Words You do Not Want to Read When Shopping Online for a (Maternity) Wedding Dress

“Beneath the chiffon is a second layer made of 100 percent polyester.”

Will the Wonderful, Joyous Glories of Pregnancy Never Cease?

At the grocery store today a pile of mangoes beckoned to me from the edge of the produce section, seducing me with their smooth skin and plump, blushing cheeks. OhmygodI’mtotallycravingamangoI’dforgottenaboutmangosyumyum I babbled to Dr. Fiance as we headed toward the checkout aisle. I managed to control myself until after dinner, when I sliced the fruit off its pit and shoved it into my mouth like a starving baby.

Within ten seconds my hands started to itch. Then my lips, then my chin and cheeks—basically every part of my face below my nose felt it had been attacked by mosquitoes. “Is it possible,” I asked Dr. Fiance, all casual-like, “to develop food allergies when you’re pregnant that you didn’t used to have?” He said, sure, not looking up from his laptop. “Why?” “Oh, it’s just that after eating a few bites of mango my face, um, itches.” He looked up at me, his eyes all big and then this man who’s totally nonchalant about spending his workdays pulling knives out of peoples’ skulls and testing other people for cancer was suddenly all, “Do. Not. Eat. Mango. Ever. Again. Promise me!”

Maybe we won’t be going to Hawai'i for our honeymoon after all.

Like a Pregnant Teen

My new ordered-online-from-a-maternity-store wedding dress finally came today. It arrived tremendously wrinkled on a broken plastic hanger with a pile of advertisements (a baby thermometer, an Olan Mills baby portrait package, a credit card that helps you save up for your baby's college education). It's strapless but lacks any sort of support to hold it up, and the skirt bears numerous smudge marks that have the look of permanence. I'm beginning to get the feeling that the world doesn't want pregnant brides to feel good about themselves.

My feeling at this point is an overwhelming sense of Oh, well. Maybe if I steam out the wrinkles, hire a tailor to add some decor over the black marks, and safety pin a string at the top to help hold it up...

Why must wedding dresses be either trashy or thousands of dollars? Can't someone make something nice for under 700 bucks? Even for pregnant ladies?

If I Had a Million Dollars

I just learned all about life insurance—something I’ll confess I’d never given any thought to before. Every time Dr. Fiancé tries to bring up the topic—approximately once a week since I got pregnant—I end up shedding tears, partly because I don’t like to think about him dying and leaving me and the baby alone (even with a million or two dollars, which, when you come down to it, doesn’t go all that far anymore) and partly because it’s all so mind-numbingly convoluted and boring.

I keep trying to tell Dr. Fiancé that if he were to die in the next five or ten years, I’d have far bigger problems than having enough money to maintain the lifestyle to which I’ve become accustomed—namely I’ll have to figure out how to get myself out of the deep well of depression I’ll certainly plummet into and how to eventually resume dating. . . It would be too weird to meet two husbands on Match.com, right? But where else will anyone be meeting anyone in five or ten years?

Dr. Fiancé is under the impression that the right thing to do is to make sure I’d be left with enough money to pay off the house so the poor orphaned baby and I will have a place to live even though I still may not be making any money yet off my writing career—which is a nice thought (the paying off the house part, I mean), but I can’t imagine staying in the house with Dr. Fiancé, um, dead. Too many memories—and I’ve never liked the kitchen that much.

“If you died,” I told him this time around, “we’d sell the house and move in with your mother. The view from her living room is very soothing, and she could probably get me a writing gig at her magazine.”

But Dr. Fiancé wasn’t convinced. Something about 401(k)s and maximum contributions and term plans and tax brackets and a fixed rate of seven percent of something.

“Those insurance guys are good,” he said. “He pretty much convinced me to go with the plan that seems the most expensive but apparently isn’t in the end—and he sounded really, really smart.”

I suggested Dr. Fiancé could maybe call his dad for advice—dads are often good at that sort of thing—but he said his dad doesn’t believe in insurance. He grinned, adding, “He thinks insurance guys are total skeezeballs.”

Gee. I wonder why.

