Mother and Child Reunion

You know how in every crowd there’s one mom—at least!—who acts all sanctimonious about her parenting choices, making everyone else feel crappy and angry and irritated?

Well, today Dr. Husband and the baby and I attended a reunion of our Lamaze Class From Hell and the worst person in the room was the facilitator who was as nightmarish as she was originally, twisting every epidural into a “medical intervention” that ideally would have been avoided.

When it came my turn in the circle to tell my “birth story” (when did this become a thing, by the way? Did 19th century moms have birth stories? Well, the mister boiled some water and I screamed and pushed real hard and didn’t die and here we are…) I delighted in announcing that I lasted all of an hour without an epidural, getting one as soon as the nurse answered my question of, “Well, how much worse are these contractions going to get?” with, “Oh, honey. So much worse.”

I didn’t want to feel like a failure for getting an epidural—it was pretty much always plan “A” for me.

Lamaze Lady made herself feel better by summarizing our collective birth stories with, “Well, it sounds like all five of you had really hard labors and used epidurals only when necessary.”

I wanted to shout out, “Not me! Not me! I got an epidural long before I needed one!” but managed instead to just exchange a meaningful glance with Dr. Husband.

When Lamaze Lady left I thought the judgmentalism part of the event was done—but then the mom hosting the event brought up one of those dangling toy “gyms” for another mom’s baby to play with while the grownups ate cookies. I remarked how nice it was that the gym was made entirely of fabric rather than a bunch of made-in-China plastic. The hostess casually mentioned that they try to avoid plastic whenever possible. “Oh, us too!” I cheered, thinking nothing of it.

Well. As one of the other moms was getting her baby situated in her carseat for the ride home, she pointed to some toys dangling from the handle of the carrier and said that, like my child, her baby hated traveling in the car, too—until she’d attached toys for her to play with. I nodded and smiled and started to say, “Good idea—I should totally get some—” When she added, “They are plastic and they are made in China.”

I was so startled that I stupidly—stooo-pid-leee—said, “Oh, that’s okay, it’s not like she can put them in her mouth.”

And then the baby grabbed the cute plastic made-in-China dragonfly hanging in the middle and mouthed the hell out of that thing.

Yes, today I was that mom.

Wish I May

The other night, sometime around 3am, or perhaps 2:00 or 4:00, I asked myself: If I could have anything in the world right now, what would it be? Why I felt compelled to play magic genie with myself I have no idea, other than the fact that I’ve grown wary (and weary!) of logging onto the New York Times website and reading about horrible things happening in the world in the middle of the night and I’ve exhausted Hulu's repertoire of Modern Family and Community and Glee, so I’m pretty much left with my own sleepy mind for entertainment.

ANYway, I asked myself what I would wish for if a genie emerged from a lantern (or, more likely (if "likely" is the right word, which it is not) a breast pump), and the answer came hard and fast: A weekend by myself in a nice hotel with nothing to do but sleep under a duvet and eat round-the-clock breakfast from room service.

Sure, I would miss my little bundle of joy during the five or ten minutes I was awake and stuffing pancakes into my mouth, and, yes, I would have to pump to keep up my milk supply, and, sure, my wee one would probably miss me and wonder why I left her alone with the parent with the scratchy face for so long, but, oh, that duvet—so soft and fluffy and warm and cozy and delicious. And, oh, those pancakes—so soft and fluffy and warm and cozy and delicious, too.

Friend of the Year

I had coffee this afternoon with a (childless) friend and discovered that I’ve hit the point of new parenthood when I no longer have anything interesting to say.

Oh, I could go on about how adorable my baby is when she makes this one particular noise or how her pouty face is cuter than any other pouty face in the world—but I vowed NEVER TO BE THAT KIND OF PARENT, so I’m left with nothing.

Pretty much unless you want to discuss strategies for interviewing babysitters or getting a two-month-old to sleep when she’s not lying on someone’s chest or removing mustardy breast-fed-baby poo stains from onesies without resorting to bleach (or is bleach perfectly fine? I don’t know because it’s too boring to ask other people about!), I won’t be a good conversationalist.

