Penelope and I had known each other since kindergarten, but our friendship had not weathered adolescence well. We’d been best friends through middle school and the start of high school, but then things got rocky. I was unhappy at home and, seeking comfort and belonging, I started hanging out with boys my friends didn’t like and letting my hormones do too much of my thinking. Penelope did not approve. She’s always been smarter and more mature than me, but back then, she was just another judgmental killjoy trying to tell me what to do. We fought more and more often. We said unforgivable things, and then we stopped being friends.

It had been about four or five years since we’d hung out or even spoken to each other when Penelope e-mailed me in the Spring of 1996. She was about to graduate from college and invited me to her senior art show. I was carrying about a bazillion credits that semester and barely had time to shower, much less socialize, so I didn’t go, but I was glad to hear from her. That summer when we both got home from school, we had lunch together, then went for a walk along the Burlington waterfront. I was relieved to find our high school resentments had evaporated, and we were able to talk and joke as easily as we had before we’d parted ways. She had only a few weeks at home before she was due to go to Houston, TX for Teach for America’s teacher training program, and from there to a two-year commitment teaching Special Education in South Louisiana.

When she left, we exchanged letters. I sent her care packages with baked goods and goofy knickknacks I picked up at various shops in Burlington and Northampton. She sent me letters filled with black-ink sketches, snippets of poetry, funny anecdotes about her students, and lyrical descriptions of places she visited and things that she did. Very rarely, we’d be home in Vermont at the same time, and we’d get together for a few hours, but these letters and brief visits soon proved insufficient to nourish the friendship that was rapidly growing more intense than it had ever been in childhood. We started emailing and talking on the phone daily.

We joked about all we had in common. My senior year (her second year in Louisiana), we were both single, but both casually seeing guys who paid far too little attention to us except for the occasional booty call, and even these guys were freakishly similar: their names began with the same letter, they were both artists, they seemed to share many of the same annoying (to us) peccadilloes. (They were not actually the same person: we did not have that much in common!) As Penelope and I bitched together, hour after hour, about these inadequate non-boyfriends, I began to consider whether we wouldn’t be better off just kicking the guys to the curb and taking up with one another, but I didn’t say anything. Penelope had never expressed any interest in women. (As for me, I was at Smith. ‘Nuf said.)

Penelope invited me down to Louisiana to visit her on my spring break. I went, and we had a blast in New Orleans and stayed up late every night talking and snuggling, but though we were closer than ever, we didn’t cross that line. We didn’t even talk about crossing that line.

Back to Easter 1998: When I got back from the movie theater, I called Penelope to share my excitement at recognizing Oak Alley, but she didn’t answer. All weekend, she didn’t answer, and then Sunday night, she called… from Vermont. She’d gone home to visit her dad for Easter, and didn’t have to go back South until Tuesday, and could she drive down and visit me tomorrow? Of course, I agreed, and then I didn’t sleep all night. It felt like our relationship was coming to a tipping point: I thought we were very, very close to becoming lovers, and I’d gladly nudge us over that edge, if only I could be sure she’d be interested. I didn’t want to freak her out and wreck our friendship again. It was better to have her in my life as a friend than not at all.

Monday morning, someone knocked on the doorjamb of the glorified supply closet in the bowels of the art building where I spent nearly twenty hours a week at my work study job, selling art supplies to a parade of eye-popping misfits. (Many Smithies enjoy an eccentric personal aesthetic, but the art majors are a cut above.) I looked up and there was Penelope, having gotten directions from someone in my house. We hugged and laughed about the fact that our trend toward eerie similarity remained unbroken: without discussion, we were dressed exactly alike, in red t-shirts, dark-wash jeans, and black shoes.

She had brought my Easter basket from home, stopping by my parents’ house and demanding it like a chocolate terrorist, waiting impatiently in the foyer until my mother turned it over, while our dog barked madly. (I hadn’t asked her to do that, but I must have mentioned that my mother had said she’d have a basket waiting for me when next I came home.)

We went to dinner with Penelope’s mom that night, driving up to Brattleboro to meet her. We came back to school and watched a movie until someone kicked us out of the living room because they’d reserved the TV. We went back to my room, and the whole time I was a crazy tangle of nerves and anticipation, wondering if I should say anything, wondering if the change in our relationship felt as imminent, as inevitable to her as it did to me, or if my years at Smith had twisted my perspective on feminine intimacy so that I could no longer appreciate female friendship without sex.

