Rule # 15: Stay on the Sunny Side (of Shitty)

Like most things in life, just when we think it’s smooth sailing, we find ourselves partway up shit creek. (Ah, I love using my beautiful local colloquialisms sometimes.) I had been having no problems with my pregnancy outside of the normal whining and complaining you’ve born witness to through these writings, and so I cruised right into week 28 (that’s seven months for you non-preggers out there) like the world was as it should be.

And then, there was blood.

Gross, I know. And completely out of place. I had just been going for a routine pee, and when I pulled down the undies, I found what looked like the very beginning of a period. Now, it had been some time since I’d seen the beginning of a period, so the sight of that brownish but bright red spot on my pantiliner doubly shocked me. Then sent me into Holy Shit Mode.

Obviously, whether you’re pregnant, have been pregnant, or can’t stand the thought of cells ever congealing together in your uterus, you can figure out that you shouldn’t have blood leaking through your sweatpants like a newly-blessed sixth grader when you’re seven months down the road. So I called the doctor, had the hubby drive me to the hospital, where I was admitted and poked and prodded and monitored, and where I sat perched upon my little bedcage for three whole days.

In case you’re curious: speculums inserted into your recently bleeding wahoo are super uncomfortable. Of course, so is sitting in a hospital for two days waiting to be told everything is fine, just a fluke, go home and be normal again, please.

So far, I’ve only had that one small instance of bleeding, and nothing since. Far as they can tell, something probably happened with my placenta. The doctor was telling me something about an indentation and a possible “abruption” and more things that I heard but only listened to long enough to gather that the wee one and I are okay and they just need to track us for a bit to make sure we stay okay. Since then, I’ve been allowed to return home and continue bed-arrest for another week from the comforts of my own couch and toilet, and—of course—computer, so I’ve done a little research of my own, and it seems as if I lucked out in the placental abruption market, at least for now. So things could be worse, as they always could, right?

I mean, how bad can being doctor-ordered to sit around and do next to nothing be? If you’re anything like me, it can be torturous, since your brain has a lot of time to run through the gazillion things you could be completing in the time it takes to run through a day from Regis and Kelly to Oprah. Not to mention missing so much work unexpectedly. Oh, my uterus is going to contract just thinking about it!

But here’s the lesson: to be a Good Pregnant Woman, you need to remember you are not Super Woman and you cannot, indeed, do everything just as you had before getting pregnant, or even as you did when newly pregnant. This third trimester kicks your ass, even when you don’t know it is, as I quickly discovered. So prescribe yourself some relaxation and laziness before your placenta says enough is enough and springs a leak. Trust me.

And if you do spring a leak or have contractions before you should be or have your water break and need netting shoved up there and find yourself talking sweet nothings into a standard-issue hospital pillow, look on the sunny side of the shitty situation: you get to preview the people and place where you’ll be delivering, you get to show your husband just how much you really do around the house by giving him the list of chores you are no longer allowed to do, and you get to catch up on some of those guilty pleasure TV shows and stacks of novels that everyone is very quick to tell you you’ll have no time for once little one officially arrives.

Who knew? Good Pregnant Women can find the silver (panty)-lining in anything.

Rule # 14: Cramp Your Style

One good thing about being pregnant (besides, you know, the impending immaculate pleasure of becoming a mother, that lovable job that's "like no other," as we're told by anyone who has raised a child) is that you don't have to put up with a period. No more tampons for this gal for awhile. No more tracking days or counting birth control pills. No more dumping out the purse in desperation to resort to that tampon you've had in there since 2004 with the bent applicator, or--worse yet--that applicator-less OB tampon your husband got the one time you trusted him with the task of picking some up. No more of it. So much less hassle.

And besides, that little present really is the monthly gift that keeps on giving, isn't it? Because not only do you have to deal with keeping your insides from leaking outside of your new khaki pants, you have to deal with feeling bloated, constipated, diarrhea-ated, migrained, and totally cramptastic. So since pregnancy has its own list of womanly wonders, we get to at least be excused from those former foes, right?

Wrong. Of course.

Welcome to PMS. Pregnancy Mania Shitdrome. And welcome to the crampiest you've ever been in your life.

You thought pre-menstrual cramps were bad? I bet you used to call off work sometimes, curl up on your little couch, pop some Midol, and try to nap them off. No can do with the baby-induced crampage. Because they last alllllll day long. For months' worth of days.