Oh, I try. I ask my friend about her job and her new boyfriend, but my queries are clunky at best. So, how’s the job going? And: Are things still good with the new boyfriend? Follow-up questions are beyond me, not because I don’t care but because I cannot think of what to ask next. Or sometimes because my baby just pooed and I can feel it leaking through her diaper onto my t-shirt because, did you know? Newborn baby poo is the consistency (and color!) of butternut squash soup! Isn’t that interesting? No! Of course not! Never mind!

I try to keep up with current events. I read the newspaper—but I do it in online the middle of the night during feedings, so by morning my recall is spotty at best. Bombing? An airplane? In his underwear?

Truth be told, I’m quite proud of myself for remembering that my friend has a job and a boyfriend. And, hey, I usually even remember the boyfriend's name, which, considering that I forgot my own age the other day, is really just completely fucking incredible. I should get a medal or something.

So Tender and Mild

As far back as I can remember, I’ve wanted a baby for Christmas. This year—my 35th on the planet—I finally got one.

I could not be happier.

I am, in fact, so full of love for her and Dr. Husband that I almost can’t stand it. My cup seriously runneth over—and I haven't even started hitting the sauce.

Be of Good Cheer

Today is the winter solstice, which I believe means tonight will be the longest night of the year which means I might have to take my own life today because LAST NIGHT was the longest night I’ve had in a long time and it was pretty miserable and I don’t think I can handle a repeat, particularly two days before the arrival of my parents and brother and the full frontal assault of Christmas.

Apparently the gods really didn’t like my hubris—or perhaps my pseudo-Catholic invocation of “miracles” about the baby taking a nap in her crib on Friday. The baby is still fussy, including most of last night.

Granted, Dr. Husband and I are lucky. (You hear that, gods? We’re lucky! I’m grateful! Thank you for this blissfully well-behaved-almost-all-the-time child!) The fact that a bad, sleepless night with our baby stands out from the other nights with our baby is reason enough for some parents of newborns to refuse to speak to us and/or permanently hate us. And though a night of a baby making whiney “eh-eh-eh” noises and then crying if you try to move her off your shoulder or change positions slightly or take a deep breath—well, I’ve babysat enough kids and read enough books and heard enough parenting war stories to know that “eh-eh-eh” noises AREN’T THAT BAD, even if they’re keeping you up all night. She could be, for instance, screaming bloody murder at the top of her lungs all night long or threatening to run away from home and take the family cat with her.

The problem is partly that we expect her to be a decent sleeper. She almost always is, so why would we bother anticipating a night of constant fussing? As loathe as I am to admit it, sometimes Dr. Husband really is right about his happiness/reality/expectations equation. So from here on out, I’m going to assume that my child will never sleep and I will never get to put her down and I will never get to shower again. Because thinking that way is sure to make me feel better.

Good for Goodness' Sake

The baby continued to be a Christmas angel all the way through Dr. Husbands’ workplace holiday party Friday night. She charmed everyone present and did not whine or cry or make even the tiniest peep the entire time—a whole hour-and-a-half!—we were there.

Then, because karma is the bitch that she is, the baby has been fussing non-stop ever since. We told her that Santa will only come if she stops being so difficult, but she just got this look on her face like I can’t believe you’re stooping to idle threats already. I’m only a month old, people. Haven’t you got anything better up your sleeves? And then the real crying began.

My Baby's All Grown Up

Not only did my child nap long enough on the couch this morning for me to do a load of laundry, bake a cake for Dr. Husband’s workplace Holiday Party, and clean the dishes (Martha Stewart, I’ve got your number!), but at this exact moment—2:03 in the afternoon—my child is napping again all by herself—in her crib. As Dr. Husband said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her do that before.”

Indeed. It’s a goddamn Christmas miracle.

Welcome to the Nursing Home

So, I’m standing in my kitchen rinsing some stray coffee grounds out of the sink when I catch a whiff of a rather nasty sour milk-type smell. I run the disposal, but the smell is still there. I transfer a used plate from the counter to the dishwasher, but the smell is still there. I stick the sponge in the dishwasher, but the smell is still there. I spy pieces of breast pump lounging in a bowl of water and think, Ah-hah! Of course! I wash them out and drain the bowl and stick it in the dishwasher, but the smell is still there. Fuck it, I think, and carry the baby into the living room—and the smell follows me. And I realize the smell is emanating from me—from my shoulder, specifically, where my darling baby girl spat up earlier this morning whereupon I decided that it wasn’t worth it to put her down—which would wake her up, which would make my chances of getting any work done “zero”—and change shirts—which would mean another load of brights which would be annoying because the last load just finished the rinse cycle, and, no, I can’t just toss the shirt in the laundry basket because, hello! The smell! So I left it on and forgot about it, and, yes, I’ve learned my lesson.