In the end, I don’t remember either of us making the first move. It just happened, organically, inevitably, as it was meant to. Fifteen years ago this very morning, we got out of bed feeling as if the magnetic poles of the earth had shifted and everything was suddenly different, suddenly put to right, and we didn’t have to worry. She flew back to Louisiana that afternoon. She had two more months to fulfill her teaching commitment, and I had one more month until I graduated. Neither of us knew what would happen next, but we knew we’d be together — we knew we had to be together.

Happy anniversary, my dearest love. Here’s to the next fifteen years, and the next after that, and the next after that….

-C.

Thankfully, the pregnancy induced hypertension (PIH) for which I was being so closely monitored for the last month of my pregnancy never developed, though I continued to have  proteinuria until the end. I submitted to weekly blood tests, urine tests, ultrasounds, doctor’s visits, and twice weekly non stress tests at the childbirth center until my water broke, unexpectedly, the morning of March 10, when I was exactly 38 weeks pregnant. I was giving Hank a bath, squatting beside the tub, and when I got up to get his towel I noticed I’d left a small, pink puddle on the bathroom floor. (My mother also went into labor with my little sister while giving 4-year-old me a bath, so maybe there’s something to squatting by the tub as a labor trigger, at least in our family. My sister and sister-in-law have taken note.)

I called Dr. Dalton while Penelope helped Hank out of the tub, got him ready for the day, and told Grammy (who lives with us and who would watch Hank while we were in the hospital) what was happening. Dr. Dalton was already at the birth center with another patient, so she had us meet her there. They quickly confirmed that my water had indeed broken, but I wasn’t yet having contractions. Dr. Dalton didn’t want to send me home because she was still concerned about PIH, so we spent much of the day walking around the hospital and its grounds (it was a lovely, sunny, unseasonably warm day), trying to get things started. Penelope also had a IEP (Individualized Education Plan) to write for work, so she did that on her laptop while I did yoga in our birthing suite.

Unfortunately, I never had more than a few painless contractions all day, and once water breaks, there is increased risk of infection if labor doesn’t start reasonably quickly, so at 6:00 PM, we started to induce labor with pitocin. The first problem with pitocin is that it is delivered by IV and requires constant fetal monitoring, so even though they let me wear the wireless monitors, I couldn’t walk beyond the very small birthing ward, and I had to tote the IV around with me. The second problem with pitocin is that it creates very strong, very fast contractions in a short amount of time, before one’s body has a chance to acclimate. (At least for me: my sister also had a pitocin induced labor, and she says she contracted every two minutes for three hours before she felt any pain. I, on the other hand, was getting pretty uncomfortable by 9:00 PM, when my contractions were still more than three minutes apart and I had not dilated more than a fingertip.)

Around 10:00, I was miserable enough to request pain meds (a decision we’d left for “Game Day”), and we started with the IV narcotic Stadol. This made me dizzy, disoriented, and pretty loopy, but only provided pain relief for about an hour. My contractions increased in frequency, strength, and duration, and I began to shake and vomit, which made me hopeful I was progressing… but an exam at about 1:00 AM revealed I was still only dilated to 2 cm. That was a crushing blow to my morale and motivation, as I was already in serious, unremitting pain from back labor (with almost no break between contractions). I got another dose of Stadol, but this time the pain relieving effects wore off within about fifteen minutes.

At 2:30 AM, when I was begging for Penelope to make it stop and let me go home, I asked for an epidural. I wasn’t philosophically opposed to an epidural, but I was afraid it was too early to get one and that it would slow the already interminable labor process, but the nurses suggested it might give me relief enough to rest and let my body do the work while I got some sleep. That sounded good to me. They had to call in the anesthesiologist, who didn’t arrive for another hour (probably the longest hour of my life to date), but a little after 3:30 I got the epidural. Penelope got light headed (having not eaten in about eight hours) while trying to hold me up while the epidural was inserted, so she had to sit and I held on to the nurse instead. I remember apologizing, embarrassed because I wrapped my legs around her hips during a contraction, a very intimate thing to do to a total stranger!

The epidural worked quickly, and I did get to doze, fitfully, after that — but only for about an hour. Around 4:30 (I think, I was kind of out of it), the nurse came in and put an oxygen mask on me. She told me the baby was having late decelerations with each contraction, a sign of fetal distress, and they were putting me on oxygen to see if it would help. I think she also urged me to turn onto my left side, but I can’t remember. (Penelope slept through this, so she doesn’t remember, either.)