Me and My Monkey

Dr. Fiancé returned last night from a four-day bachelor party in Costa Rica, courtesy his brother and three best friends. He brought me back a present, warning as he handed it over that there weren’t a lot of good gift options in Costa Rica—by which I assume he means at the airport—but he proved himself to be totally wrong by bringing me the world’s most adorable stuffed monkey with a baby monkey Velcro-wrapped around its torso. “I saw it and thought mama monkey and baby monkey—she’s got to have that,” he explained as I cried—yes, cried—at the sheer adorableness of it all—including the fact that I have a fiancé who brings home stuffed animals from his bachelor party.

It used to be that when Dr. Fiancé went out of town, I’d get sad and lonely and kind of pissed off at him for leaving me alone in this big house in a fancy neighborhood that is decidedly not a historic school building filled with friendly artists eager to come over for a cup of tea and a chat about the best way to decoupage an old map of onto an old desk salvaged from the curb. Plus, we don’t have curtains on any of the windows, so cranking the stereo to 11 and dancing around the living room in my underwear isn’t really an option, and what else is there for a girl to do when her fiancé dashes off to, say, Costa Rica with his boyfriends for the weekend?

But this time around, I didn’t get sad or lonely or angry—I just got kind of cranky. I’m not sure exactly what I was cranky about, but for once it didn’t feel like I was cranky at Dr. Fiancé, more like I was cranky the way someone is when they have a million things to do (plan a wedding, prepare house for baby, write a book) and are too nauseous and exhausted to get many of them done in any kind of efficient way. Plus there are these pregnancy hormones to blame.

Truth be told, it’s not the book or the baby that are the issue. I want the wedding to be planned for me. I guess this isn’t a new feeling so much as a return visitor—the kind that eats all the cookies and overstays their welcome.

Once again, as much as I want to be married to Dr. Fiancé, I do not want to interview more photographers who will tell me that their $2000 base rate doesn’t include a single actual physical photograph—just their time. I do not want to spend even one more minute shopping for a maternity bridal gown, a maternity rehearsal dinner outfit, or a suitable maternity day-after-the-wedding outfit. I’m not interested in finding a tailor, a seamstress, or someone who knows how to make corsages, and I’m done with all the meetings and emails with the woman struggling to make our invitations look the way she swore they would when I forked over a deposit. I do not want to drive to Mount Rainier to taste potatoes and salmon and make sure they’re up to scratch—in part because if they’re not, I do not want to find another caterer. Ignorance is bliss, baby, and salmon is salmon.

I keep telling myself the reason I’m not making wedding progress is that surfing the internet exacerbates my morning sickness—which is totally true but didn’t stop me from registering for fifty-some-odd baby items at Target yesterday morning. It’s so much more compelling to do stuff for the baby who will be part of our lives forever than for the wedding, which will be one weekend, so I started trying to think of wedding planning as “marriage planning” instead to see if that helps.

Unfortunately I quickly realized that it’s not like the caterer, photographer, and cake maker are going to be with us for our entire marriage—if only—so it really is planning for a wedding.

I’ve returned to wanting to elope or squeeze into my Goodwill wedding dress and traipse down to the courthouse on Friday afternoon and spend the weekend honeymooning downtown at the W Hotel. Surely everyone who’s already purchased a plane ticket will understand. They’d still be welcome to visit us in July—they’d even be allowed to bring us gifts—especially if they’re completely adorable.

Maternity Wedding Dress Shopping Expedition No. 2

I ordered a maternity wedding dress online today from one of those godawful maternity stores that prides itself on being stylish but is about as fashion-forward as the plus-size department at Sears. On a positive note, this place actually sells maternity wedding dresses—a rarity, it turns out. Of the two options, both were on sale and only one was too hideous to consider. There’s a chance that the one I ordered will make me look like a pregnant albino mermaid, but there’s a chance it will work. For $200 I had to try. The other dress that I like is handmade by a local designer and runs $1600—before alternations. That’s a lot of onesies.

