Before we decided to proceed down this perilous little path called parenthood, I read all about pregnancy and parenthood until my eyeballs bled. About how my uterus would expand exponentially and my back would hurt and I might vomit. My sleep would permanently be altered during the first trimester and never really change back, my hair would thicken and then fall out. I expected to be on insulin at the start of the 2nd trimester, my diabetes run ragged because of the elevated hormones in my blood, and so on and so forth.

I’m about 2/3s of the way through this pregnancy and it’s nothing of what I expected. I felt physically ill during the first trimester, but I never threw up. I never got that crazy fatigue that most women get when they are pregnant, and I swear, once the second trimester hit, like on the dot, my cranky nausea went away. And amazingly enough, the further along I progress in my pregnancy, the more it seems like I won’t even have to switch to insulin at all - I feel like I’m one of the only people in the world in which pregnancy improves freakin’ diabetes. For about a month I’ve gotten nearly nightly charley horses. My hair is looking pretty great, except right now it’s grown out a bit faster than it normally does, and it normally grows fast and is really thick. My fingernails are growing like crazy.

And I am loving every minute of it.

I am a pessimist by nature, and very skeptical of… everything. Everything. I was happy for about a split second when we found out I was pregnant, and then commenced the worry - I worried about everything and still do, and I doubt that much will change after the baby is born. And no matter what people say, having a moving, writhing and kicking human being inside you is really, really fucking weird.

Someone asked me recently how I was feeling about the pregnancy and this process and I had to think about it. I’ve had an easy ride of it physically thus far, a fact I’m very grateful for, believe me. But I wasn’t prepared for how it would change my view of myself. Pregnancy has been one of the most empowering and enriching experiences I have ever had. Just seeing my body change on a weekly basis to accommodate this new life inside of me has been amazing.

I have always considered myself a feminist, and having grown up in a household of strong women (my mother and grandmother), I have never once thought to myself that there was anything that I couldn’t do or accomplish in my life. And now, I am in the middle of life creation, and it feels like my body is exploding with power I never knew I had, even though I’ve always known all along that I am a strong woman and can do everything I set my mind to and more.

Wow.

It takes a village to raise a child. African proverb

My son will be coming into a world that is ready and waiting for him. My grandmother has been knitting up a storm, knitting through the pain of her knotted fingers, ridden with arthritis. My mother turns Chinese names in her head day and night, thinking of something fitting for her first grandchild. Our apartment is slowly preparing itself and filling itself with items from friends and family to help nurture and care for our child. I feel loved and while I might not mentally feel prepared, right now our baby has a panda bear, a place to sleep, a new board book (all about sushi, naturally), and enough diaper covers to last quite awhile. We’ll be okay.

We’ll be okay.

***

We just finished watching Six Feet Under, via netflix, and the last three or four episodes had me bawling. Beyond the general storyline of the show, I realized how very much I loved the Fishers - how dysfunctional they were, how they fit well together and how they loved, oh how they loved. And then as I watched the storylines unfold I cried hard, thinking about the baby inside me and how one day he too will die, and god, he’s not even born now, what on earth am I going to do if he dies before me? And Josh -

(parenthetical interlude)
Josh and I met and started dating in earnest a week or so before September 11th, 2001. He lived close enough to the World Trade Center in New York to hear (and probably feel) the impact of the planes hitting the towers, and eventually fled the city to come to me in Connecticut. I have a saying that I’ll tell Josh every now and again: “If you die, I’ll kill you,” and here, I’m only half joking. Josh once explained the phrase to a classmate of his as evolving from the very real threat of death in our relationship from the beginning, and looking back on it, it totally makes sense.
(end parenthetical interlude)

- Josh is not allowed to die. Neither is Ava, but she is seemingly unswayed by my idle threats to her, and instead paws my breasts.

But man, all of the emotions and fears, coupled with this healthy dose of hormones I’ve got running up in my system meant crying for hours, and a restless sleep. And I know I’m totally being such a dork - god, it’s just a TV show, for crying out loud, but I can’t help it. Josh bought me one of the two soundtracks for Six Feet Under, and I’ve got it playing now, and I feel so teenagery maudlin. Lord.

***
Another OB visit and my blood sugar is doing fine. My blood pressure is slightly elevated (the first number was high - 128 something? over 78) but the doctor isn’t worried about it, and neither am I. For a high risk pregnancy, my pregnancy has been oddly normal. At around 34 weeks, we’ll have another ultrasound, and then talk about non-stress tests. The baby is kicking up a storm and I am having a lot of fun feeling his random limbs poke out. The other day I was laying down on the sofa and I saw my belly jump when he walloped me one.

I’m sure I’ll get sick of this soon, and in fact, if Baby Boy can stop kicking my cervix (I think he’s kicking my cervix) and especially my bladder, that would really rock.

Anyway, now the name of the game is to wait. Clean up a little, maybe, and wait.

I am really, really bad at waiting.

I think, I think, spring has sprung. The CTA has turned on the air conditioning on the red line, so instead of the aroma of warm and stale urine wafting in from the remote corners of the cars, it smells a little less so.

(I am not making public transportation sound very appealing, am I? Rest assured that I love not having a car, especially this week when I have been driving a company car for a few days and spent as long driving from work to home as I did trying to find a parking space in a densely populated neighborhood.)

(And while I am speaking in parentheticals, Chicagoans park for shit. There was one block I drove by in a huff where only six cars were parked, with just enough space between each car so no other cars could park in there. “Fuckers,” I said to Josh. “In New York, you could have easily fit another six cars there. How lame.”)

***

Things are going well by us as the spring finally, uh, springs. Josh is done with classes for the semester in a few weeks, a fact for which I am insanely jealous as I won’t be done with my busy time until this child comes. On the pregnancy front, today I am 25 weeks and 2 days pregnant, which amazes me to no end, as I feel like it was just yesterday when I was yawning at my desk with pregnancy test in hand, having woken up at an insane hour to go to the bathroom. And here we are, 25 weeks. I’m slowly turning round, the baby kicks all the time - the baby is big enough now to kick upwards, toward my ribcage, which is an odd thought entirely - and in fact, last night kicked Josh in the face, which I am still giggling about. I eat red meat like it is going out of style, and there might be a small piece of me that thinks that instead of having a baby boy, we will be having a wee little cow. I crave cheeseburgers like they’re going out of style.

We are slowly getting ready for this child to make its appearance in our lives. The first real thing we bought about six or seven weeks ago was a panda bear. The baby needs a bear, right? Since then, we’ve arranged for cloth diapering service (I am amazed that there are people who, for a fee, will come and pick up dirty diapers and give you clean ones in exchange). I have two breast pumps (I know, two! One is for me to keep at work and the other is for occasional home use). We got a Maya Wrap sling in the mail today, and I played the DVD and tested it out on the aforementioned panda. And the two pieces that amaze me the most - we have a carseat for the baby’s arrival home and a portable playpen type thing for the baby to sleep in. I’m leaving it up for now, so Ava can get used to it, but wow. It’s weird to think that there will be a child soon who will sleep there.