I continued in a confused, half-asleep, half-aware haze for another hour until Dr. Dalton came in and did another pelvic exam. I had dilated to 4 cm, which was finally some progress, but not enough: the baby was still having late decelerations, and I was not progressing fast enough to risk continuing with labor. Dr. Dalton recommended a caesarian section. (I think she’d already called in the surgical team, so I don’t know what would have happened if I’d disagreed — but I didn’t. I was ready to be done, one way or another.)

It took another forty-five minutes for the surgical team to arrive and set up, but that time moved quickly, filled with consent forms and other preparations. I remember the nurse handing me a consent form and showing me where to sign. I took the clipboard from her and said, “I’m a lawyer, I have to read it,” which made everyone laugh (except me). Dr. Dalton said, “As a lawyer, you probably know that they always tell us consent forms are unenforceable anyway,” and I retorted, “Well, yeah: how many drugs have you given me tonight? Do I look like I’m in my right frame of mind?” which made everyone laugh again (again, except me).

In the OR, they gave me a spinal and draped me for surgery. I cannot describe, and frankly don’t care to think much about, the actual c-section itself. Even with the spinal and a local anesthetic “gap” medication, I felt a lot more of the surgery than I expected to. The anesthesiologist kept asking if it hurt or was just uncomfortable, and I couldn’t answer her: of course it hurt, but it was also intensely uncomfortable. Penelope was sitting next to me, trying to talk me through it, but I can’t recall a thing she said.

The anesthesiologist told Penelope when they were lifting the baby out, and she looked over the drape (something I was afraid to do, being a blood fainter, when Hank was born). She says it wasn’t gory: it just looked like they lifted a baby out of a funny red hole in the drape. (“Red hole” = gory, to my lights.) I remember everyone talking about what a big baby he was, and then I was pretty distracted by pain/discomfort as they worked to remove the placenta.

Penelope went with the baby to watch as they cleaned him up and did his APGAR tests. (He scored a 7 first, and then a 9, which is about as well as c-section babies ever do.) She says the nurses were taking bets as to how big he was (8 pounds, 7 ounces). I could hear him yelling and yelling: he was soooo loud.

Penelope carried him over to me as they were still putting me back together. I didn’t know what to say, but knew I had to say something, so I started (in my narcotic haze) reciting “The Owl and the Pussycat.”

The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea in a beautiful pea green boat. They took some   honey, and plenty of money, wrapped up in a five pound note…

They gave me another dose of something because I was in a lot of pain, and Penelope says I went into a narcotic nod for about 5-10 minutes. I don’t remember that. I remember them driving my gurney back to a recovery room, being greeted by the dayshift nurses (shifts changed during my surgery), and then promptly throwing up on myself and one of the nurses. After that, though, I felt much better.

They brought Ollie to me and laid him on my chest. Paula (one of the day nurses, who we remembered from our hospital stay when Penelope had Hank, and who I’d also become re-acquainted with during the many non stress tests over the last few weeks) encouraged me to try breastfeeding. Ollie latched on immediately and nursed for a long time, probably 45 minutes, despite the fact that I couldn’t yet sit up or really even hold him, being still quite numb from my chest to my feet.

I hated that total sense of helplessness and was glad when the spinal started to wear off. I didn’t need much for pain management: just Motrin. I got up on my feet about eight hours after surgery and walked back and forth across the small room. It was still very uncomfortable sitting up and standing, but I was glad to be able to move.

Hank and both of his grandmothers came to visit that evening. Hank is an excellent, proud, gentle big brother. “The baby person is finally out of Mumma’s belly!” he says.

-C.

