There is probably no way of predicting how a change will affect us, especially a multi-layered change like pregnancy. I’ve heard a woman tell how much she hated being pregnant and couldn’t understand how anyone could feel otherwise. I didn’t know what to think of it at the time, she didn’t elaborate much further except pointing out that it was too hot and too hard to move.
I generally like the heat. Sure, there are days when I need to cool off but our AC is only running during the hottest days of the summer. I have to think that she was referring to that third trimester when the exhaustapus from the first one returns… with friends. But I’m in the ‘honeymoon‘ phase: the second trimester! All the energy has returned and then some. I’ve been feeling happy, even-tempered, healthy (if constantly hungry). My mind is soaring and it’s, I’m sure, much clearer since the last drink sometime in February. So, yes, I love it.
I have found one book that speaks to the issues men face when raising a pregnant wife to term. That book is from SNL superstar Kevin Nealon. Yes, You’re Pregnant, But What About Me is the first book I’ve found (and our bookshelves are full of them) that speaks to the often neglected and misunderstood needs of men during the pregnancy period. The cover of the book showing a disheveled Nealon with a ‘Can you believe this?” look on his face caught my eye from the sidewalk and I had to enter the store and find out what this book was all about. Alisa’s first trimester was difficult for me. Books arrived daily - often in 2’s and 3’s - None of which spoke to anything that ‘I’ was experiencing during ‘MY’ pregnancy. I opened Nealon’s book to page 122, although I had already determined that I would buy the book from the picture on the cover. Kevin Nealon wouldn’t let me down - mano e mano.
“…It was at that point that my battles with hormones officially began, and sadly, the common man is no match. This chemical imbalance can play strange games where there are no rules or boundaries. During these times of confusing behavior, I quickly learned never to try to reason with a woman experiencing hormonal mood swings. Do NOT try to defend yourself; it does no good. Just surrender and go along on her hormonal trip with her. I know your instinct will be to try to explain reality, but, once again, you must just surrender. A pregnant woman will cry at any given moment for absolutely no reason, and you must remind yourself that it is most likely nothing you have said or done - it’s just the hormones…The most important thing for the husband / partner to do is to be one hundred percent supportive. It doesn’t matter what it is. If she wants to yell at the mailman about something, you had better be right behind her, saying, ‘Yeah. You heard her! Bring more catalogs and water the grass!” Read the rest of this entry »
It’s gosh darn hard to tell if that flutter in my belly was indigestion or the baby moved. I dare say I had both this evening. I ate out most of the (suspect) meals of the day, and even though Chris made an awesome dinner (baked tilapia, sauteed green beens, pirogies), was still tummy-achy while we were watching Mad Men on DVD. I was lying on my side when tiny little butterfly sensation occurred in my lower left abdomen followed by immediate and clearly painful sensation on the other side. I think I might start feeling pregnant right about now, especially judging by the look of me, if not by the look of Chris
On Saturdays, we go to Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket. It’s some 20+ minutes walking for us, so I sometimes count it towards my daily exercise. We are there to get our free-range milk and eggs and peek into the grass-fed meat coolers (‘next week’ – we usually say. My overwhelming hunger and distaste for tofu has me contemplating eating a cow, or at least a small part of one). Sometimes we go home with some apples, tomatoes and swiss chard (that just ends up wilting in our vegetable crisper next to all the beer Chris will drink over the next few days and complain how he can’t get to it because of the greens).
Chris, again, has me doubled over with laughter: I have to hold my belly in fear I’m shaking Twitchy too much. It’s Park Slope at its quintessence. A couple is walking towards us.
- Here we have a sample of our species, Slopus Impregnatus. This specimen is a typical sample, looking like a beautiful woman in a sun-dress who apparently swallowed a basketball accompanied with a man with a dumbfounded expression on his face. And over there, it’s a cousin of it, they are in the same genus: it’s the popular Slopus Contraceptivus. Sometimes it will turn out that what you thought was Slopus Contraceptivus is actually Slopus Impregnatus, but it’s best not to make any assumptions.
How can I possibly be grumpy, hormones messing with me or not?
Belly looking bigger. Less and less variations from day to day though. Maybe it’s not just being bloated, maybe the avocado-sized baby needs a melon-sized uterus?
I’m not sure where I first heard this term - for a trip that a couple makes not shortly after a wedding, but shortly after finding out that they are pregnant - I think Leslie Mutchler hipped me to it. It’s quite the ‘affluent’ thing to do. I guess it’s supposed to be the last big ‘hurrah’ before all of your credit line goes towards a baby rather than oneself.
Perhaps our first ‘babymoon’ was a year ago to Bosnia and the Croatian coast. I guess our last trip to Europe before baby ckab arrives. No baby happened there, but we took A LOT of pictures.
Our next babymoon was an official one - to Miami and Key West Florida just after Memorial Day. Official in that, well, we were pregnant. We had JUST passed our first trimester and the dinosaur creatures that had plagued ab during those first weeks of exhaustion, food aversions, weepyiness, and hyper scent had for the most part abated. All except for smellasaurus - this girl can smell ANYTHING. She’s smelling what the guy downstairs and across the hall just threw away in his trash. Anyway…
Key West is known for many things - a rebelliously liberal temperament, hot sun and brilliant sunsets, Ernest Hemingway and polydactyl cats, snorkeling, and the ‘winter white house’ of President Harry S. Truman. We stayed for a week in the sun and enjoyed many breath-taking sunsets (we rented bikes, so it was not uncommon for alisa to come up short of breath.)
We took no pictures - save for one picture that alisa took of me in our rented convertible (basically a drive from Miami to Key West rite of passage) and a number of a breath-taking sunset on the Staten Isalnd Ferry on our return to Brooklyn (alisa is sensitive to all sorts of industrial toxicities, so it’s not uncommon for her to have trouble breathing when exposed to the city after an extended absence. (…not really - she probably finds herself healthier IN the city rather than outside of it.))
I generally like the heat. Sure, there are days when I need to cool off but our AC is only running during the hottest days of the summer. I have to think that she was referring to that third trimester when the exhaustapus from the first one returns… with friends. But I’m in the ‘honeymoon‘ phase: the second trimester! All the energy has returned and then some. I’ve been feeling happy, even-tempered, healthy (if constantly hungry). My mind is soaring and it’s, I’m sure, much clearer since the last drink sometime in February. So, yes, I love it.