The Modern Condition

The baby’s Social Security card arrived in the mail today. Now she seems like an honest to god person. No, it wasn’t the peeing or the pooing or the eating or spitting up or crying or cooing that made her seem real—it was a two-by-three inch piece of blue and white paper that the government sent her in the mail.

She’s supposed to sign it when she joins the workforce. So strange to think of this cute little lump getting her first job and paying her first taxes and experiencing what will hopefully be her first—and only!—inkling of why some people decide to become Republicans.

We All Have Our Beefs

The baby and I attempted to go out to lunch today. Pretty exciting stuff. Leaving the house! In a car! All for the love of a bacon cheeseburger!

Around 11 we started getting ready. I nursed her. She pooped while eating. I changed her diaper. She pooped again, leaking through her clothes. I changed her again. I laid her on the bed so I could get dressed. I put on some pants. The baby started to wail. I picked her up and calmed her. I laid her down. She started to wail. I left her on the bed anyway and put on my shirt. I picked her up. She continued to fuss, so I burped her. She spat up all over her sleeve and my shirt. I changed her outfit. I put her down. I changed my shirt. She, predictably, wailed. I looked at the clock and Holy fucking hell—time to nurse again.

It was 2pm by the time we finally left the house, both of us in clean clothes, one of us fed but screaming nevertheless because she doesn’t like being in her car seat since it doesn’t involve human contact. This is unfortunate when the bacon cheeseburger of her lactating and ravenous mother’s fondest desire can only be found on the other side of the city—a 30 minute car ride away.

It’s also unfortunate that her mother forgot that the burger of her fondest desire can only be paid for with cash.

By the time I lugged the baby in her loathsome car seat into the nearest grocery store to use the ATM and back into the car and to the burger joint, I had pretty much lost my appetite, and my will to live.

I ate 3/4ths of my burger while the baby blessedly slept, and I swooped her out of there the second she cracked an eyelid and realized she was sitting in the wretched car seat.

She screamed so hard on the way home I was convinced she was starving to death and pulled over to nurse her as rush hour traffic whizzed by and I fretted as I went to collect her from the backseat that I would either lock her in the car and myself out or one or both of us would be hit by another vehicle or I would hit her head on some part of the car as I nursed her (the steering wheel seemed a good choice) or some creepy old man would ogle my exposed breast.

In general I consider myself pretty calm for a new parent (others have even commented on this themselves! people who aren't my own mother!), but this tranquility apparently vanishes the moment transportation—or screaming—become involved.

As we resumed our drive home and the baby resumed her screaming, I decided that we won’t try to leave the house in the car again until the baby is 3, which is unfortunate for many reasons, not the least of which is that Christmas is right around the corner and unless I can get out and do a little shopping, all my precious baby will be getting from me is the gift of life—and whatever crap I can find for her on the internet.

The Ladies' Lounge

The baby and I braved a department store today, as I was in desperate need of a pair of pants to fit my current post-partum form and psyche. (“Why don’t you just wear your maternity pants?” Dr. Husband suggested. Why don’t I just wash down a bunch of pills with some vodka and slit my wrists and, for good measure, stick my head in the oven?)

It turns out there’s this whole underworld of moms to be found at 11am on a Tuesday in the Nordstrom women’s bathroom. They have a few chairs and a couch, so it is the place to nurse and, apparently, the place to judge and be judged.

I’d just finished feeding the baby and in the 13 minutes it took me to hook my nursing bra back together she let loose one little cry, probably because she realized, Ack! I just ate lunch in a public bathroom! and this random other nursing mom looks over and says, “Sounds like someone is still hungry!”

Then, as I finished fixing my attire and my baby stared at a nearby light fixture, random nursing mom #3 told random nursing mom #4 she was glad to hear that #3’s baby likes looking at people’s faces because if a baby seems more interested in gazing at objects, like, say, a ceiling fan or, say, a light fixture, than at a person’s face, it’s an early sign of autism.