It's not so much one continuous cramp. They are definite, individual, singular-at-a-time cramps. Apparently Braxton-Hicks is the name docs like to call them (really? So the wonderful woman who got these named after her had to be some broad who wanted to hyphenate her last name in the honor of equal rights type shit? Good Lord. My husband's last name is definitely the only one I'm carrying, b/c it's his sperm that led to this uterus situation! He gets to carry full blame!). B-H basically means you're having contractions. But don't worry; just practice ones. So you mean I get a sneak preview of early labor? Oh, happy happy joy joy! Somehow, I like the kind of sneak previews you get at the movies better. Sue me.

But it's not so much the actual cramps that will annoy the piss out of you. And we both know you've got PLENTY of piss these days. It's more the feeling that you could majorly cramp up at any second, if you happen to move, pivot, cough, sneeze, breathe, laugh, blink, or exist the wrong way. Like that uterus is just poised for action in there, peering up at you past your lungs, peeking around the lip of your (continuously) enlargening and bumpy nipple, a little sneer on its uterus lining. Sleeping has become a game of samurai-like geniousness. I can't just easily twist and turn like I used to. (And, oh, God, how I do miss sleeping on my stomach!) Now I have to fully wake up, brace myself, flex my hip slightly to test for tightness and achiness--the result of resting on top of my other hip for an hour too long while I snoozed--clench my hands against the mattress, and try to shift my cannon barrel belly without using any ab muscles.

That's right. You try moving something that is attached to your abdomen w/out using your ab muscles to do it, for fear of everything inside deciding to clench up like a lion on the jugular of a juicy zebra.

And it's not just your uterus that wants to cramp all the time. It's other muscles too. Like your calves. Ooooh, yes. I run a daily stable full of charlie horses now. Especially at night time. Like if I'm concentrating too hard on my stomach situation, they get jealous and give a little pull as if to say, "Hey! We've been here longer. And you haven't walked us for two days. Pay attention, bitch, before we pop a cap o' cramp in your ass too!" And forget a morning stretch. Ah, I remember waking up and taking a moment to just yawn my hands far above my head and reach my toes ballerina-style toward the bottom edge of the bed, feeling the spaces open up nicely all along my back. If I even THINK about a toe extension of a downward variety now, it's bye-bye sanity, helloooo knife in my shin. Seriously. Because I'd rather stab a knife in my shin than have to feel another one of those cramps again.

But guess what? No one really cares, as usual, to hear about all of your cramp-ity doo dah days. So, I'm sure you know by now how to be a Good Pregnant Woman when it comes to anything like this: Just grin and bear it. Pretend that when you are rubbing a part of your bump, it's because you're bonding with baby, not because you're actually trying to shove her back up and over to relieve the pressure she just put on your back nerve, or kidney, or general sense of malaise.

And certainly not because you're secretly thinking she better knock it the hell off because she's getting god damned annoying already with the constant attention-seeking behavior. You know someday she's going to be a pain in your ass since she'll be a teenager.

Too bad you weren't warned sooner that she'd start off being a pain in your uterus. So cramp away, little one. Cramp away. Mama is a woman, after all, and she's already keeping score.

Rule # 13: It's Strong Enough for a Man, But Made for a Woman's Thighs

I love when people tell me that, from behind, you can't even tell I'm pregnant. That I definitely only look like I've gained weight in my belly.

Then when I think about it, who does look pregnant from behind? What's that even mean? That I don't have a round hump appearing below my tramp stamp, stretching out its Chinese characters to look like a toddler's attempts at coloring on the living room wall? Thank God for that.

And if I look like I haven't gained weight anywhere other than my belly, Criss Angel should be asking me for trick tips. I mean, obviously the belly gets bigger. And rounder. And feels like a soccer ball has been shoved up your wahoo to rest right below your lungs, so that any normal bending requires the focus of a deep sea diver with low levels of oxygen. Not to mention that, almost 26 weeks in, I'm beginning to notice the feeling that my skin is stretching. Like, I can literally feel it as its happening (or so my Mego Prego brain imagines). It's like a balloon that's been blown up just a tad too far...that's been shoved up your wahoo to rest under your damn lungs. Or like you just ate the largest burrito in your life and all of the gas exhaled by those beans is rolling around inside and refusing to come out. I feel puffy.

I'm that kid from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that ate a blueberry she shouldn't have and bloated up into a rolly-polly ball.

That's not the only part of me that has expanded, however. Sadly, the thighs are a-thundering.

