Feed me

SARA: Hey Anil, this pamphlet the doctor gave me says, "Some women are less bothered by nausea or cravings, but instead develop an unusually strong appetite, wanting to eat up to every two hours, sometimes around the clock."

ANIL: Is that why I woke up at 3:30 a.m. the other night and you were sitting up in bed, eating a banana? 

Pregnant celebrities need friends too

I just saw in the Boston Globe that Giselle, supposedly, is pregnant. Since she and Tom Brady hang out in Boston all the time (last weekend he capsized a kayak in the Charles River; I think that's funny), don't you think she might want a preggo buddy--and by that I mean ME? Hmm, on second thought, maybe hanging out with a gorgeous supermodel isn't such a great self-esteem power play when I'm already gaining weight, my face is breaking out, and it's all only going to get worse. 

I let a different kind of pregnant celebrity friend opportunity slip through my fingers a few weeks ago when Maya Rudolph came into Patagonia with her husband and daughter. I swore it was her, but couldn't be sure, and even if I was I didn't want to be "that person" who calls her out when she's enjoying a nice day with the family. That said though, she was obviously pregnant, and I was pregnant as of one whole week, so had I been SURE it was her I would have mentioned the vast amount that we had in common and she might have at least friended me on Facebook. 

At least I can still count on Angelina being friends with me, because with Anil's half-Indian heritage we will have an appropriately trendy ethnic-looking baby. That's a relief.

mmm, library

Right after I told my parents that I was pregnant, my mom mailed me these books. She bought What to Expect When You're Expecting, but this other book, The First Nine Months, she had actually saved from when she was pregnant with me--30 years ago!

To be honest, until this point I've been a little freaked out to look at the pictures, but I open it once a day and inhale deeply. It smells fantastic--like library books from when I was a kid. I can't get enough of it, and I find it comforting. It's like when Proust ate the madeline cookie and was transported back to his childhood; I smell this book and am five years old hoarding piles of books from Poquoson Library. 

all systems are go

We had our first ultrasound and first official OB/GYN appointment today, and it looks like I have a 3/4 inch stuffed panda in my belly. We could clearly see the head and body (or the outline of whatever they are so far), but the arms and legs are still little nubs that stick out perpendicularly, much like the circular paws on a stuffed animal. That may sound weird, but I think it's really cute. So... I guess it's real!

What I just read

Foreskin's Lament, by Shalom Auslander (thank you Brookline Booksmith bargain table)

I can't write entirely about baby stuff, at least not while the cupcake is so tiny... and anyway, this book is narrated around the birth of the author's first son. It's HILARIOUS. Shalom Auslander has had stories on This American Life and a there are some samples of his clips here. Funny stuff. The title comes from Auslander's agonizing over whether to have his newborn son circumcised, given his problematic relationship with God. (He says: "I believe in God. It's been a real problem for me.") Any time I get paranoid about what might go wrong in this new condition, I can at least console myself that I'll never be as paranoid and he is, and if something does happen, it's not because God is teaching me a lesson. The catch, though, is that I don't have all that angst and biting wit with which to write such a great book. I'll take the trade off.

week 6/7, or, why I'm doing this

This past semester, I took a class on Pragmatism, the philosophic thread of William James and cohorts (1890's, post-Civil War) that suggested we take notions of right/wrong and good/bad out of the ether and determine worth based on "cash value" instead. What's it good for? What does it do? John Dewey said that every experience is a moving one--it either moves you toward something (like being open to new experiences or to learning more), or it inhibits you. I had a blast writing my final paper on how we use humor to reinterpret memories so that they have "cash value", so they move us toward further experience. If we do something socially stupid, it's more pragmatic to turn around and tell a funny story about it instead of cringing and filing it away. If we can joke about it, we can almost retell it and laugh with each other (which feels much better than being laughed at, even if just in your own head). 

I think that blogging about pregnancy and motherhood is a fun way to make sense of and even reinterpret all of the craziness that descends on us as we start this journey. I'm hooked on this hilarious (yet insightful--the best combo, right?) mommy blog called Dooce that exemplifies it perfectly. It just seems like if you take too much of this stuff too seriously, you'll quickly drive yourself too crazy. 

The latest indignity that I've read about? What to Expect When You're Expecting has a section that explains how you might think you're showing in the first trimester, but don't get excited--you're actually just bloated. I mean, I'd just be embarrassed by that if I couldn't make fun of it. I've been thinking about how that's in part why I wanted to tell people that I work with about this new "condition," because I don't know how to make sense of it if I'm not laughing about it. 

week 5

Full disclosure: I always found it aggravating that pregnant women and mothers of babies and toddlers would use weeks instead of months (then months instead of years) to report how far along they were. Like, 12 weeks instead of three months. I know, woe is me that I have to divide something by four in my head, as if I'm the one being put upon in this situation.

Now I get it though... [maybe we should start keeping count of how many times I say that: "NOW I get it..."] I'm on week 5, and the whole process of 40 (really? 40?!) weeks is so daunting that each week does feel like a milestone. It's also so early that I feel apprehensive about telling people about what's going on with me. It's like, suddenly I'm on this separate plane of existence, but I'm not supposed to tell anyone? Apparently though, avoiding the issue and playing off how tired/crappy/distracted I feel sometimes is an impossibility (for me, let alone Anil--I think he's fighting tooth and nail to not wear a sandwich board around the hospital saying "Sara's pregnant!"), so it's becoming anything but a well-kept secret. I just feel almost impostor-like being so early in this process and blabbing about it. It's like this limbo where I'm not the Sara that I was just a few weeks ago, but I'm also not "officially" this other Sara yet either, at least not publicly for all intents and purposes.

On a more positive note, though, Anil went to Whole Foods and bought a bundle of fruit. He made me a giant fruit salad to munch on all week, including a bag of cherries that he "painstakingly" cut in half and pitted, one by one. It pretty much makes up for the "you still have to watch your overall calorie intake" comment made the night before when we went out to dinner with friends and I explained the "you have to eat continually all day" strategy for avoiding morning sickness :).

Supposedly it's early to feel much of anything anyway, but I'm trying to follow the guidelines so that I feel as good as possible in these first few months (ugh, there it is again, months! I'm counting weeks because months have never felt so long!). I had a bout of nausea on Friday, and my first lesson learned the hard way is that it goes away. I had no clue! I cancelled evening plans I had been looking forward to because I envisioned feeling nauseous not just for the rest of that night, but for the ENTIRE NEXT TWO MONTHS! I was passing people pushing strollers on Newbury Street, wanting to stop and ask them, "How did you do this?!?" By the time I got home though, ready to sulk through the night, I felt fine. I'm sure it's just the first of many mind/baffling experiences to come.