While all scientific evidence may point to the contrary, I am quite convinced that at 34 weeks, monsieur bebe, has gotten bored and figured out a way to sneak out the back door of the amniotic sac and is scouting out my internal organs as we speak. I often feel like my insides are being examined by some kind of antiques dealer who is picking up my organs, turning them over, sometimes flicking them or squeezing them to check for quality and resilience.
“Excuse me, would you put that down?!!!”
“What?!” Nayef says startled, dropping his hairbrush. “It’s mine.”
“Not you,” I say angrily staring at my belly. “It’s him. He’s massaging my liver again.”
“Leave him alone. Let him do what he wants. He’s just a baby.”
Yeah, that’s what you all think. This one’s going to come out with a tool belt around his waist and a miners helmet, with that light thingy, pointed at the doctor and then he’s going to give her a full detailed report about the state of my insides. He hasn’t sat still since week 22. Who does he take after? I know I appreciate quiet time and rarely move unnecessarily.
According to my weekly email updates, he’s a little over 4 pounds or the size and weight of a pineapple…. Mmmm pineapple, what I would do for a big juicy slice… It seems that every time someone mentions the name of a food, I embark on a music filled fantasy of how I am going to consume that food, and then I work myself up into such a frenzy that if I don’t have that particular edible delight immediately I feel the world will end and I will die a sad and painful death. I am not exaggerating.
Two nights ago, my husband mumbled that he felt like eating an apple while we were getting into bed, and that one sentence set me off into a mad search in the fridge looking for an apple. (not for him, but for me.) My mouth was watering, knowing that if I found one, it would probably be shriveled up and really, really old because I don’t remember buying any in the recent past. My quest left me empty handed and teary eyed. I wanted that apple so bad…I fantasized about biting into it, or blending it with ice and mint, or chopping it up with other fruit and pouring orange juice all over it. That apple was my ultimate fantasy that night, and it went unsatisfied. Do not ask me how I made it through the night. Before I left the kitchen defeated, I found applesauce in the freezer, from the early morning sickness days, but by the time that defrosted I had passed out and when I woke up the next morning it did not live up to its fresh predecessor; the crunchy intact apple.
Last night however, at 11:34pm, before the closing of Midway, we ordered 4 shiny red apples, a bunch of bananas, apple juice and orange juice. By 12 midnight, I had made two smoothies using chopped apple, a banana, ice cubes, mint, apple juice and a dash of orange juice. It was scrumptious. I had to wake my husband up to drink it. He fell asleep on the couch waiting for me to come back. With one eye open, he downed the glass, told me it was amazing and then collapsed into bed.
I was so refreshed by my invention, that I was more alert than I’d ever been at any AM timing in my life. So awake was I, that at 3am, I decided the poor excuse for a “nursery” had to be neatened up. There is a box in that room, which has been there ever since we moved into the house, after our wedding. I’m talking summer 2006. In that box are miscellaneous crappy items, that I’ve lived for two years without, and yet still feel the need to dust them and keep them. In the dead of night, you could see the profile of a very big bump moving around in that room, lifting a box and carrying it all the way back to the bedroom for a long night of sifting and reminiscing. I wish there was anything of value in there. I found 12 MAC lipsticks (I don’t know why I buy them, I wore lipstick like 3 times in my life and it never worked out), 7 different eye shadow boxes, 10 lip liners, 6 eyeliners, a beaded ring that I never wore, and dental floss. I lovingly dusted everything and arranged it on my dressing table, as if they were not expired, poisonous, or never to be used anyway. I’ll throw them away some other time.
At 4am, I felt inadequate as a mother, so I started to read voraciously, with an effort to actually finish the book, What to expect the first year. This was one of the many books I had ordered since entering the third trimester and was suddenly struck by the realization that pregnancy usually ends with the arrival of a BABY!!! Being too stricken with panic to actually finish any one given book, I have a series of well-meaning book marks stuck in each one, signaling my efforts to prove that Amazon, wasn’t getting my money for nothing. What I’ve learned so far, is how not to flash people in the mall while breast feeding, and how it may or may not be that colic is caused by eating too much cauliflower.
BUT NONE OF THESE BOOKS ARE REALLY TELLING ME WHAT TO DO! I want my mommy. I’m thinking about the baby’s belly button and how to clean it. How the hell do you change a diaper? What do you dress them in for what activity, there are so many names for their clothes!!! Onesies, wraps, vests, cardigans, t-shirts, pajamas! Aren’t they all the same???
I tried to fill the baby bath tub the other day to practice and after a lot of pulling and tugging the hose thingy just wouldn’t reach the tap. Then someone told me that you only use the hose for draining the tub. If you want to fill it, you get the water to the right temperature and then do it the old fashioned way with a bucket, from the sink.
Oh.
I must calm down. I give myself the dramatic soap opera slap across the face. I stop hyperventilating. I think I’ll go to sleep now. I had barely two hours of sleep. What with the insane nesting of the third trimester and the annoying morning sickness symptoms of the first, I could barely rest last night. And since the inspector seems to be at rest, no longer fiddling around in there, it’s a good opportunity to catch some zzzzz’s.
