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Throughout my whole life, I've always been a very bad girl.
Now, this isn't the bad girl that stars in the fantasies of S&M connoisseurs; this is the fact that I am female, and have never felt as if I've gotten the hang of it. I've always maintained that I'd rather be comfortable than pretty. I tried to be pretty briefly in high school, so I could attract boys, and all it got me was getting up earlier in the morning to do makeup and hair. Once I pranced around in high heels, thinking I was sexy, and went to visit a friend. Upon stepping onto his lawn after a rainstorm, my high heels sank directly into the soft lawn. He had to carry me into the house, and I was mortified. Soon after that episode, I went back to flat shoes and jeans and t-shirts. I did manage to catch me a man who actually liked me for who I was, and didn't mind me dressing in comfortable clothing. When we got engaged, I had to hire a Professional Girl (again -- not talking sexual here; some people call them Wedding Consultants) to take over the job of doing the details of the wedding. Never having gone through the dream weddings time and time again as a girl, I had problems realizing everything that needed to be done. And still I had to repeatedly tell this Professional Girl that things like dreamy photographs of me looking at my engagement ring, spotlight dances with Daddy, and anything pink were totally out of the question. She fought me briefly, but I reminded her that I was paying her. So I made it through the non-girly wedding and have been settled back into my happily married life of non-girly pursuits like kung fu, computer games, tabletop games, science fiction, and writing. Last fall, after three years of marriage, my husband and I sat down and did the Talk About Starting a Family thing. We agreed that it was time to bring a l'il rug rat into our life, and, skipping some details you don't need, I got pregnant. Now comes the hard part. Now the world expects me to be girly again, and I can't take it. Suddenly I'm pregnant. I'm going to be a mommy. I look around me, and I do not fit into the mommy club. I seriously don't belong here. Don't get me wrong. I am writing for a website called Grumble, so expect this to be an essay full of grumbling. However, I will put a disclaimer here that I am quite happy about having this baby. I am just not happy in the way that most women are happy. I read the pregnancy magazines, and am astonished. They run a little column called "How I Told Him" having cute stories about how women told their husbands they were expecting. Most of them involved showing or giving the husbands the positive pregnancy test. Now, we all know what a pregnancy test is. It's a stick that you pee on. Your pee soaks the stick, reacts to a chemical, and shows you whether you're pregnant or not. And these women give this urine soaked stick to their husbands! Since we had already discussed the possibility, my husband knew I was going to test, so he just waited patiently till I was done and told him the good news. I later asked him how he would have liked a present of the test, and he made a face and said as happy as he was that I was pregnant, he still didn't want a stick soaked with my pee. I am somewhat of a private person. Suddenly, when you become pregnant, your body and personal information is considered public property. "Was it planned?" is a cleverly disguised, "Don't you know what birth control is?" "How much weight have you gained?" People love this one -- it's such a stigma to ask women this question, it's like everyone gets to break loose when there's a baby involved. "Thought of any names?" That's a weird one. Naming a human being is a big deal, and yeah, you start thinking of proper names pretty much from the beginning. And if you tell people what you're thinking of, they feel free to give you their opinions on those names. Or worse, things get really surreal and people start calling your stomach by their favorite names. And don't get me started on the touching. I do not want to be touched without warning. The belly lies between the genitals and the breasts, and it feels a little too personal to have people just come up and touch me there. And they just don't get it when I say to respect my personal space. "But it's so cute!" they protest.1 Doesn't matter. It's still me you're touching, and I don't like it. But no, I'm supposed to be all earthy and motherly and comfortable and "oh yes, we're naming a girl Jennifer and a boy Robert, and please, come feel the baby kick!" If I show displeasure, then I'm obviously going to be a horrible mother. If I complain too much about how badly I feel, or how the hormones make me perpetually grumpy, then I shatter their view of peaceful impending motherhood. People ask me how I feel. I tell them. They look shocked. They don't want to hear how horrible my hips are hurting me, making walking and swimming and yoga (those wonderful exercises for pregnant women) nigh impossible, much less sleeping. They want to hear that I'm feeling great and pregnant and happy and awash with