The following is a post I wrote for mommyeverafter in June of 2010. It is staggering to me when I think about it. Then, my daughter was two months old. It was my very first week of blogging. And, in this post, there are so many kernels of truth and glimpses into the future and I had no idea. I talk about pregnancy books, having no idea that I would write them; I talk about anxiety, having no idea that prenatal anxiety was a real thing and one that I had; I talk about the duality of things, even before I knew all that I know now. As so much in this post still rings true for me, I hope it does for you, as well. xx, B
Being pregnant is amazing. A miracle.
And what they fail to mention in all of the “What to Expect” books is that being pregnant is like receiving a brain transplant. Not only does your mind no longer work properly, but it also encourages bouts of actual insanity.
Remember the The Iced Tea Incident?
Unfortunately, that wasn’t just some end-o’-preggo anomaly.
I can remember being 6 weeks pregnant and calling the doctor to request and immediate ultrasound. I was nervous.
I felt less nauseas.My morning sickness had stopped.
For an hour.
This craziness wasn’t me. It was the HCG speaking.
Or, at 12 weeks, when I went food shopping, checked out, loaded up my bags, got into my car, and then realized that I hadn’t paid for my groceries. Just walked right out of the store with a cart full of stolen food.
Hey, what can I say, all of my oxygen was going to baby. Brain, be damned.
I once got a very pregnant pedicure next to a woman who mentioned that she was a doctor. An internist, mind you. Can you guess how many questions I managed to cram in to that thirty minutes of “relaxation”?
And then there were the Google searches. I could wave my crazy flag freely in the privacy of my own home.
Of course there was the weekly search of, “what baby looks like at X weeks”
And then there was, “dog jumping on pregnant belly”
As well as “do coffee shops accidentally serve caffeinated coffee posing as decaf”
And “do babies in womb get scared by blowdryer”
And, who could forget my desperate searches at 38 weeks and beyond for “videos of how to stimulate pregnancy acupressure points in order to bring on full term labor safely at home”
But, in the end, things went back to normal. My morning sickness returned while I was in the waiting room for that early ultrasound. I went back into the supermarket and paid for my groceries. The sweet doctor from the nail salon will never get that pedicure back, but at least it gave her practice, right? And my baby came right on time, at 40 weeks exactly.
But hey, at least I now know where to locate acupressure points Spleen 6 and Bladder 32