Now, in my previous life, I used to say that my thighs were chafing. But it wasn't until I actually began procreating life that I discovered the true meaning of the burning, itching, aching, rash-like phenomenon that transpires when sweaty thigh rubs against sweaty thigh for far too long underneath a maternity dress on a hot summer day.

While breaking Good Pregnant Woman form and whining to a friend about this problem, I was given a tip. And I consider this friend of mine to be a savior.

Want to know the secret to stopping the childbearing chafe?

Secret.

That's right. Rub some good ol' deoderant on your inside thighs and waddle away, ladies. No rash. No irritated bumpy pores. Just clean, fresh smelling, glide-worthy legs at your service.

Don't necessarily take to heart everything you are told to rub your body down in, though. I've also been told to lather myself up every night with Crisco shortening to prevent stretch marks.

Takes the phrase "a bun in the oven" to a whole new baking level if you ask me.

So I'm going to stay out of the kitchen shelves and stick to raiding the bathroom medicine cabinet for remedies awhile. Now if only something could pop the pressure in my bloated bump. Even my belly button can't handle it anymore...

Rule # 12: Namely, Mystery Beats Sarcasm

You have survived the years worth of badgering over when you were going to ever have children and provide your family with the all-important grandchildren & heirs to the family-name throne (for however much or little that really is worth). You've battled through the barrage of stereo-typical questions(and by stereo dash typical I mean the questions everyone asks you so many times you think you're listening to a CD on your stereo on "Repeat One" mode for eternity)involving your gestation, due date, and sexxxxxxx, baby. Oops, sorry. I meant sex of the baby. My bad.

And you found out the sex because a) it's the 21st century and that's pretty easy info to come by these days, b) you felt as if you could be better prepared for the little one and c) you just wanted to shut everyone the hell up for a change (circa Rule # 6). If you're like me, you found out you're having a girl. And you were surprised because for the last eight years of your life, the trustworthy necklace tests have told you nothing but boys boys boys. And boys and boys.

Filthy lyin' necklace test. Threw me off. Good thing I did find out now because I was NOT ready to have a daughter! But no worries, because I am honestly excited. At least for years 1 through pre-tween. ;)

Anyways, I'm sure you've figured out that the questions aren't over. People are prepared for this one, too, you know. Next one up their sleeve?

Oh, how sweet. Have any names picked out yet?

Damnit.

Here's the thing about names: everyone's got different tastes. That's why I've got a baby book with over 100,000 names, about five of which I really truly like enough to mull over. Naming someone is a HUGE responsibility. I mean, you're in charge of assigning a word to someone that will be used to refer to her for the REST OF HER LIFE. When that word is said, it will represent her. So it better be damn cool, unique, beautiful, intelligent, radiant, creative, passionate, and awe-inspiring...because it has to fit her. And she will be all of those things. At least that I am certain about.

So I feel enough pressure--as delivered by myself--to choose a flippin' fantastic word to call my daughter after I deliver her. I do not need every living person who crosses my path to ask about my choices in the hopes of throwing in their two cents.

Perhaps I should charge. If you want to know my choices, that will be two cents, please. All proceeds benefit the Unnamed Reeder Child College & Future Wedding Foundation.

My Good Pregnant Woman advice: play confused, frustrated, overwhelmed, or mysterious. Whatever you do, do NOT divulge your REAL choices. And if you do actually have one name picked out, guard it like a horny dog guards that stuffed animal he has made his hump slave.

If you tell people your choice or possible choices, they will ruin them for you. They'll know someone who knows someone who knows someone by that name who turned out to be a serial killer. Or psychotic schizophrenic bipolar multiple personality. Or different species, like a hairless chihuahua. Then they'll also feel the need to offer you MORE possibilities to consider, and THEN you'll have to pretend you like what they say, even if you don't, and even if they tsk-tsked over your favorite when you told them. Don't do this to yourself. Because you won't have patience to pretend, and you'll hurt their feelings, and then you have to take precious pregnant minutes to feel guilty about being bitchy, and you'll waste enough time on that every time you go to Babies R Us and a sixteen-year-old trainee can't figure out how to ring up your crib purchase for a half hour. (Wow, what a specific example, you may be thinking. Real life, people. Real life.)

If you don't just pretend to not have it narrowed down yet or to like so many names you couldn't possibly share them all anyway, you'll end up being sarcastic. People will ask you what you're considering and you'll say, "Noname," or "Abba," or "Shithead," with the most serious and loving tone you can muster. By the way, I know for a fact two out of three of those have appeared on birth certificates here in America. And they aren't dancing queens, either.

