Author: admin

Pregnancy Doesn’t Suck, Part 1

Wake at 3 a.m. to realize that 3 a.m. is a ridiculous time to be asleep. Draw a bath, shed your nightgown, and soak weightless in the tub. Read the latest New Yorker from cover to cover in absolute silence.

Plug the overflow drain with a washcloth, so the warm water covers your belly and laps against the nape of your neck. When your toes get wrinkly, dry yourself off and turn on a dim light in the living room. Have a cup of tea and a small slice of rosemary cake. Fall asleep on the couch.

Pica

There’s something so Karmicly satisfying about this story:

Oops! Unruly flier slaps undercover air marshal

In other news, my return of morning sickness turned out to be an extremely nasty but short-lived bug (food poisoning?). Never has recovering from a flu been a more blissful experience. Thank you all for your good wishes and commiserations. Edith Meyer even sent a delicious little rosemary cake! How lucky do you have to be to have people send you cake when you’re cranky? When does that ever happen? Also, her handwriting was so good that I almost ate the note too.

I’ve decided that I need to put together a little compendium of lovely things about being pregnant to balance my bitching. Forthcoming.

Who’s Complaining? Oh Wait, It’s Me.

So say you’re about eight months pregnant and things have reached the back-aching, no sleeping, shallow breathing stage.

Now, suppose you come down with a sinus infection that halves your already meager amount of sleep and energy. Then say that the copious nose blowing creates a large cut in one nostril. This cut becomes infected and swells into a nostril cyst. (A visible, dead sexy, nostril cyst.) Huh. Is that a cold sore coming on? It is.

You suffer through through three weeks of swollen feet, stopped-up nose, dry mouth, painful nostril swelling, burgeoning cold sore, and then one morning, you wake up feeling better. You’ve had almost a full night’s sleep, you can imagine a day when you’ll breathe through your nose again, the cut is healing, the cold sore has subsided, you can almost hear Julie Andrews singing through the window.

That night, your long-gone morning sickness returns in full force.

Kiddo, you’d better be pretty effing cute.

Both Sides of the Pillow Case are Cool

My friend Leslie Harpold died a few days ago.

When she heard about the baby, Leslie sent us a care package because she thought an email wouldn’t be enough of a celebration. It contained:

-Punk Rock Baby and Hip Hop Baby, lullaby versions of punk rock and hip hop classics
-Two bibs, one that reads, “Notorious B.I.B.” and another that says, “Mutha Sucka”
-A onsie that says “Mama ain’t rasin’ no fool.”
-And mittens to keep the baby from scratching. One says “LOVE,” the other “HATE.”

Those mittens, especially, made me feel like a mom for the first time. They got me thinking about tough little baby hands.

Years ago, I wrote a quote on our hallway chalkboard that said, “What you are thinking about is what you are becoming.” Leslie read it and cringed. “That’s hideous,” she said.

I wish you’d known Leslie. And if you did know her, wasn’t she something?