I will not obsessively read about what the Hell to do with a newborn as if this were the Bar exam.
I will not obsessively read about what the Hell to do with a newborn as if this were the Bar exam.
I will not obsessively read about what the Hell to do with a newborn as if this were the Bar exam.
I will eat brownies until I temporarily distract myself from obsessive, Type A Minus baby research - complete with dorky highlighter and sticky notes! - and attempt to relax.
In less anal-retentive news, here's the latest Pretty bump shot at 36 weeks. Identifying details have been cropped to protect you from my vanishing cheekbones & other unsightly puffiness:
(Warning, all ye who enter here - mention of lady doctor appointments & ladybits ahoy!)
A pregnant lady's faith in her obstetrician (or midwife, doula, shaman, fairy - whatever your health practitioner of choice) is not unlike a child's belief in Santa Claus - you know that he or she is likely the one magically delivering the goods and pray fervently that he'll deliver as promised on the appropriate date.
With this faith & prayer comes the third part of the holy Gestating Trinity, the desperate hope that your Dr. Claus has All The Answers. To, you know, everything related to that glorious life you're growing within you blah blah blah, but also in that Mr. Rogers-y sense of being generally comforting and omniscient about the universe and life etc.
While in the midst of my first weekly appointment yesterday - *Allow me to pause & inform the non-P Word crowd that those are the, ahem, rigorous examinations done in the last month of one's pregnancy in which your OB gets more fresh with you than your enthusiastic Prom date attempted junior year - I happened upon this theory. My personal Dr. Claus, preternaturally cheerful to the point of nearly being irritating, looked up from the examination table and beamed beatifically at me while proclaiming ...
"What an adequate, very proper pelvis you have!"
You can imagine my delight, of course, upon hearing those magical words - it must be that proper pelvis of mine that keeps me honest about the flossing and the thank-you note writing! Perhaps those scofflaws like Miss Lohan wouldn't have those pesky legal troubles if only their ladybits had decent decorum!
Naturally I had to share this felicitous news, so after thanking Dr. Claus profusely (properly!) and throwing myself together , I sped to the Trophy Wife Wagon and shared his expert opinion with the Anonymous Husband.
Wouldn't you know it - the AH barked out a laugh, paused a beat, and then inquired in all seriousness, "Sure, but isn't that just code for childbearing hips?"
Please don't be alarmed - rather than being disappointed with the AH's analysis, I giggled and felt a sense of relief. After all, if I've had to dress around these hips of mine for some thirty(-two) years, at least I now have the comfort of knowing they serve the greater purpose of entree into the Junior League and other, ahem, proper institutions (if also the labor & delivery ward).
(Subtitle: Because I Can't Quite Bring Myself to Name a Post After a DMB Song Title Like "The Space Between", Even Though I'm Secretly Still Playing DMB Like It's a 1995 Kegger & People Still Say Things Like "Kegger")
T-Minus 1 weeks: I begin working from home to await Grand Master P's arrival (thanks to hideous commute many leagues from hospital);
T-Minus 5 weeks: Grand Master P is theoretically scheduled to arrive*;
*Note to Anonymous Husband: "Theoretically scheduled" does not mean "put it in your Outlook as a firm appointment". Feel free, however, to pencil in "shop for Push Present" in as "permanently busy" for the next five weeks.
T-Minus 0 weeks, minutes, seconds, nanoseconds,etc: I deduce that this is both too soon and too far off, all of it, and panic about how to live the time in between.
When I say "live", I mean to say to appreciate the time the AH & I have as a family unit of two blah blah blah. "Patience" is both a glorious song of yore and about as abstract and unlikely a character trait to happen upon me as it is for Axl Rose* himself to make a comeback. How to focus on what I have now when what I've always wanted - the whole picket fence chiche and all - is just around the corner?
*Dating myself in this post with not one, but two circa 1990s music references. I feel as ancient as when "Glee" referred to U2 as "classic rock" this week. There is no Botox dosage large enough to cure this feeling of old, is there?
Friends have warned us in ominous tones to enjoy this time as if Armageddon or Justin B*ieber (assuming you recognize a difference between those two) lurks just around the corner. While I'm happy to stuff as many dinners out & pampering opportunities in as possible, surely - hopefully - maybe? - the birth of Grand Master P doesn't actually signal the end of Fun As We Know It?
I recognize that things are changing.
I recognize that Fun As We Know It will cease for a short while - but won't the AH & I, with luck and effort, eventually emerge on the other side as somewhat the same people we were before?
Any advice, wise ones? Would it help if I throw in an unforgivably gratuitous puppy photo? I owe you a bump update, but failing that, please allow me to distract you with the candid Pug stylings of my nursery design assistant (Twitter friends, you'll recognize this one):