While sarcasm will amuse you and your friends endlessly, it's Bad Pregnant Woman form to really do this to good-intentioned albeit annoying aquaintances. So get used to squeezing those shoulders up toward your neck in that helpless signal kind of way. And keep a pen and paper handy.

You'll want to keep track of all of the names people offer you, since they'll be on your Epic Failure list forever.

Rule # 11: Stop, Prop, and Roll (Out of Your Shoes)

It's a conspiracy. Seriously.

The world knows I've adamantly attempted to maintain some semblance of fashion sense and cuteness (see Rule 8) during this pregnancy thing. But I'm not idealistic, or unreasonable. I knew that my high heels were unfairly banished to the back of my closet as soon as my belly button popped like a cooked turkey. I was prepared for this limitation in my footwear.

So my solution? Flats. Plenty of cute, comfortable, solidy stable flats that I could wear to work and look professional, pregnant, and still cute all at once.

But nooooooooooooooo. Could the world give me this one little thing? Could it use its mystical forces to grant me the ability to wear stylish flats with ease so that I felt as if I'd maintained at least an iota of my former self in this bloated state?

Of course the hell not.

Let me break it down into a little equation for you:

[Pregnancy + End of Summer + 3(Days of >90 degree heat) + Cute shoeware] / Working Conditions - Air Conditioning = Feet Bloated Like a Dead Floating Body in an Episode of CSI (any spinoff of preference works here)

I'd like to say that this wasn't a problem until the end of my day today, when I sat in my classroom with three fans blowing on high and two windows opened to maximum capacity with the lights rebelliously turned off, only to find it still sweltering. I'd like to pretend that only after three full work days of those conditions, with over a hundred hot-air-filled teenagers in & out of my room, did I discover it impossible to cram my toes into the pair of black flats I've owned for two years. You know, one of those pair of old reliable shoes that you've broken in, so that they conform to your feet just right. If your feet had parents, these shoes would be them; that's how comfortable, reliable, and supportive they are to your tootsies. I'd like to say that only after hours of sweating and water retention were my swollen soles no longer welcomed with open Mary Jane straps.

But I can't. Because the sad truth is, they were really tight this morning, when I shoved them on in the last two minutes I had to pack my lunch and skid out to my car.

Take it from me, my prego friends: don't live in denial like I did. You won't have near enough patience, tact, or tolerance to outlast the inevitable disappointment you're headed for when you ignore the blister that's formed on your heel before you even turn the ignition to start the day. Just purchase cheap clogs that will match most outfits and avoid full-length mirrors, so you don't have to see what you've been reduced to by your uncooperative body and its lovely little passenger.

So thanks, summer, for needing to be so damn hot that my FEET look like WATER BALLOONS one needlepoint away from explosion. And thanks, pregnancy, for making me feel like an 85-year-old granny who needs to wear support stockings and prop her feet on a crocheted footstool after ten minutes of any movement.

Good thing I'm getting a custom-made baby out of this deal.

Rule # 10: Keep Counting the Ways

Another milestone is within reach. I am just a few days away from 24 weeks. Or 6 months, whichever you prefer. And folks, you do have your preferences.

Before getting pregnant myself, I used to wonder why pregnant women had to be so obsessive as to relay the length of their pregnancy via weeks. They sounded like teenagers in their first "real" relationship who were all too eager to share the good new lovey news.

"Oh my God, we've been together for, like, two weeks and four days. We're celebrating our three week anniversary this weekend! I love him so much!!!!"

I used to always smile politely at their peppy pregnant answer of 14 weeks while quickly doing the math in my head to determine how many months they were, since after all, the world knows a woman is pregnant for nine months, and all I really wanted to know was how close she was to popping.

Then I got pregnant myself, and discovered that I'd been lied to. Just like the fact that Christopher Columbus apparently did not sail the ocean blue in 14-hundred and 92 to discover the America where we live, pregnancy is not nine months long, my friend. It's ten.

What?, you ask. Or perhaps you actually are thinking, WTF?

Doctors measure pregnancy by weeks. Forty of them to be exact, which, if you are a math genius like myself, you've already figured out makes ten months instead of nine. That's because they actually begin tracking your pregnancy from the first day of your last period. Why? Because they can. And because they can't pinpoint the exact hour during which sperm hit egg, so they go back to the last milestone they can track: that monthly shedding of a uterus wall. That You Are Woman, Hear Me Bitch marker of every month.

