I suppose you might be rolling your eyes at me right now. Go ahead. Being pregnant isn’t always this blissed-out Earth Goddess Instagrammable wonder-show that it’s often presented as. For some of us, it hurts and sucks to be pregnant — your body is stretched and pulled and your pelvis is actually tilting and your hormones are all wacky and you can’t sleep. People give you all kinds of unsolicited nutritional advice about nitrates and soft cheese. Strangers touch you, because as a pregnant woman out in the world you are now somehow public property, like a park bench or a new city-approved sculpture. Everyone can just put their hands on your belly and congratulate you or comment on how huge you are. So I am here to say unequivocally: I don’t like being pregnant. And I know I’m not the only one. Why can’t we say that and still be good mothers? We can. I just did.
And yes, being pregnant is a beautiful thing, too. You’re making a life. There’s a body inside of your body! How crazy is that? It’s like you’re a human matryoshka doll. I mean, that’s pretty amazing, even if it’s uncomfortable.
One requisite of being a human matryoshka doll is reading parenting books and magazines. I flip through pages and pages dutifully, although they’re filled with things and people I feel completely disconnected from. I’d rather be reading an article about the latest Radiohead album, not “The Top 5 Pregnancy-Safe Cleaning Products.” But, I do happen upon one article that piques my interest, all about decorating the nursery. It suggests you paint your baby’s room your favourite colour, since you’re going to spend so much of your life in there for the next few years. Don’t paint the room for the baby, paint it for you.
So that’s what I do. I find painting very relaxing, and although I’m uncomfortably pregnant, I paint her entire room over the course of a few days; three walls mandarin orange, and one wall cream-coloured with giant hand-painted circles in mandarin, lime, and brown. When I’m finished, The Husband installs the mobile he bought to go above the crib: a complete solar system that orbits a bright sun. He’s a scientist, what do you expect? It becomes my favourite room in the house.
I may not be in the best headspace while pregnant, but The Husband is really, really happy now. And he’s been growing a beard. Or rather, trying to grow a beard, since he’s one of those men who has zero body hair and not quite any facial hair either. It comes in scraggly and patchy, and the beard and moustache don’t even touch in the places they should. Still, I find him impossibly adorable. I call it his “playoff beard,” since he is determined to keep it until the baby is born. Just like hockey players vying for the Stanley Cup, he will not jinx the proceedings by shaving his face. It’s quite a superstitious thing to do for a scientist, and I love him more for his contradictions. Still, part of me feels him slipping away from me. Everything is about the baby now, and it’s like our relationship has shifted into a business partnership. The business of baby.
Almost every night now, The Husband rests his head on my giant belly and shouts “Hey!” She responds by jumping all around like an excited puppy in my uterus. He pokes my belly hard and says, “Whattaya at?” and she pokes back at him immediately, every time, and hard. They go back and forth like this, already communicating, and I feel more and more removed from things. More and more like a vessel, a host that will usher in his greatest relationship, making me insignificant. Which is exactly what happens.
FULL MOON, FIRST OF JULY
Dear White Shirt,
Tonight, we talked and talked, all the adults, once the kids finally fell asleep. We drank wine around a bonfire and then more wine and we talked about how the moment is life. How isn’t it funny that the things you can’t plan for often turn out to be the best things? If we let them.
We had more wine. We talked about death and fear. We talked about risk and love and gratitude. We talked about how our parents fucked us up and what ways we would inevitability fuck up our own kids. We laughed so much, even when what we were talking about was painful.
We smoked weed. We talked about how our lives are half over now — if we’re lucky — so our goal is to have more fun and to feel more present in the now, in the here.
We talked about you, because everyone always wants to talk about you, and I always talk about you anyway because how can I not? You’re so woven into my life in a way that I’m not always sure I understand but also in a way that strangely makes sense.
And I wished you were here. Because we’re at a rented cottage on Canada Day and we ate ribs for dinner and homemade biscuits and beets and all that made me think of you and how you love to eat and would enjoy it — like, really enjoy it — and you’d say something quirky and funny because that’s how you do, and I would look at you and be melty, because that’s how I do.
I thought of Birdie’s face and how it lights up around you. How she’s always the kid with the single mom when we’re doing things with my friends with kids. The other kids have siblings and two parents and she whispers wishes to me sometimes while she’s falling asleep, things like “Mom, sometimes it would be nice to have a brother or sister to play with. But that’s okay, I understand.”
And I lie there very still beside her, because when I had her I wasn’t sure I had “the feeling,” you know? The right feeling I thought I should have about being a parent. But being her mom turned out to be the one truly good thing in my life. The one easy thing. And now that I’m approaching forty, “the feeling” is so strong in me I can’t think of anything else sometimes. How my body seems to want another baby. Yours.
I would do it in a heartbeat now, no question, but time is running out, and you can only be occasional to us. You are not here lighting sparklers with her, or singing duets with me as I play guitar around the fire. You aren’t worried that time is running out. You’re trying to make sense of your own life. You’re trying to be good and true to you. Your free spirit is what I love about you, even though it’s the thing that keeps you from me.
And I crawled into bed now and I’m still wearing your Adidas jacket and it still smells like you somehow and it’s like I’m flooded, but not with anxiety or sadness at what you will and won’t be.
No, I’m flooded with good clear thoughts of all the things you already are.
xo,
mp
July 1, 2014
BIRDIE
Spring 2007. I’m eight months pregnant and I’m a giant, swollen mass. The doctor has put me on bedrest because my blood pressure is constantly through the roof. My feet have gone from a size seven to a size nine. For the last month, each night before bed, The Husband has wrapped my forearms in ice. He does it with such care and a lot of little jokes. I feel lucky to have a husband who wants a baby this much. The ice sort of helps with the agonizing pain, but nothing helps these ankles. I can’t even see them anymore.
Basically, the last month of being pregnant totally sucks. When I’m thirty-seven weeks pregnant, The Husband drives me to the doctor for an ultrasound. The high blood pressure and swollen limbs have the doctor concerned I might have pre-eclampsia. She does an ultrasound and declares there to be very little amniotic fluid. She looks at us and asks, “You have any plans today? How do you feel about just having this baby?” and I am so relieved. Yes, please, take this baby out of me, please.
I’m induced. Thirty-five unbearable hours later, the next night, after so much pushing and no success, they wheel me into the operating room and do a C-section. The Husband has been at my side every step of the way, and neither of us has slept for what is nearing forty hours. I can barely see Birdie when he brings her to me. My eyes are crossing and I see two, three babies, all blurry.
“Is she okay?” I ask and he says, “She’s perfect.”
“Oh, good,” I say, and pass out.
While