Size Matters

According to the sole “So, You’re Having a Baby! Here’s a Bunch of Stuff to Worry About!” book I own, the baby is now the size of a peach—three inches from the top of its head to the bottom of its bottom. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a peach that small, even at the hippie organic non-genetically-modified stores where I get my produce.

On a different size-related note, it’s hard to imagine shooting a peach out of my vagina—even a small one. I shudder to think what fruits the next six months will bring.

Cravings

I hate being a cliché, so I’m reluctant to admit the only foods I want for lunch or dinner these days are pizza, hamburgers, BLTs, and grilled cheese sandwiches. For snack, it’s cheese Dortitos, Oreo cookies, and iced tea. I might as well buy a minivan, stock my closet with yoga pants, and start watching Everyone Loves Raymond.

A Pastry By Any Other Name

Next in the lineup of domestic issues to be sorted out is the name thing—not the baby’s first name, which we more or less decided on within a day of getting engaged, but our various and sundry surnames. Dr. Fiancé is 100% adamant that his kids have the same last name as him—and that his last name not be changed. He’s less adamant—like maybe only 99%—that I should keep my last name. I, too, would like to share a last name with my children, though I’m seldom if ever 100% certain about anything, and though I’ve always imagined I’d keep my own last name when I got married, I never really imagined my children having a different last name than me.

I tried suggesting that Dr. Fiancé take my last name as his middle name and giving it to the kids as their middle name, too, and me taking Dr. Fiancé’s last name as my middle name so that we all have both surnames somewhere close at hand, but my Taurus of a fiancé was not inclined to change even his middle name.

And did I mention he’s morally opposed to hyphenation?

When we visited my aunt and uncle in North Carolina last month we found out that my cousin and her fiancé are jamming their surnames together—with no hyphen but with a capital letter in the middle, like an email address or URL with capital letters here and there for clarity’s sake. I was so glad my aunt told us this because I figure the more creative/unique/unusual solutions we hear about, the more normal hyphenation or middle-name-changing will start to seem.

One of my writer friends suggested we take the anagram route and came up with Strudel, which is a near anagram (minus a few letters) of our last names, and which, I have to say, totally rocks.

Dr. and Mrs. Strudel has a pretty nice ring to it, you have to admit, especially if you’re as fond of pastries as I am.

Living Dangerously

Dr. Fiancé put in a special request for chocolate chip cookies tonight. Without thinking about it, I licked the raw-egg-containing cookie dough off the spatula. I hope I haven’t killed our child.

The Sweet Smell of Spring

This is the first morning I’ve woken up and felt halfway decent in nearly a month. The movement of rolling over to see what time it was didn’t make me feel seasick. Hallelujah. I took a deep breath, turned back toward the spring sun streaming through the window, savored the moment, and immediately began worrying that the reason I feel better even though I have a few weeks left in the notoriously nauseating first trimester is that something bad happened to the baby-in-progress.

But then I came downstairs and the chemical-sweet stench of Febreze emanating from the leather chair I stupidly bought off Craigslist last year without giving it the sniff test was so sickening I nearly tossed the chair in the garbage (again). Ditto the kitchen sponge. And the soap. And the overly browned bits on the edge of my English muffin. Yep—still pregnant.

I Am Not a Doctor

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I am not a doctor. According to my dad, I wanted to be one when I was three, but I must have changed my mind. It would have been a bad career choice for any number of reasons, not the least of which is that my knees buckle under when I so much as hear the words “bile” or “mucous.” I would have never made it through a dermatology slide show, much less an anatomy class. When I watch Grey’s Anatomy, I keep one finger on the fast-forward button, skipping the surgeries in favor of the banter. In college I only pulled one all-nighter and vowed never again. I like my sleep. I like my sanity. I like to have time to sit on the grass in the sun and write poems. I am more cat than crow, more inchworm than hummingbird.

Sure, I can run around crossing things off a list, accomplishing an impossible number of errands, but at the end of the day I feel dull and hollow—and possibly bipolar—and who needs that?

Dr. Fiancé and I have, as he puts it, “different ways of dealing with discomfort.” Namely, he throws himself into situations that cause it—hiking, kayaking, running, playing basketball, traveling to places that don’t have proper toilets, whereas I like to avoid such things. Life is uncomfortable enough as it is without seeking out blisters and sprains and fatigue and revolting smells.