And then, as I we headed out the door and I tried to convince my fussing baby that riding in her stroller couldn’t be that bad, a random child-free woman waltzed into the bathroom and said, “Looks like someone needs to be fed!”

It looks to this mom like a couple of someones need to mind their own business.

Pretty in Pink

The past few weeks I’d been worrying that my baby was going to start having gender identity issues, as her entire wardrobe before her arrival consisted solely of gender-neutral clothing—slate-colored leggings, brown sweaters, pale-aqua shirts—clothes that, come to think of it, no man would ever wear—at least not off Broadway—but it turns out when you stick a baby in a plain-white onesie and a pair of ice-blue leggings, she looks like a boy. It turns out all those ruffles and frills and flowers and hearts adorning all those pink, pink, pink shirts and jackets and rompers and sleepers are the only things in the world that will ward off the questions, “How old is he?” and “What’s his name?”

Who cares if people don’t correctly assess the sex of the baby? you say! That’s what I used to say, too, back when I naively thought a person could dress her newborn in pale green and have the world receive her as a girl. But it turns out I feel very protective of my offspring—ready to pounce on anyone who fails to see her for exactly who she is: an adorable, brilliant, motivated, fashion-forward, perpetually hungry girl. What else does she have at this age beyond her sex to define her? She’s not old enough to acquire her own message-bearing t-shirts or haircuts.

So I bought her a package of girly knit caps: a white one with pink flowers, a pink-and-white striped one, and one plain pink. She was wearing the pink-and-white striped one this morning when a fellow customer at my local coffee shop asked, “So, what’s his name?”

If the antidote is more pink, we’re in luck as this week the pink has been pouring in from friends and relatives and relatives of friends and friends of relatives like a tide of frosting on Valentine’s Day: pink footie pajamas with a matching pink hat; pink overalls with a pink-trimmed shirt; a denim dress with pink sequins, pink leggings, and a pink undershirt.

I have to say that even though when I put my baby in the frilly white bunting in which I myself was brought home from the hospital, she appeared to be dressed in drag, my pale white baby girl does look rather good in pink.

Cat's in the Cradle

I have a confession to make. I rode in the back seat with the baby on the way home from the hospital. And on our first two trips to the pediatrician. It’s just that she’s so little back there alone—and I’m still not entirely used to her being outside of me. I swear the situation is temporary. I swear I’m not on the verge of becoming a Mennonite. I love dancing—and swearing—far too much.

On a related note, I swear the baby will not always sleep in the bed with us. WE ARE NOT ATTACHMENT-PARENTING PARENTS! As soon as she can learn to actually stay asleep when not in contact with another human, she will sleep in her little co-sleeper and then graduate to her crib. I cannot wait to snuggle with my husband at night again and, before too long, do OTHER THINGS with him, too.

So, a message to the cat: go ahead and keep enjoying the co-sleeper for now—but don’t get too used to it. And if you could wash the sheet when you’re done, that would be lovely.

Thanksgiving

For this child I could not be more thankful!

Another Kind of Normal —or— Why Western Medicine Rocks My World

Dr. Husband and the baby and I are home from the hospital now, and it turns out that being the mom of a newborn is a hell of a lot more fun than being the mom of a not-yet-born—and I haven’t even taken any of the Percocet yet! Yes, yes, it’s mesmerizingly lovely to gaze into the rich, Seattle blue-grey eyes of my sometimes-gorgeous baby, but equally lovely is witnessing the varicose veins rapidly disappear from my southern regions. It turns out that enduring such pleasantries for two months is good conditioning for enduring the after-effects of a vaginal delivery.

Speaking of which, giving birth to my baby was truly one of the best experiences of my life—just like the “normal” and “natural” childbirth advocates of the world—and all those dreadful pregnancy books—promise. I was, as you may recall, terrified of the whole hospital aspect of childbirth: all those needles and tubes being inserted into places formerly unvisited by foreign objects, all those chemical smells and beeping monitors and florescent lighting. But I had the world’s greatest labor nurses and anesthesiologist and obstetrician, and in the end, I slept through most of my labor.

Have I mentioned how much I love epidurals?

