

At the start of this pregnancy my husband Ted came home one day and told me that some fetuses - at some point in our evolutionary past - would kick the crap out of their moms-to-be from the inside.

A portion of these mothers - thousands of years ago, of course - died from internal injuries inflicted by their overzealous hulk-like progeny-to-be, my husband said, to my dismay. Those babies didn't end up in our current gene pool, Ted assured me however, because neither they, nor their moms, survived the ordeal.

Well, I feel like some of those aberrant genetics sneaked into modern times.

What's worse than the strong fetal kicks of month seven? The painful stretches and knee and elbow rolls of months eight and nine! The baby limbs might look cute already - squished inside my belly - but they sure feel lethal!

And I swear the baby has decided to use my bladder as a pin cushion undoubtedly to free its tiny hands while it practices kitting a sweater!!

"I'm finished," I told my Ob/Gyn the other day. 

"Congratulations," he said. "Now sign this."

As I inked my signature on documents giving the hospital permission to care for me during labour, the doc explained that the baby hadn't dropped yet and I probably wasn't as finished as I would like to be.

Right then and there I made a decision: I just might be one of those moms who is always telling her kids how much she suffered during labour.

"Eat your broccoli little so and so," I will say with a pleasant smile. "I suffered for you my darling and the least you can do for your poor mother who suffered through the pain and agony of pregnancy so that you could be alive today to even so much as look at broccoli, is to eat your green vegetables." 

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. 

 

I guess we'll just fight it out

Next week my husband and I start prenatal classes and I'm already gearing up - mainly gathering the strength - to handle the debates that will undoubtedly erupt between us over the lessons.

At the best of times my husband and I love to tussle. About everything from which route to take home from my parent's house, to what colour the sky was yesterday, we're an argumentative couple.

Normally I don't mind.

But I'm not looking forward to arguing over whether to cover our newborn with a blanket or a grow bag and any other topic that might make us nervous when handling our child.

True, I don't know exactly what will be covered in the classes, but I suspect those teaching will use fear and shame to convince us, say, never to use bumper pads or lie our baby on its stomach.

And I'm sure a doting nurse will warn us that we're headed for the Bad Parents Hall of Fame if we don't breastfeed. We're planning on it, but I refuse to feel bad about myself if I just can't. I've seen so many friends frightened by public health messages, especially that one, only to feel like failures when they can't abide by "the rules."

I won't get bullied. But I worry about Ted.

So eager to do right by our pending bundle of joy, he may get, well... totally neurotic (more than me!) and insist we bend over backwards to do everything exactly "right."

I don't know if I can deal with that. Already we're debating whether or not we'll "let" our child sleep through the night before three months (like he or she is going to give us a choice) and whether we subscribe to the theory posited by The Happiest Baby on the Block."

I can't lie. I've been devising ways to get him to stay home - but planning a sporting event he may want to attend next Thursday night (and for the six weeks after that) is proving difficult.

"Oh fine," I recently told him, "I give up. I know you're going to come, aren't you?"

"Yes," he said. "I'm excited."

Fine. I guess he should have some say in this whole parenting thing.

So let the arguments begin!

I can weather these

Life A.L (after Lentil).

Even though I haven't been drinking this holiday season my friends tell me I'm more delusional than ever.

Their comments stem from comments I've been making, such as:

My child will sleep through the night at three months old. My kid's feet will certainly touch the ground and be brushed by the arms of other people, not just its parents' and I'll be tough (I swear, I will) when little kicky gets older and tries to manipulate me with its cute lamblike-cries. I won't be one of those parents who spoils him or her rotten.

"Okay, whatever you say Michele," my friend Lindsay said earlier this week, wearing an enormous poo-eating grin. "Just wait sweetheart."

Just wait. That's what I'm doing. And in the meantime, I'm creating a whole set of apparently unattainable goals for myself and my child. This, after I threw a tantrum in the foyer of a gym last week when my husband Ted suggested I might want to join that facility, which has lots of mom and tot programs.

The thought of how different life will be P.L (post Lentil) made me nervous, which made me emotional, which made me irrational, which made me throw a tantrum.

On an intellectual level, I can grasp that life as I know it now - and have crafted for 32 years - will take a 180 degree turn. But, I still can't get the notion straight in my head. 

For all my grand ideas, I have no idea what awaits me on the other side - no matter how many times I stare at the pages of the Happiest Baby on the Block. 

To add a note of levity to our lives, my husband has taken to being silly.

"Okay," he said, befpre leaving for work one morning this week. "I will play the role of the baby. For instance, practice burping me."

For as long as I could stand it, he stood there making meek crying noises and flailing his arms.

"Stop it," I finally said. "No." 

And so I'm still left waiting. But even though I'm no closer to figuring out what reality will look like in just over three months, I am sure I'm not the only one who is delusional. 

Stupid advice!

It's amazing that so many people have lived past the first few months of life, according to everything I read these days.

There is so much (conflicting) advice on how to be pregnant and then take care of an infant it could make a head spin around and around and around.

No wonder I'm so dizzy lately.

When I was born, my mother, as per the advice of her doctor, put me to sleep every night on my stomach. When I told her recently that doing so now would be akin to inviting a venomous snake to share a bed with my bundle-of-joy-to-be, she started laughing. Out loud. A lot. Let's call it howling.

"Ma," I said. "Babies have to sleep only on their backs now."

"You're kidding me," she said. "But how will they learn to use their necks? And, uhm, you're still alive."

"Babies are also not allowed to be anywhere near bumper pads," I added.

"So children just squish themselves up against the bars of the crib when they start to move?" she asked.

"I guess so," I said.

More howling.

Every day it seems I read some new advice. "Exercise during pregnancy!" I've read in many places." Too much exercise can be fatal," I read in an online magazine recently. "Don't skip rope," I read in one book. "Skipping rope is fine!" someone told me.

"Don't drink soy milk while pregnant because it promotes allergies," a friend said recently. "Soy milk is an excellent source of calcium while pregnant," I read on the Internet when I looked it up.

Admittedly, I don't trust the Internet much of the time, but I can't seem to figure out who or what to trust. Period. Correct, definitive answers seem as difficult to find as the fountain of youth (anyone know where that is, by the way?).

So, I've decided to just try my best, do what I think is right and feel guilty most of the time.

But what else is new? That's always been my strategy!