Likewise, some people enjoy traveling to countries where they don’t speak English so that they’re pushed out of their verbal comfort zone. I, on the other hand, do not require a foreign tongue to feel challenged and self-conscious and misunderstood. An audience of two—or sometimes even one—is all it takes for me to develop performance anxiety.

This is all to say, my “approach” to “handling” the discomforts of pregnancy has caused some tension chez nous. Dr. Fiancé is of the school (specifically Harvard Medical School) that believes in pushing through discomfort. I suppose that’s what you have to do to make it through medical training, but it seems ironic—the people in charge of helping us take care of our bodies are forced to take such poor care of their own, deprived of rest and sleep and three decent meals a day. If you’re running yourself that hard, don’t you lose touch with what’s going on with your body? If you need sleep but aren’t able to get any, aren’t you setting some part of yourself up to mistrust the rest of you?

Many times these past few queasy weeks I have wondered—frequently out loud—how other women do it. How do pregnant doctors-in-training get through residency, for instance? Do they just accept the fact that they might throw up on a patient? I’m scared to throw up on my car. And do they just not worry about the fact that their brains are muddled with raging hormones and thoughts of food and waves of nausea and that those distractions are probably preventing them from performing at the level to which they’d previously been accustomed? Am I a wimp for, say, feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of teaching creative writing to high school kids once or twice a week, working on my own writing, planning a wedding, keeping up with the rigorous travel schedule Dr. Fiancé prefers, tending to a house and yard larger than any I’ve ever lived in, growing a baby, and trying to remain gastronointestinally intact?

Dr. Fiancé is worried he won’t be able to have the adventures he’s always dreamed of if I don’t push myself harder. I’m worried my child might grow up with a dead father and a mother in prison for homicide.

Sweeter Than a Hallmark Commercial

Dr. Fiancé and I took a long walk this morning, heading a litle further north than we normally do and ending up near one of Seattle’s premeire private schools—the “artsy fartsy” one that still manages to look like a place the Obamas would consider sending their girls.

One of the beautiful old brick buildings had a porch with an old-fashioned rocking chair swaying in the breeze and a memorial plaque that included the Charlotte’s Web quote, “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.”

“It would be so cool to walk our kids to school,” I said, all casual-like, flicking the pregnancy-induced tears out of my eyes. Why wouldn’t I want to send my kid to a school with quotes like that on the wall? And maybe a better use of my energies isn’t to talk Dr. Fiancé into public school, which, frankly, I’m ambivalent about, but to make sure our kid gets lots of art classes and access to rocking chairs and Charlotte’s Web quotes.

“I’d be thrilled if my kids went here,” Dr. Fiancé beamed. “It’s a really good school!” Then he took my hand in his and we headed home and then to the antique jewelry store to look for old, arty, classy wedding rings.

Paper Trail

I’m feeling a little better today, thanks to the twice-daily dose of drugs that hopefully are not messing up the little person growing inside me. Armed with a nausea-reducing travel mug full of Keifer and a constipation-reducing Fiber One bar, I ventured on yet another wedding-related errand: the stationary store.

It has finally dawned on me that our wedding is not going to be the cake-and-champagne-in-a-picnic-shelter-in-a-nice-park-type-affair that I’d imagined we could throw for, like $5,000. We have numerous meals and tons of logistics and multiple means of transportation and, clearly, a dress that’s going to cost more than $15.

All of a sudden yesterday the plan of D.I.Y.ing our wedding invitations seemed not just daunting, exhausting, and taxing in my newly nauseous state, but kind of not fair. My 13-year-old future half-brother-in-law had invitations that look like tuxedos made for his upcoming Bar Mitzvah. Yes, it might have been more his mother’s doing than his own, but still, shouldn’t I be allowed to have invitations made for my wedding? I don’t need them to be engraved or even letter-pressed, and I don’t need envelopes inside of envelopes inside of envelopes with ribbons and shiny lining and all that crap. I just need them to look like I didn’t make them myself with Microsoft Word clip art.