And how much I love Metoclopramide, which failed to stop me from throwing up (but, hey, my first 20 weeks of pregnancy more than prepared me for that!) but succeeded in knocking me out for two hours during which my cervix dilated seven whole centimeters. And for those pregnant ladies out there wedded to a “normal” “natural” childbirth: Do you have any idea how much it would have hurt to have your cervix dilate SEVEN centimeters in two hours? How abnormally, unnaturally excruciating it would be?*

I myself was lucky enough to have the world’s greatest epidural. I didn’t feel a thing—just a light, painless pressure as I pushed for 40 minutes and my baby slid out of my body and into the world. My hefty baby girl with whom I fell instantly and completely in love.

The entire experience was just as glorious as my Lamaze coach promised—but without any pain.

And I hate to gloat (but that won't stop me!)—I didn’t even break a sweat.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go take some more Advil and apply a new Tucks to my tender (but proud!) nether-regions. Because even the world's best epidural has to wear off sometime.

*Okay, fine, my cervix may well not have dilated that fast without the Pitocin coursing through my system, but whatever. I just had a baby. Cut me some slack.

In a Name

So, I have a new theory on why I kept gravitating to girlish boy’s names throughout my pregnancy—Robin, Avery, Wesley, anyone? I now think it’s not because I harbor a secret wish to have a sissy for a son (it’s actually not a secret!) but because the human being displacing my intestines for nine-and-a-third months was a girl. Is a girl.

Yes, after nine months and ten days I am the mom of a baby girl.

A girl!

An eight pound 11 ounce baby of the female persuasion, born around 8pm last night. (Which, by the way, makes my O.B. psychic in addition to being a gifted suturer.)

This makes me inordinately happy, as the chances of a girl child liking to spend her afternoon quietly making necklaces or potholders with me in my art studio/office are, while not 100%, still far greater than if said child were a boy. Particularly a boy named Conrad or Conan or Thor. (Okay, I made that last one up.) Robin, Avery, and Wesley clearly would have been the sort of boys who love making potholders and necklaces with their mama, but if not one of them preferred basketball to basketweaving, their daddy’s heart would have been broken. And if I had endured three vomiting- and varicose-vein producing pregnancies and not produced a single girl, my heart would have been a little broken—along with my vagina. Because no matter how sweet Robin, Avery, and Wesley would have been, bringing me mugs of hot tea and a hand-embroidered hanky whenever I wept, it’s not quite the same thing as having a little girl.

Even if she turns out to be a basketball-loving, craft-hating, rambunctious little tomboy. No matter what kind of person she turns out to be, my baby is a dreamy dream come true.

Induction Day

I’m trying to relax and just enjoy the day before my 7pm hospital check-in time, but there’s a dude power-washing our deck and sidewalk, as per our September request so that nobody would slip on the moss and algae this fall or winter, especially while carrying the baby. It’s nice that one more thing is getting checked off the list, but damn is that noise irritating. At this rate, the hospital will actually seem relaxing. As will that blessed epidural.

Friday the Thirteenth

One week overdue. One day past the “most likely to give birth sometime in this range” window articulated by my obstetrician weeks ago.

I myself was born five days late—as my mom keeps reminding me—so it feels semi-fair in a cosmic sense that my baby would be five days late. But six?! And, at the rate this day is passing by with nary a uterine twinge, it will soon be seven. Seven! Days! Late! At least!

My mom was supposed to come for a five-day visit tomorrow, but when I told her there might not be a baby by the time her return flight left on Tuesday morning she said, “Well, I certainly don’t want to do that,” thereby shattering my illusion that while she was coming in part to meet the baby, she was mostly coming to entertain me and make me soup.

Apparently once this baby arrives I’m going to have to make my own damn soup.

When Life Imitates TV

Dr. Husband and I finally got around to watching the Happiest Baby on the Block video, at the urging of every person with children we’ve ever met. Which leads me to wonder, if every parent in America is following Dr. Karp’s famed baby-calming techniques, then every baby in America is the happiest baby on their block, and how is that possible? I mean, statistically speaking?

