being pregnant

You are told you look "great", a lot. Too much. You grow suspicious. You don’t look any different than you usually do. No, you look a little different - your belly sticks out and you have that blemish on your nose that hasn't gone away for 5 months. You got an exfoliating facial just to prove how bourgeois you could be, but the blemish is still there (belly too). You suspect they mean "great, seeing as soon life as you know it will come crashing down around you" or "great, considering you've gained 15 pounds so far" or "great, since when they told me you were pregnant I expected to find a wheezing, ankle-less slob in flowered overalls stained with pickle juice."

You glide through baby sections of department stores trying to create a registry to offer people who want to buy you gifts and benefit from such things as registries. You are afraid to touch anything. It would feel like admitting defeat. You are lulled into a stupor by the wash of pastel colors. You wonder what ducks and giraffes have to do with being a baby. Oh, you see now, they are baby ducks and baby giraffes. Well, as long as that's cleared up.

You have questions. Question to husband: "What will you do if I run away and leave you with the baby?" Answer: "We will miss you." Question: "What will you do if I crack up and get committed?" Answer: "We will visit you."

You discover you and your husband have different ways of preparing for the baby, although you suspect your paths are obscurely related. You read birthing stories and focus on the one where the woman in labor screams at the other women in the room that they are crazy for ever having done this or telling her she could. Your husband asks you where the fire extinguisher is.

You figure you'll have to do the dishes after every meal now since you don't want to get caught in labor with a messy kitchen. Your rationale is solid. Midwives apparently deal with blood and slime and exposed genitals, but you doubt they'd tolerate what's in your drain catcher.

You tell the cats on a regular basis that "things are gonna change around here" and that "I can't be at your beck and call every minute any more, you fuzzy little rats." Then you lie on the floor and pull a shoe lace slowly past waiting paws.

Sleep is a joke. There aren't enough pillows in the world. You dream restless dreams about job interviews. Your husband asks if you're okay. You think about smothering him with one of your pillows.

You are often really hungry.