The woman at the stationary store was perfect—a young woman who collects old ephemera and would be thrilled—seriously thrilled—to come up with the design I have in mind, based on antique train tickets. (Did I mention that one of the means of transportation at our wedding is an antique steam train?) She’ll make an invite with a tear-off RSVP card attached to the bottom. There’s perforation involved, which adds a few hundred dollars, of course, but I figured out I can do that myself with a sewing machine or some sort of roll-y tool that I’m sure is available somewhere on the internet. I can handle that much D.I.Y., even in my current condition.

It feels so good to have someone helping—someone with the tools and the skills and the know-how, not to mention the unbridled enthusiasm for all things wedding. I got kind of lonely making our save-the-date cards, just me and my jam-prone laser printer and the sound of my own voice cursing.

Dr. Fiancé asked where exactly the bulk of the cost of the invitations comes from, and I explained we were mostly paying for someone else’s design work. “So it’s like art?” he asked. “We can hang one of them on the wall later?” Unclear whether he was being sarcastic.

Either way, he gave the project the thumbs-up and quickly busied himself looking for train-themed stamps on the internet.

Maternity Wedding Dress Shopping Expedition No. 1

What is it that makes so many brides—and their mothers—lose their sense of humor? I mean, I assume they once had one, these ladies scowling at me from their risers and three-way mirrors as I step up to my own riser and three-way mirror, my giant belly protruding from a series of cheaply made wedding gowns like the world’s largest marshmallow popping out of its bag.

I reply to their stares with a smile and a belly pat, saying in a tone that I mean to be simultaneously reassuring and ironic, “It’s just a pillow.”

They do not crack a smile, not one of them.

Today's Adventure: Safeway

Kellogg's now makes Unfrosted Frosted Mini-Wheats. Who knew?

Triumph

Yesterday I successfully consumed an entire popsicle in just two sittings.

Today: two slices of pizza!

That Deep-Down Body Thirst

I went to the doctor yesterday and got a prescription for a drug they give chemo patients to stop them from throwing up. Supposedly it won’t deform the baby, which is nice, but not as exciting as not dying of dehydration or starvation or frustration. I also got some Gatorade at the pharmacy—the red flavor. It’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted in my whole life.

Reality

I don’t want this to become a pregnancy blog in which I go into gruesome detail about my various discomforts and discharges and alienate people who aren’t pregnant themselves, but I’ve just spent the past four days throwing up—and I mean continuously. Think food poisoning. Think stomach flu. Think “I wouldn’t particularly mind if I died right now.”

“Try saltines,” the books urge—but I can’t even hold down an ice chip.

I am so never getting pregnant again.

Optimism

I thought it was just motion sickness from the airplane ride home, but we’ve been home for 18 hours now and it hasn’t gone away. My mom said she had almost no morning sickness when she was pregnant with my brother and then just a little bit with me, so I’m hopeful it won’t get much worse than this.

Breeders

It’s my birthday today. I’m 34—and did I mention, pregnant? Yesterday afternoon Dr. Fiancé and I went to South Beach’s lone bookstore and bought a copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting—the only pregnancy book they could fit in between photobiographies of Marilyn Monroe and coffee table food porn. Dr. Fiancé also picked up a copy of Pat the Bunny. The combination of the two purchases caused the uber-trim, black-clad, perfectly manicured salesman to give us withering look that sighed: breeders. Then he said it’s a good time to bring a kid into the world—which we assumed was sarcasm. “At least we have Obama,” I shrugged, wishing I were wearing the “Silence Equals Death” t-shirt I never got around to buying. The salesguy smiled and nodded and pointed out that by the time our kid is old enough for it to matter the economy will have improved and maybe the country will be a more progressive place than it’s been for the past eight years. “Congratulations,” he said as he handed us the bag—and he seemed to really mean it.

Today’s adventure was our first trip to Baby Gap (a set of stripey socks and two onesies) and then to Everglades National Park, where alligators lollygagged right next to the sidewalk—close enough to touch if common sense didn’t dictate otherwise.