We’ve known from the beginning, when I got pregnant using the same donor we used when Penelope carried Hank, that preeclampsia might be an issue. Preeclampsia, aka pregnancy-induced hypertension, or PIH, is a prenatal disorder usually marked by high blood pressure, proteinuria (protein in the urine), elevated uric acid, edema (water retention) especially in the hands and face, abdominal pain especially on the right side, headaches, and blurred vision. If left untreated, it can worsen and develop into eclampsia, the seizure disorder that (spoiler alert) killed Lady Sybil in a recent episode of Downton Abbey.*

Our doctor said there is some chance that the risk of developing preeclampsia might have some genetic link to the donor sperm. She wasn’t at all surprised when we learned that some of the Sister-Wives had also developed preeclampsia during their pregnancies, and so she’s been watching for it all along. (Penelope and I also suspect she’s a little bit hypervigilant about it because she feels bad about missing Penelope’s diagnosis until her pre-e was so severe, but in Dr. Dalton’s defense, Penelope’s condition had a very unusual presentation in its early stages: she was vomiting and had severe heartburn, but she didn’t have high BP, much swelling, proteinuria or headaches until just a few days before she delivered Hank, at which point she was already dangerously sick.)

At almost every prenatal appointment so far, Dr. Dalton has frowned worriedly as she noted the presence of protein in my urine. Last week (32 weeks, 5 days gestation), I had a slightly-higher-than-usual (but still normal) blood pressure, but I had not had any of the other symptoms (except the proteinuria): no unusual swelling or chest pain (some swelling and heartburn are both typical in late pregnancy), no blurred vision, and my headaches have actually improved with pregnancy. Doc was worried enough to order a 24-hour urine collection (yup, that’s just what it sounds like: I peed in a jug for a whole day), and when the results came in, they only worried her more. More than 300mg protein in a 24-hour urine test is considered high; my results last weekend exceeded 750mg.

But, yeah, enough about my pee. Anyway, Doc’s office called and asked to see me ASAP, and I went back yesterday afternoon. I knew from Penelope’s go-round with it that preeclampsia can be ‘managed’ with medication, diet, and bed rest, but it only has one cure: almost always, the condition resolves itself once the baby is delivered. Penelope was diagnosed at 36 weeks, almost full term, so they skipped the treatment and went right for the cure: induction of labor. I was, yesterday, only 33 weeks, 4 days, so I knew if they diagnosed me with pre-e, the rest of my pregnancy would take a very different course than that which I’d planned — I’d probably be on bed rest until delivery.

I spent the last few days at work trying to get my work load in order so that my colleagues could take over if I had to leave suddenly. It’s funny: looking back over the last few days, I had a rational understanding that I might be put on bed rest, but I also had a contradictory confidence that this wouldn’t happen to me. I feel much better than Penelope did at the end of her pregnancy. My BP is fine. I don’t have any symptoms except for proteinuria, but I’ve had that since the first trimester, and so maybe that’s just some quirky personal trait.

Yesterday, Dr. Dalton ordered more labs. My uric acid is elevated, too, so that’s another symptom of pre-e. Doc says that’s enough for her to believe that if I don’t have full-blown pre-e yet, I’m “headed down that path” and she’s treating me as if I have it. That means an evaluation with the high risk OB-GYN specialist at DHMC, 3x weekly doctor’s appointments to monitor BP, weight, and urine, 2x weekly non stress tests, and ultrasounds to monitor fetal growth every 1-2 weeks. That’s a lot of obligations to heap on a gal’s plate, and then in the next breath tell her she’s not allowed to drive. My poor mother-in-law is now not just Hank’s daycare provider, but has also just become my personal chauffeur (to my shame).

-And yes, when I’m not at the doctor’s office, I’m on bed rest. I don’t know how I’ll manage, especially with Hank running around, urging me to play with him and take him on adventures.  We’ve tried to explain it to him, and he’s a bright kid, but he’s two. Hank’s not the biggest problem, though: the biggest problem is that I am as unserene as ever, and stillness is not a thing I do with any grace.

-C.

*As my mother so helpfully pointed out when I told her my diagnosis. Gee, thanks, Mum.

Hank, trying to examine the Baby Person (with a flashlight).

He reached over and grabbed my nose.

“What are you doing?” I asked, gently removing his grasp and making a mental note to trim his sharp little nails.

“Mumma has nostrils.”

“That’s true,” I agreed.

“Ma has nostrils. Hank has nostrils.”

“Yes, love. People have nostrils.”

“You are a children,” he said (struggling, as ever, with pronouns).

“You are a child, yes.”

“Children have nostrils.”

“Right,” I told him. “Children are people; people have nostrils.”

“Monkeys have nostrils, too,” he noted, holding up his lovey, Ugly Monkey, to show me its embroidered nostril holes.

“So they do,” I agreed.

“You don’t eat monkeys. Monkeys are not food.”