So this is why pregnant women love to answer you with weeks instead of months, because upon known conception, they are brainwashed to track this thing by the week. It's how the doctors talk to us. Their little measuring tapes that they start breaking out around week 20, like you're an obese 15 year-old at Fat Camp, measure your appropriate size via WEEK NUMBER, not inches. Measuring at a week ahead of where they've tracked means you may deliver a week early.

Of course, I measured exactly on the mark last visit. Sigh.

Basically, bear with us when we automatically spew numbers at you on a 1-40 scale, because it's how we've been trained. But ladies, if you wish to be Good, consider your audience when answering this question: if this is a woman who has given birth in her life within the past, well, EVER, week her up. She'll know, understand, and love it. If it's a woman who hasn't given birth herself but has been surrounded by the hormonal hell of pregnancy often, hit her with that seven-days-at-a-time count.

If, however, this is a young lady who has not waded through the world of waiting for her water to break, try to give her months. She'll feel more comfortable and look at you like you've still got some normal human being left about you. If it's a guy, father or not, I suggest you just be vague. If they ask how far along you are, say, "Due end of December!" or "Almost there!" or "Well, getting there!" and smile, because they don't understand it anyways and they are just trying to be nice. Thanks, boys.

After all, you are the ones that get us into this nine month mess for forty weeks. And I never was any good at arithmetic.

Rule #9: ...Wait, What Was I Going to Type?

I've never had the most reliable short-term memory. I mean, with trivial items, sure. I was a regular Rain Man. Lost the receipt from dinner last night? Got it, down to the centavos. Can't recall the exact time you dropped off that prescription to be filled? 3:18 pm, my friend. How old was I when I ate so much chocolate my nose bled? Four. Always four.

My memory was always photographic enough to make high school and most of college a breeze too. I could close my eyes and see my notebook sheet, doodles and all, to recall enough of it to b.s. my way through any short answer or essay.

But as I grew up and flipped sides of the desk, from student to teacher, and flipped through life roles, from daughter to wife, I became busy, with lots more to multitask more of the time, so forgetful moments became inevitable. You know, forgot to turn in lesson plans by 8 am Monday morning so took them down at 10, or went to visit the mother-in-law and forgot to take that tupperware back for her. The usual. Misplaced keys. A rented movie returned one day late. Mowing over a pile of dog shit you never cleaned up. That type of stuff.

So if you find yourself in any of what I just listed, brace yourself for when Mego Prego Brain hits. When your life role flips once again so that it's standing on edge between non-mother and mother (since you really are in a weird in-between pregnancy purgatory during the 40 weeks it takes for a child to cook up), you will realize that, honey, you ain't seen--or forgotten--nothin' yet.

It's as if pieces of your brain just fall away. Like you've suddenly become someone who smoked crack for a decade and can no longer retain information for longer than five minutes. You'll tattoo yourself with half-assed scribbled attempts to remind yourself of all the important things you need to do, none of which will be helpful since the ink will smear in the sweat you work up when walking from your car to your front door.

I wish I could list for you all of the things I've forgotten just in this past week to demonstrate its impact. But that's just the problem. I've already forgotten what I've forgotten.

And once you've forgotten something for the fifth time, you'll experience an appertaining rage unparalled by any prior experience in your life. Your veins will burn and your eyes will slit and your lip will curl. If you could punch your brain for being such a slacker asshole, you totally would. But you can't, so you'll just growl, loudly. In public. In the middle of the grocery store aisle. And you won't care who sees. Or hears. Or listens. Or backs away slowly, hands in the air.

My Good Pregnant Women, we must call this what it really is: a brain disease. Pregmensia. Bumpheimer's. The life source growing inside you is sucking away your mental powers, and there's nothing you can do about it. There is no cure. Well, I guess there is, actually. If you call birthing a cure. You just have to hope there was no permanent damage done to that cerebral membrane.

Therefore, I announce this to be one area where people really DO need to cut us some slack! I'm developing the next person to enter this world who matters, so don't ask me to remember to bring you in the recipe for my baked macaroni and cheese. Don't tell me a five-digit number to memorize as my new password. And if you even think about handing me papers I need to hold onto for two months, just turn around and walk the other way, then walk back my way in two months when I'll pretend to care a little more.

In the meantime, get yourself a large and very sticky pad of Post-Its and...

Shit. I had something profound for you to write on there, but I forget. F--- it. Milk the stomach and just go nap every chance you get. No one will dare say anything to you.

And thank God for that, since you won't listen or remember what they had to say anyway.