We’d been putting off watching partly because the prospect of watching a bunch babies scream seemed like an aggravating—and overly foreshadowy—way to spend an evening and partly because I’d read on the back of the box that the DVD was 128 minutes long. Two hours of screaming babies getting swaddled and shushed and held on their side and swung and given pacifiers to suck on? Thankfully it was some kind of typo—or maybe there are some really long bonus features on the DVD or something because the main feature was more like 28 minutes long—long enough to make us feel like we have a fighting chance at successful swaddling and not so long that we were driven to drink. (Well, at least not more than a few sips.)

As regards the swaddling, Dr. Husband said, “They really do become burritos, don’t they?”

Yes, they do. So much so that when I was standing in line today at a Mexican fast-food chain watching the employees make other peoples’ lunches as I waited to order mine, I kept thinking, “Wow, those burritos are like little swaddled babies, aren’t they?”

Talk to the Cervix

So the baby scooted down another centimeter in the past week, which is all lovely and good, progress-wise (it’s less lovely and good bladder-wise and varicose-vein-wise), but since I’m not at all dilated or effaced or any of those other labor-related delights, the baby has nowhere to go. Apparently my cervix needs to “ripen,” which makes me think I need to put it in a paper lunch sack with a banana to speed up the process.

I worried out loud that maybe my cervix is, as the books say, “incompetent”—a phrase I remembered only for its supreme offensiveness, not so much for its meaning.

“Uh, that means that your cervix can’t hold the baby in,” Dr. Husband explained. “Not that it’s holding the baby in too well.”

My cervix, it would seem, is hyper-competent.

I told Dr. Husband that we need to stop harassing the baby to come out because the wee one is doing its part. “If you have any requests or complaints,” I told him, “address them to the cervix.”

Dr. Husband protested that talking to my cervix is not nearly as much fun as talking to the baby, but I was all, “How do you know? Have you ever talked to a cervix before?”

Happily, the answer to that was No.

Deadlines, Revisited

Okay, Baby No-Name. You have a deadline now: 7pm, Tuesday, November 16th. If you aren’t out by then, they'll give me some drugs to start getting you out. A week ago this date seemed impossibly far away, but now it's a huge relief to know the pregnancy won't be infinite.

If you’re at all like your dad or me, having this deadline will be very motivating—maybe downright inspiring.

And, just so you know, your dad and I often finish things early... and it would be okay with us both if you did, too.

Oh. My. God.

Well… my due date has come and gone, and here I am: still pregnant. Dr. Husband did his best to keep my spirits up throughout the weekend—cooking me lots of meals, taking me out to a movie, joining me on walks, bringing me flowers from the grocery store—but none of this did much to lessen my crankiness.

Like so many aspects of pregnancy, this last, insomnia-laden, too-huge-to-move stage was so oppressive at first that all I could think was, “I’m not going to make it.” This was my thought when I was massively nauseous and barfing all the time and when my indigestion kicked in in earnest and when I got varicose veins in intimate places and when I injured my knees falling on the gravel driveway and when it became clear I’d never be able to wear an attractive bra again.

But somehow, against all odds, I did make it through the nausea and the barfing and am still making it through the indigestion, the varicose veins, the knee injury, and the unattractive bra-wearing—and chances are I’ll make it though this last stage, too—I just wish with every sore, achy, tired muscle in my body that this stage would end already. Because a life spent lounging about in yoga pants, propped up by pillows on the couch, more or less immobile is not the life for me. At the very least I’d like to be wearing jeans.

Seattle Nice

It’s no secret that Seattleites are, as a whole, a passive-aggressive people. We give panhandlers money and then get offended if they don’t smile or say “Thank you.” Or, if we’re a panhandler, we carry a sign that says, “What if I starved tomorrow—would you care?” We are too wary of conflict to confront people directly but too petty and self-righteous to just let stuff go—which leads to the leaving of lots of notes, mostly under peoples’ windshield wipers, often sealed in a Ziploc baggy to protect the seethingly polite contents from the rain.

I have received windshield notes from neighbors asking me not to park on the strip of public street in front of their house, notes from fellow drivers asking me not to parallel park my “fancy German car” so close to theirs, and notes from garbage collectors asking me not to park my own car on my own street on trash day. As a joke, I once left a note on a friend’s car when I saw that she’d parked behind me, exhorting her to check the city statutes on the minimum distance allowable between two parked cars. To make it totally over the top I included a legend indicating the length of one inch [__________] for her reference. She had no idea it was a prank until I confessed, so similar was my note to ones she’d received in the past.

