Week 15 (17 weeks pregnant): Anticipation, Anticipaa-aa-aation is Keepin’ Me Waiting or There Are Two Colors in My Head

For weeks now, people have asked me if I know if I’m having a boy or a girl, which of course I won’t know until the ultrasound that is done between 18 and 20 weeks. After forgetting numerous times, I finally set the date: next Thursday (April 15th), I’ll find out if it’s a little Greg or a little Mary that’s been swimming around in there. The instructions I was given were hilarious at best: I’m expected to drink 24-36 ounces of water an hour prior and not pee my pants. Considering that I’ll have the urge to pee when my bladder is holding approximately a thimble’s worth of urine, I’m sure this will be a challenge.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I would prefer to have a boy. I have always wanted a boy, and have always envisioned myself as the mother of a boy. Why? I’m not entirely sure, but probably because of the severe lack of testosterone in my family (and Greg’s). My mom is one of four girls (no boys). My maternal grandmother is one of seven children, only one of which was a boy. My grandmother’s twin sister had three girls (and no boys). My maternal grandfather had two sisters and no brothers. One of my mom’s cousins has five girls and no boys (can you tell my family is Catholic?). And so on. In Greg’s family, it’s very similar: he has five nieces and one nephew. His mother was one of four children, only one of which was a boy. One of his cousins has two girls, and two stepdaughters. I have to admit I feel more than a little pressure for my little bundle of joy to have its very own little bundle of joy, merely because of the overwhelming presence of girls in both of our families. At family gatherings with the in-laws, the gap is clear: the smattering of men folk/boys present congregate near the TV to watch whatever game is on, and the massive group of females convenes elsewhere. I usually end up with the guys; not because I just love sports (Cardinals baseball is about the only sport I can even remotely tolerate), but because I’m more comfortable there. This is not to say I hate other women and I especially don’t hate the women in Greg’s family because they’re all very lovely women, but I feel a little out of place and well, crowded. I’m not the girly type. In fact, I’ve spent the vast majority of my life in jeans, t-shirt and sneakers; about the only time you’ll see me in a dress or skirt is when attending weddings or funerals. Other than my recently acquired crocheting and knitting skillz, I’m not into the typical girl things. I had Barbies growing up, but I was just as apt to ride my bike or find some other way to get injured or covered in dirt (usually either by digging around in the dirt or playing with whatever dog we had at the time). When I was a wee lass, I was a total daddy’s girl and we would go on motorcycle rides to see inappropriately-violent-for-my-tender-age Arnold Swarzenegger movies, and I loved every minute of it. I target shot for fun. I often wore camouflage clothes, and was sad when I grew out of my very favorite camo shorts. I loved the hell out of Nintendo games and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I watched He-Man along with She-Ra. I wanted more than anything to take karate lessons, much more than ballet or tumbling. I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself butch in my formative years, but I was definitely not the most delicate of ladies. Once puberty hit, I became less of a daddy’s girl and more of a hormonal holy terror, but that’s neither here nor there. Even as boobs sprouted and the baby factory started up business (a business that wouldn’t prove successful for many more years, of course), my interests lay mainly in music (and not the typical crap that girls liked, I’ll have you know; I have a pretty encyclopedic/Aspergian knowledge on a variety of musical topics and had the aspiration to be a rock star at one point and took guitar lessons, but I grew out of that one, thank goodness) and avoiding being the typical girl, which resulted in my frequently being accused of being a lesbian. I did eventually grow out of all that business of course and entered the typically “girly” profession of nursing, but I’ve retained my sense of sarcasm and my sense of being just a little different from most girls.

That said, the thought of raising a girl is absolutely terrifying to me. The thought of dressing it in anything pink or frilly sends me into panic mode; in fact, I refuse to do so if it is in fact a girl, and will specifically ask for not-pink things on my registry. I’m not going to dress it up in camo and construction boots of course, but I find the clear division between the sexes that starts at a young age just plain ridiculous. Boys get blue; girls get pink. Boys like sports and trucks; girls like playing dress up and being princesses. Of course, these are all socially constructed expected behaviors and likes/dislikes, but it seems to me that girls are pushed harder to be girly than boys are to be boyish. My inner-feminist recoils at the notion of buying a girl baby dolls and a kitchen play set to further enforce the notion that girls are only good for squeezing out pups and making dinner, but I also detest the idea that boys aren’t supposed to like those things; I also don’t want to feel like I’m pushing a girl (or boy, for that matter) to be something she’s (he’s) not. The subject of gender has stirred up a lot of emotions in me that were either long buried or that I didn’t even know existed.

Of course, I do want to make it clear that I already love this baby, boy or girl, and I’m not going to leave it on the side of a mountain if it’s a girl. I can see pros and cons of both. Boys come with challenges of their own; they’re often rowdy, usually more aggressive, and can be just as moody teenagers as girls can. Boys are also expected to fit specific gender roles and stereotypes, which is just as infuriating. Maybe this is just the liberal in me talking, though.

Next week I’ll hopefully have an update on what gender it is, as long as it keeps its legs wide open for all to see. Of course, the most important thing is that it is healthy and growing normally and all that jazz, and I’m looking forward to seeing the critter once more.