-C.

Hank started calling the new baby “the baby person” before we knew Baby Person was of the male persuasion, and it stuck. Actually, now Hank often speaks of the Baby Person by what will probably be his name. At first this was one of several names we were testing out, but it was Hank’s clear favorite, so it will probably stick, too. (Word to the wise: if you hope to keep your baby’s name a secret until birth, you need to keep it a secret from any toddlers you know, too, even the big siblings.)

At any rate, we had an ultrasound this morning to check Baby Person’s size relative to my due date. (I’ll be 33 weeks tomorrow.) All looks good. BP is head down already (please stay that way, kiddo), and is measuring right where he should be. This late in pregnancy it’s hard to get clear profile shots because baby is all curled up in increasingly cramped quarters, but we were able to see him yawn. He’s still a thumb sucker, as he was at his 20 week anatomy scan. (Hank was never a thumb sucker.) He had fluid in his kidneys and stomach, which means he already knows how to swallow, and we could see him practicing breathing movements.

This was likely our last peek at him before he joins us in a month or so, and it is such a relief to know that everything seems right on track.

-C.

Our new (old, as in circa 1850) house has three bedrooms upstairs: ours, another one connected to ours by an adjoining door, and one across the hall. The first two are plain white with some ugly faux wood paneling, in need of some paint, but plain and inoffensive. The room across the hall has ancient textured blue and white wallpaper, painted petal pink, which is cracking and peeling and water stained due to an old roof leak. The roof has been repaired, the room, not so much.

Knowing that Baby’s arrival will soon mean that Hank will move from his current room to the one across the hall, we had plans to renovate. My dad is coming for a few days next month to put up new drywall, after which Penelope and Grammy will paint (Hank chose red–we’ll see). In the meantime, though, the room is pink, and in rough shape–as you can tell from the photo.

Tonight, unexpectedly, Hank asked to sleep in “the big bed” (ours) instead of his tent. I told him, “Did you know we have a big boy bed of your very own in the pink room, when you’re ready?”

“You need to see it,” he said (he struggles with pronouns), so we went across the hall and he lay down on the twin bed that Penelope’s Grandpa made for her when she was a kid.

I thought he’d take a look and then opt to stay in his own, familiar tent, but he surprised me by pulling at the covers. “You need to get comfy cozy in the big boy bed,” he announced.

“Really?” I asked, looking askance at the peeling walls and barren decor. This was not going according to plan.

“Yes,” he said firmly.

Penelope and I shrugged. We weren’t ready for this, but we made do. We don’t have a safety rail yet, but we pushed the bed up against the wall and barricaded the other side with furniture so he won’t roll out. I gathered up the nighttime loveys from the tent. We read a story, gave him goodnight kisses, and shut off the light… all the while thinking he’d change his mind. He didn’t. He fell asleep singing himself a happy little song about being comfy cozy in the big boy bed in the pink room.

We spend so much time waiting for childhood milestones, noting with nervous anticipation as our kids get closer to crawling, first steps, first words, first sentence. As parents, we wait and coax and urge and even push for progress, when our little one might not be quite ready. Sometimes, though, milestones just happen, without warning or time to prepare. Sometimes, a kid knows when to leap to the next level, and suddenly we parents are the ones scrambling to catch up.

-C.

This is a huge advance in women’s health care coverage, and I would have thought that doctor’s offices and hospitals and medical supply companies would be shouting it from the rooftops, but no. I’m now at the stage in my pregnancy when I go to the doctor at least every two weeks, and there is usually a whole bevy of other pregnant ladies shifting uncomfortably on too-hard chairs in the waiting room, and you’d think there would be signs or fliers or neon flashing lights advertising “Hey, mamas! Free breast pumps!” but you’d be wrong. Even my doctor hasn’t mentioned it.

I happened to hear about it during my morning commute on Monday, when NPR broadcast this story on how the breast pump industry is booming in light of the new law. If I hadn’t happened to be running a few minutes late, I would have missed the story, and I would still be planning to shell out $300 for a pump (if no one bought if off my baby registry for us first, that is).