The approach is annoying and lame—and a hell of a lot easier than actually talking to people directly about something that’s bothering you. And so it was that I came to park in the truck of the construction dude who’s been working on the next-door neighbor’s house since mid-summer. For months now the dude and his helpers have been leaving their trucks in the alley, thereby parking in me and Dr. Husband. When we want to leave the house via automobile, we have to go next door and coax someone down off a ladder or off the roof to come move the truck out of our way. This is obviously exasperating, but we’ve tried to be patient. We’ve tried to be reasonable. We’ve tried to be accommodating—and this, of course, is how passive-aggressive behavior is born. Did we flat out tell them not to park us in? Did we talk to the owners of the house and ask them to ask their workers to park on the street instead of the alley?

Um. No. Each time the workers moved the truck and apologized for blocking us in, we would say something along the lines of, “That’s okay.”

Until today.

I’d been out doing errands and when I returned discovered the truck blocking the path to our garage. It was raining out. I had two bags of groceries in tow. I’m 39-weeks-and-six-days pregnant.

I very quietly snapped and decided to just park them in. Fuck it. If they wanted to leave, they knew where to find me.

Sure enough, an hour or so later the contractor knocked in the door, all hangdog and contrite. “I’m so sorry,” he said. I managed to keep myself from saying, “That’s okay,” and instead came up with, “It’s just that my due date is tomorrow—”

“And the last thing you need is the fucking contractor blocking you in!” the contractor finished for me.

“Well, yeah,” I agreed, not quite being able to make eye contact with him as I lumbered towards the car to move it for him.

“You’re pregnant! You get to say whatever you want!” he pointed out. “You should have told us to fuck off a while ago!”

“I’m working on it,” I muttered.

He repeated his apology and promised it wouldn’t happen again.

And that, my friends, is how it’s done here in Seattle.

Sew What?

What’s wrong with me? Every time I’ve set out recently to purchase any flat, textile-based item (i.e. table runners for the wedding or curtains for the baby’s room), I’ve come home not with the item in question but with a vast swath of fabric and a nagging feeling of resentment towards myself. Because, the thing is, I don’t like sewing. I like things to be pretty, and I like things to be homemade, and I like making things, and I like having made something, and I like being surrounded by things I’ve made. I also like fabrics and textures and colors and patterns and often get turned-on just by being in a fabric store—even a giant chain with dirty linoleum floors and harsh fluorescent lighting. You might think that all this, combined with the fact that I’ve been sewing various projects since I was in junior high would add up to “this woman likes to sew”—but you would be wrong. Very, very wrong.

I hate to sew.

I also hate to knit and, to a large extent, I hate stringing tiny beads onto wire, even though I’ve made most of my own jewelry and a significant number of wooly scarves.

Something about these endeavors leave me feeling like Beth March in Little Women—cooped up and sickly and destined to die a virgin.

So why is it that I, 39-weeks-and-five-and-a-half days pregnant woman, came home from Ikea this afternoon not with a pair of curtains for the guest bedroom but with a piece of fabric—a piece of fabric that will require washing and ironing and cutting and measuring and more ironing and sewing and, gah, my head hurts just thinking about it.

One answer—the one I gave my husband—is that the curtain options were all ugly and not as inexpensive as I’d hoped and would have required hemming anyway whereas the fabrics were interesting and vibrant and downright hip—not to mention less than ten dollars.

But the real answer, clearly, is that I’m a masochist. And a slave to aesthetics. I’m all, I’ll be damned if the tables at our wedding reception are decorated with shiny, tasseled crap made in China. And, For the love of all that is holy, I will not purchase one more pale green or yellow item for my gender-not-yet-determined baby’s room. And today, Oooh! Lookit that pretty, pretty fabric! Must have!

So I’m sitting here hoping I’ll go into labor right now not just because I’m tired of not being able to properly digest food or walk up the stairs without getting lightheaded or see my own private bits without the assistance of a mirror but because going into labor right now would be just the excuse I need to not have to sew those motherfucking curtains.

No Babies Here

What more is there to say?

I mean, other than #$% $*#^# *$!&*!!!

And: fuck patience.