Week 14 (16 weeks pregnant): I Know All There Is to Know About the Crying Game

On Tuesday of this week, I had my monthly visit with my babydoctor, Dr. Gingrich (the one I previously mentioned looks a bit like Ann Coulter, but who does not have the unpleasant demeanor to match; she’s very sweet and kind, in my opinion). As with all the other doctor’s appointments, I made Greg come with me. After showing up about two minutes late, we waited in the waiting room for over half an hour for a very brief and uneventful checkup. Weight and blood pressure were taken, Dr. Gingrich reviewed all the myriad blood tests I had done the last time I visited and doppler’d my belly, more blood was drawn, and we were back out into the waiting room after probably 10 minutes or so. Granted, a lot was covered in those 10 minutes. I asked the nurse who weighed me how my weight was progressing since the scale at home said I’d gained about a couple of pounds, and she informed me that I’d actually dropped a pound somewhere along the way and never gained it back. As with everything else pregnancy related, I was a little worried and thinking it was abnormal, but Dr. Gingrich informed that it was just fine that my weight was pretty much the same since I’m already overweight, and that a weight gain of 10-15 pounds was optimal for someone my size (which is how much I should have gained by now if I was “normal” size instead of fun size). She went over all the blood test results with me, and relieved me of my fears that I had AIDS, Hepatitis, anemia, or any of the other various maladies that I’d been tested for. My hemoglobin was a rather robust 13 and some change, which is good considering that I was quite anemic all through high school. I knew all that stomach-irritating, constipation-inducing iron in my prenatal vitamins had to be good for something. I went to pay for my co-pay, only to be informed that I no longer had a co-pay at my visits, which is sweet. After years of paying into health insurance that I’ve scarcely used (never enough to even meet my deductible), I’m finally reaping the rewards of forking over so much cash every paycheck for seemingly nothing in return.

In other news, I found myself becoming Weepy McWeeperson over stupid stuff that normally wouldn’t register on the sob-o-meter. One morning driving home from work, I merely thought of the song “Do You Realize?” by the Flaming Lips (again, I was not actually listening to it), and tears started welling up in my eyes. We also got the movie “Up” from Netflix that week. I’d heard it was sad in parts, and I’m usually kind of a sucker for sappy movies, so I don’t know why I was so surprised that I cried approximately every two minutes through the entire movie. There were the obvious parts, like when Carl and Ellie find out they can’t have babies (oh help me please, I’m crying now just thinking of it, dammit), and when Ellie dies (okay, I just need to keep a box of tissues near at all times lest I think of that movie ever again), but I also cried when Carl and Ellie’s house was the last left on their street. And when someone knocked over the mailbox. And any time that Dug was being made fun of by the other dogs (I’m completely serious). And when Carl showed up at the boy’s Wilderness Scouts ceremony. And so on, and so forth. I made the mistake of having a plate of food in my lap when I was trying to watch it, and every time I tried to take a bite, something would happen that would make me sob (not just tear up; literally sob) and nearly choke on my food. I finally gave up on eating anything about halfway through the movie, because I really didn’t want to have to give myself the Heimlich maneuver.

Later that week, we got “Where the Wild Things Are” in the mail, which I was just marginally interested in seeing. I quit watching after I started sobbing uncontrollably when Max’s snow fort was destroyed. I saw one tear roll down his cheek, and it was all over. Greg looked at me like I had lost my ever-loving mind. All I could choke out between sobs was “they destroyed his snow fort!”. I turned my attention instead to the computer, which I was pretty sure was not going to play on my tumultuous emotions. New rule: no more watching movies that have even the remotest chance of making me cry.

One fact that all the pregnancy books tell you, along with just how gorgeous your skin is going to be, is that your hair will have never looked better and it will grow faster than usual. I must attest to the truthiness (ha! spell check didn’t correct that!) of this statement, because I have noticed that I’ve been having a lot more good hair days than bad lately. My hair is definitely thicker and shinier (well, greasier too, but that’s what shampoo is for, ya dirty hippies), and has more body than usual, which is just peachy keen. What they all neglect to tell you (beside The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy; thanks for the heads-up, Vicki) is that all of your other hair also grows at the same accelerated rate, and that hair starts popping up in places you never knew it could (and I won’t go into the pubic zone here, you perverts). Suddenly I noticed that my belly was covered in a scant carpet of baby-fine blonde hair, and that my leg and arm hair have started growing at an exponential rate. The peach fuzz that already existed to some extent on my face has become peachier and fuzzier. I’ve always had what seems like an excessive amount of arm hair, but it’s getting thicker by the minute. Luckily I’ve inherited my grandmother’s German genes and blonde hair; had I taken after the Italian/Sicilian side of my family, I’d probably be resembling one of the Great Apes by now and dragging along on my knuckles, wearing a diaper (and possibly tearing off some innocent person’s face). So now I’m shinier and hairier. Maybe I am turning into an ape: a rare blonde, albino ape. I’ll try to climb the trees in the backyard, just to be sure.

Lastly, I finally got some much-needed maternity scrubs. When I took them home and tried them on, the shirts were a little large and the pants were loose but seemed to fit okay, even though the pants were predictably too long (I realized a long time ago that women’s clothes are in fact modeled after Amazon women). Feeling a little restricted by my other scrubs (which do still fit, even if a little snugger than I like), I decided to wear the maternity scrubs to work one night. I spent the entire night trying to avoid being the subject of “Pants on the Ground”, since I had to pull my pants up every five seconds to prevent myself from tripping on my own pants and breaking my legs. I’ll just have to hang in there until I get large enough to outgrow the regular scrubs and graduate to my big girl pants.

And, that’s a wrap! Tune in for the next riveting installment of Itty Bitty Blog!