the miracle of life. I hurt almost all the time. I also maintain that science fiction fans should not become pregnant. If you've happily attended movies like "Alien" and "Eraserhead," seen TV series like "V", and read any sci-fi short stories form the radiation-obsessed writers of the 1940s, just go ahead and adopt. Save yourself the freak-out. When the baby begins to move, it's weird. My first thought when I felt the first wiggle was, "Holy shit, there really is something alive inside of me! How the hell am I going to get it out???" Yes, I've read all the books, I know how it works most of the time, and how it works in an emergency, and I still maintain that it's a fucked-up system. Carrying something living around inside of you... I tell people that I'm convinced that fetuses are parasites; they fit all the definitions. They feed on the host, usually to the detriment to the host (my pelvis aches so badly I find it difficult to walk most of the time, and I'm hungry all the time. I might as well just park myself in front of the fridge so I won't have to move to get food), and they leave in a painful, bloody mess. Kind of like Alien, or Stephen King's "Dreamcatcher."2 The only difference, and it is a big difference, I will be the first to say, is that we usually are very happy about the outcome of the birth. And again, the fact that I am not utterly thrilled about the miracle of life moving around inside of me makes me a bad person. One friend asked me how it feels to have the baby move. "It's weird," I said truthfully, and I suddenly felt guilty. I hadn't followed my Mommy Script, saying how miraculous it felt. It felt like someone was inside of me kicking me. That's really weird. It's not bad but I wouldn't classify it as good, except in that it indicates that the baby is alive, moving, and active, which are all good things. But it feels weird. When stuff moves around in there, there's a little voice in the back of my head saying, "Is it going to bust out? Is it kicking my organs and causing damage?" But that's not what I'm supposed to say. When I got married, I thought it was interesting that many in society felt that on the day before the wedding, if my then-fiancée and I had had sex, we were going to hell, but on the very next day, it was OK and happy. If people wait till they get married to have sex, does the marriage license really make an entire life of feeling guilty about sexual thoughts go away? Pregnancy is kind of the same. Women learn to fear the extra line on the pregnancy test from the first time they have sex. Then, suddenly, you find yourself hoping for it. We are taught that it's bad to be fat, and then we celebrate women getting pregnant. Medical peoples say that sudden weight gain and stomach bloating can indicate cancer. But it's OK if there's a baby in there. And yes, it's true that often you "pop out" all at once. One week, I was pudgy. The next week, I was clearly pregnant. Being almost-too-thin most of my life, this really freaked me out. Words like "swollen," "distended," and "all together too wrong" kept running round my head as I looked at the huge stranger in the mirror waddling around. All of a sudden, strangers feel the need to comment about my pregnancy. After denying a pandhandler change, he followed my husband and I for half a block, asking if it was hard carrying around that load in the summer. I assumed he was talking about my husband, because he was carrying a bag full of games and books back from a convention. It took a second to realize that he was talking to me - and suddenly the situation went down a really creepy road. He eventually lost interest when I ignored him. I realized something positive about all of this (except the being followed by panhandlers wanting to discuss my delicate condition), though. I am the kind of person who hates transitional times. If a huge decision is made (like, "let's have a baby" or "let's break up" or "let's move across the country") then I want to do it right then. None of this waiting: I've got stuff to do. Being pregnant is perhaps one of the largest transitional moments of your life, because your life will change a great deal after the long wait. If I'm ready to take the plunge, let's go, it's better than sitting through this uncomfortable swollen state, knowing that my free time is limited and I have to pack as much into the next few months as possible. I remembered that I was like this during wedding planning -- irritable and grumpy. I just wanted to be married already, and the damn wedding flowers didn't really matter. This thought actually comforts me, because after the wedding I was thrilled to be married to my faboo husband, and I hope that after my role as Grumpy Pregnant Lady ends, I'll be thrilled to be a mom to a faboo kid. Caterpillars go into cocoons; I surround myself with a protective web of grump. And we both emerge for the better. In the meantime, don't touch my belly, and don't call me cute. And for God's sake, don't ask me for money, follow me around, and comment on my condition. That's just wrong. |
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