It sounded almost too good to be true (and apparently there are still quite a few kinks to be worked out, as this HuffPost article describes), so I called up my insurer, Cigna, to get the scoop. And lo, it is true! I had to suffer through the confusing voice-activated menu where the choices they give you (if ____, press 1; if ____, press 2) never actually encompass the issue you’re calling about, but eventually I got through to a real person, who confirmed that yes, breast pumps and lactation consultant services are fully covered with no out of pocket deductible. Cigna has one home-healthcare-supply company that they deal with, and I was given that number. After making my way through yet another voice activated menu maze, I spoke to a very helpful woman with the unlikely moniker “Sparkle” (unlikely in that I was calling a healthcare company, not a 900 number), who started a claim for me. In about a month (still well before Peanut is due), I expect to receive a free Medela pump delivered right to my door at no expense. I didn’t even need a prescription.

Bottom line: if you have insurance, and you’re breastfeeding or planning to breastfeed, call your insurance company now and find out how to get in on the deal.

-C.

Not to minimize her experience, because she was really, really sick and miserable for that last month or so of pregnancy, and it took her weeks afterward before she felt human again, but the fact that Penelope didn’t labor is sort of a sore spot with us. You see, I’m pretty terrified of labor. Everyone’s afraid of labor to some degree, but I think my fear goes a little beyond the norm and skirts the line between healthy and debilitating. Back when we decided to have a family, part of the plan was that Penelope would have the first baby, in part so that when my own turn for labor came, I’d have seen it before, know what to expect, and therefore (hopefully) be more prepared and at peace with the process.

That didn’t happen, so I’m trying to prepare and educate myself through research. We’ve now taken the childbirth prep course twice. I’ve done a ton of reading. I’ve tried to watch videos, but mostly I “watch” with my hands over my eyes, squinting through a crack between my fingers, cringing and queasy (and I have to say, the videos don’t help me feel any better about the process). I’ve been speaking to friends and family who have been through it. I’ve been doing prenatal yoga, practicing positions that will hopefully be helpful in labor. I’ve been building a “toolbox” of breathing and visualization and meditation techniques intended to help me focus and deal with pain. I guess at this point, I’m about as “prepared” as possible.

Sometimes, I feel optimistic: I think I will do this, my body is made to do this, and like women have done all over the world since the dawn of humankind, I will come through labor just fine. (Only, unlike other women birthing throughout history, I can give birth in a clean, homey birthing suite with access to indoor plumbing and medical intervention if necessary, and not in a hut under a sweltering desert sun or in the back of a covered wagon traversing the Oregon Trail in January.) At other times, I remain terrified that I am the world’s biggest wimp, and evolution be damned, I cannot do this.

Here’s the thing: I can read all I want, and talk to every mother I know about labor, but the bottom line is that every labor is different and every woman handles labor differently, and so there’s really no way for me to know what to expect or how things will turn out. So I have to be prepared for everything.

Knowing that, we have what must be the world’s most flexible birth plan. Other couples write reams about what music they want playing, what comfort items they want in the room, what the lighting should be like, what labor positions or aids they intend to use, what photographs they want to take, etc. Not us. Our birth plan consists of just three goals for the big day:

1. Healthy baby

2. Healthy mama

3. Medical staff to treat Penelope/our relationship/our family with respect

If we come through labor and delivery with those three goals accomplished, we will be sublimely satisfied, no matter how we get there.

That said, I remain pretty anxious about pain and pain management. I’ve been lucky enough so far in my life not to have experienced much by way of pain. I suffer from debilitating migraines, but labor pain is not at all the same thing. I’ve never broken a bone or even suffered a major muscle injury. (Knocking on wood.) I had a bad grease burn on New Year’s Day that nearly made me pass out, and I hate getting slivers more than just about anything, both of which make me afraid that my pain tolerance must be pretty low, but again, I’m told labor is a totally different kind of pain.

My dad had this Peanuts comic on his fridge for a long time, because he and I are both total wimps when it comes to having slivers removed.

Knowing that I’m afraid of pain, friends have told me there’s no shame in an epidural. Surely not, but I don’t want to be so afraid of pain that I request an epidural before I really need one, because epidurals can lengthen labor, make it harder to push, and make childbirth seem a detached and out-of-body experience. I don’t have much experience with prolonged pain, but I do have experience with myself on pain meds: I had my wisdom teeth out a few years ago and I was loopy for days. I’m not a glutton for punishment by any stretch, and I’m not philosophically opposed to medical intervention (including pain meds), but since childbirth is something I expect to do only this once, I’d like to fully experience it to the extent that I can.