Also I found out I’m already considered five weeks pregnant and that the little critter has a heart the size of a poppy seed. It’s a total cliché—but it does truly feel miraculous.

So

It turns out having to pee all the time is an early sign of pregnancy. As is feeling all week like you’re just about to get your period. As are breasts that suddenly weigh as much as watermellons and nipples that have been standing at attention for six tiresome days. (Did I neglect to mention that before?)

I peed on a stick this morning and a big blue plus sign emerged before I could even set the stick down on the side of the sink.

I’m pregnant.

I’m pregnant?

I’m pregnant!

Holy. Fucking. Hell.

I’m pregnant.

I took Dr. Fiancé to the beach to tell him the news, figuring it was a nice echo of his marriage proposal. It turns out that South Beach isn’t quite as private as a beach on Molokai’. Even in this struggling economy, people are vacationing in Florida. I pulled him out into the ocean until the water was up to our knees and the nearest people were a few yards away and asked him if he wanted to be a dad. He smiled his sweetest smile and said of course, and I said that’s good ’cause you’re going to be, and he said, yeah—like someday, yeah, of course I’ll be a dad. “No,” I clarified. “I mean—you are going to be a dad.” Dr. Fiancé’s eyes got all big and his eyebrows went way up and he hugged and kissed me and said, “Wow”—and couldn't stop saying it all day long.

Lost in Translation

Guess what my aunt made us for breakfast this morning: a British-style tea party complete with homemade scones and crème fraiche and get this—lemon curd. Always the polite guest, Dr. Fiancé spread some curd on his scone as directed, and proceeded to declare it delicious. I shared my cake quandary with the table, telling my relatives about Dr. Fiancé’s aversion to the word “curd.” Everyone pitched in with alternatives: lemon spread, lemon cream, lemon delight, lemon surprise. My teenage cousin looked up a French translation online and proceeded to mangle a phrase that sounded like “coffre beurrehgh.” Not much of an improvement. I tried to read Dr. Fiancé’s face throughout the conversation to see whether he truly only minds the name of lemon curd, or if he truly doesn’t like the taste. The answer remains unclear.

In other news, I keep going to the bathroom every 20 minutes to see whether my period has started. It hasn’t. Weird. Very weird.

Late

Dr. Fiancé and I flew to Charlotte, North Carolina today to visit my aunt and uncle the minister who’s performing our wedding ceremony.

I checked my calendar yesterday, and my period was due last Saturday, give or take. “Maybe you’re pregnant,” Dr. Fiancé grinned, but I assured him I’m crampy and feel like I’m just about to get my period—it’s just taking its sweet time in getting started for some reason. “I’ve never heard of feeling like you’re going to get your period being a sign of pregnancy,” I said, as I climbed over him to get into my seat after heading to the bathroom for the third time on the flight to check my cycle’s progress. He pointed out that he’s never heard of someone feeling like they’re just about to get their period for a whole week. “Maybe there’s something wrong with me,” I proposed to no avail. We’ll just wait another few days and see.

A Club of Onesies

Last night I gave my first public reading of my work, at a local writing center. I read my blog entry from December 8 about my misadventures in biofeedback and the one from January 12 about my perennial baby-craziness.

I was a nervous wreck all week, my stomach a flock of angry birds, and the anxiety making my period late. I’d been assured by friends and fiancé alike that once I got started, the nerves would wear off and I might even start to enjoy myself.

They were totally wrong.

The lights were super bright and in my eyes, and I couldn’t see anyone’s face to be able to tell whether they were enjoying themselves which was particularly important to me since I, as I mentioned, was not.

Eventually I finished reading and took my seat and drank Dr. Fiancé’s cocktail and then started to enjoy myself. A particular highlight was when one of my Writers-in-the-Schools colleagues came up and gushed, “Oh, my god! The onesies! I thought I was the only one so crazy about wanting to have babies! I love it!” I told her I’d already made note of her at our first work meeting and had flagged her as a future mom-friend, since she had a kid and I’ve heard it’s really hard to meet cool fellow moms. “Why wait?” she shrugged. “Let’s be mom friends now!”