I don't know when it happened, but every woman of childbearing age in the greater Seattle area is pregnant. It's unbelievable. Every time I go to the grocery store, take Westley to the park, or even just glance out my front window, it looks like a Lamaze class just got out!
Although up here, I guess it's more likely to be a "Birthing From Within" class.
Regardless, I keep noticing all of these lovely expectant mamas - many toting around children close to Westley's age - and I'm feeling sort of left out.
No, wait. It's not quite "left out." More like... I desperately want to be pregnant!
I am so fucking envious of these women, and I can't stop wishing it were me rocking basketball belly and the "glow."
My, oh-hey-the-IUD-is-out-might-get-pregnant-soon casual attitude has transformed into something bordering on sick, baby-carrying obsession. I'm not quite as bad as the woman I knew in college who would pat the sides of her lower abdomen and declare, "I'm pregnant with half-babies" (referring to her zillions of eggs). But I am plowing through all the pregnancy-and-childbirth books in the house at a surprising rate. I'm getting all hyper-Fertility-Awareness with myself. I'm probably one circle dance and a full moon away from smoking some "Mom To Be" tea.
"What is wrong with you?" I ask my pregnancy-fantasy self. "You hated being pregnant!"
It's true. I did hate being pregnant. Physical awfulness for five months, emotional awfulness for several more than that (not to mention my nightmarish plummet into postpartum depression), and, in the background, a life in a state of complete upheaval. Good times, my pregnancy.
Pregnancy Fantasy Me tries to convince Me-Me that I wouldn't hate it now. That the life upheaval part was the real issue last time. Now I wouldn't be dealing with a job that I hate, a miserable commute, or an unemployed husband. I wouldn't be about to move into a new house. I wouldn't have to take a crowded bus to midwife appointments with a heavy work bag and a giant belly.
And as for the body thing and the not feeling great, well, I certainly wouldn't be going out for enormous veggie burgers and French fries twice a week! (Pregnancy-Fantasy Me has a point, there.)
I'm ashamed to admit that the fantasy is pretty seductive, even when I try to brush some of the rainbow glitter off of it. I have to consider just how much better my life is now. Not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, very much improved. Pregnancy couldn't possibly be as miserable the second time around, could it? (And some of that misery has to be a figment of my imagination, doesn't it?)
For a moment, I quit fighting the fantasy and started playing around with Due Date Calculators. BabyCenter's due date calculator will let you put in a future date as the date of conception - very enticing for someone in a pregnancy daydream space. So I pretended that the expected start of my next period was my Last Menstrual Period in the obstetrical date sense.
For some reason, seeing my fake 2011 due date freaked me right out.
Then, while clothes shopping for Westley today (underpants are go!), I rounded a corner and found myself in the maternity section.
Oh, sweet Mother Mary, maternity clothes. Whether or not the memory of my overall pregnancy misery level is accurate, the outfits are exactly as ghastly as I remember.
Pregnancy Fantasy Me thinks this is a great excuse to learn to sew.