Ideally, pain management will be a game day decision, and I will be able to make a moment-to-moment assessment of where I am and how I’m doing with the pain, and be able to request medications as necessary. You hear and read about those poor women who wait too long to request the epidural and then can’t have it, though, and sometimes their birth experiences are more frightening, painful, and exhausting than necessary. I keep going back and forth on the natural vs. medicated debate in my mind (such that sometimes I hope circumstances evolve in such a way as to take the decision out of my hands), and not coming up with a satisfying, reassuring plan.

I suspect that I have long since given in to my tendency to over-think things. I need to go back to our birth plan (healthy baby, healthy mama, respectful treatment), and remind myself that the goal is simple, and that the details are out of my hands: baby will come when he comes, and how he comes, and he is in charge (and He is in charge), but I am not in charge.  

Breathe.

-C.

I got pregnant 100% on purpose, and not without considerable effort and expense. I signed up for this. I’m 36 years old; my wife has survived pregnancy, so has my sister, so have most of my female relatives and girlfriends. I knew — or thought I knew — what I was getting in to. In the first trimester: fatigue, nausea, anxiety; check, check, check. In the second trimester: cravings, round ligament pain, headaches; check, check, check. In the third trimester: heartburn, carpal tunnel, constipation, swelling, shortness of breath, insomnia, back aches; yeah, yeah, yeah… Quite a laundry list of aches and pains, but all relatively minor, and so worth it when one thinks of the end result: a baby, a perfect, beautiful new life, full of love and hope and miracle and potential.

Here’s what I was not prepared for: Pregnancy Brain. I’d heard of the phenomenon, of course. I had a law school friend who told a hilarious story of losing her car during her fifth month of pregnancy and spending hours walking the lots at the local mega-mall trying to find it. It was a great story, but she was in law school, keeping up with our classes just fine, so I thought, “how flaky can she really be?” I remember Penelope making lists for everything while she was pregnant with Hank, and leaving herself reminders on sticky notes all over the house: notes on the bathroom mirror when she had an early morning meeting, notes on the fridge about groceries we’d run out of, notes by the front door to remind her to bring such-and-such book to work so she could lend it to a colleague. She warned me that this was due to the pregnancy, because her mind was a sieve and she couldn’t remember anything (and worse, she now tells me that the forgetfulness doesn’t fully go away after baby’s birth), but to me, it just looked like she was becoming more organized, which, frankly, seemed like a good thing and something she could have stood to do even before she got pregnant. 

Even with these real life examples and all that I had read on the subject, I didn’t take Pregnancy Brain seriously. In all of the pregnancy guides, the official explanation for pregnancy-induced forgetfulness boils down to “hormones,” so I was dismissive, even derisive, just as I am when people write off a woman’s emotions or behavior as being caused or exaggerated by her menstrual status, as in, “Ah, she’s just bitchy because she’s on the rag.” Sometimes men make these comments (in which case they’re easily dismissed because what the hell does he know), but often women, too, will use their period as an excuse for bad behavior: “Sorry I’m acting as if I was raised by badgers; I’m PMS-ing.” I’ve never been sympathetic, perhaps because though my periods are sometimes brutal, they never made me behave like a troll, and when I am a troll, I like to own it. This is all me, baby:  no hormones required.

Anyway, somehow I thought Pregnancy Brain was the same deal, so I was surprised and a little bit offended when, right around the fourth month of pregnancy, my generally organized, compartmentalized, unapologetically Type-A mind started flaking out on me. I, too, started forgetting where I left my car. I’ve been compulsively punctual my whole life, and suddenly I found myself late for meetings or missing appointments entirely because they’d fallen off my radar. I go to court without needed files, go to depositions without a pen to take notes, leave the house without my wallet or my phone, forget to do things I said I’d do. I leave myself notes and reminders (mostly in my phone, which is a big help on days when I forget my phone), but even so, things fall through the cracks. I don’t make myself a note if the thing I need to remember is going to happen in the next few minutes — like if I leave my desk to go to the file room for a specific file, or if I hang up the phone intending to make another call to someone else, or if I walk to the kitchen intending to get a snack for Hank — but often I’ll wind up at my destination (the file room, holding the phone, standing in front of the fridge) and draw a total blank as to what I’m doing there. It’s embarrassing and humbling and infuriating, and I hope to God Penelope is wrong when she threatens that I may not go back to normal when the baby comes.

-C.