Genius Toiling in Obscurity

I think there's somebody in there

I'm 35 weeks pregnant, so you'd think I'd be used to the idea that pretty soon I'm going to have a baby. And yet I keep having these moments when the reality slaps me in the face and it becomes apparent that I have not actually previously gotten it. The other night, David and I went to a movie, and of course, being 35 weeks pregnant, I had to go pee during it. I walked, half-blind, out of the dark theater and into the glaring lights of the women's room. In the mirrors above the sinks, I could see myself from the thighs up, brilliantly lit, blinking like a gopher coming out of its hole on a summer day--and holy cow, I looked pregnant. It hit me so hard you'd think I was one of those women who had, up to then, managed to be pregnant for eight months without knowing it. I peed, waddled back into the theater, hauled myself laboriously up the steps to our row, took my seat, and interrupted just as Digitized Legolas was about to take down the Oliphant to whisper to David, "Honey, there's something I need to tell you...I think we're going to have another baby."

When Eric was in the womb, he almost never got the hiccups. The new baby gets them all the time. Yesterday, he had an unusually protracted and violent bout, and I found myself worrying that they were making him uncomfortable, and wishing I could comfort him. Even though I know there is no more comfortable place than the warm, wet, and swaddling womb he's in right now, I wanted him to know his mother cared and would have comforted him if she could. I wanted to pat his back.

We have pretty much zeroed in on a name, so much so that we are even using it sometime, though we're holding off on general announcements in case when the baby comes out one of us has a sudden blinding intuition that we have chosen badly for this baby and need to re-visit the question. We are both prone to sudden blinding intuitions, some of them actually useful.

This is a link to a hilarious compendium of baby-naming conversations off bulletin boards, with commentary. Turns out there's some kind of trend toward naming babies for the places they were conceived, usually cities, but some women have cracked wise about "Backseat" or "Grandma's Spare Room on Christmas Eve." In case our first choice name doesn't work out, I like "Reproductive Endocrinologist's Office Dierauer" as a backup. Or maybe "Feet in Stirrups Dierauer." "Dignified Position Dierauer." "Strangers Looking On Dierauer." "Thread that Catheter! Dierauer." "How's the Motility? Dierauer." I've always liked the wacky names Puritans gave their children: Preserved by the Grace of God Edwards. God's Mercy Saves Smith. Praise His Name Waters. This is our chance to reclaim that tradition for our modern age.

Like all highly-pregnant women--and women trying to get pregnant, for that matter--I am working hard to predict the future through statistics, superstition, and random guesswork:

Will I successfully deliver vaginally a second time? I'm sure I will: the c-section rate for women who have previously delivered vaginally is only about 2%, and I have already proven good at both dilating and pushing.

Will this baby nurse? Hard to say, but if I trust my intuition about the kind of person I have inside me, I'd say Most Likely. He is more restless and active than Eric was; Eric was not born inclined to go after what he wanted. He was the kind of newborn we sometimes had to wake up to feed, and he almost never fussed at a wet or dirty diaper. He couldn't be bothered to latch on to a nipple as a neonate. But this one strikes me as more likely to let us know what's what, and to demand that we deal with him. I think he'll suck.

When will the baby be born? My due date is April 15. Eric was born about 16 days before his due date, and I have not been able to find any information about whether there is a baby-to-baby correlation for early/lateness. I have a strong feeling we won't go all the way to April 15, but no clear idea of just how much before that we'll be, though I am suggesting Sunday, April 11, to the baby every day during my practice birth hypnosis sessions, that being a very convenient day for everyone involved. Eric was born when we asked him to be (he didn't know we were joking), so I figure I might as well plant a seed with Number 2. Though he has not struck me as particularly compliant so far.

Having mentioned it, I will quickly tell the story of how Eric came to be born when we asked him to be, and then I have to go deal with some laundry:

On a Friday night when I was 37 weeks 5 days pregnant (yes, I keep track that tightly. I'm 35 weeks 2 days right now, counting from LMP, or 34 weeks 5 days counting from two weeks pre-IUI, which was on CD 19 because I ovulated so late I thought we had actually missed it, and I decided to stop testing on CD 17 and set my sights on the next month, but then the next morning, on CD 18, on a whim I peed on another OPT stick just to confirm my powerful intuition that I had somehow missed my LH surge...and, so much for my intuition, I was surging. And the morning after that, there I was counting ceiling tiles in Dr. Sauer's office, sans Dr. Sauer, who was on vacation in France, but even though a nurse practitioner actually did the procedure it cost the same as if the doctor had done it, but I digress).

OK, so I'm 37 weeks 5 days pregnant, back in May of 2001, and David, Scott, and I are enjoying a leisurely dinner out. David says to me, "I'm tired of waiting for this baby, let's have the baby tonight."

I say, "Tonight's not good for me. It's been a long, busy day and I'm tired. How about first thing tomorrow morning, after a good night's sleep?" David agrees.

We go home, I sleep nine blissful hours with only one trip to the bathroom, which is about 6 fewer trips than is typical. I wake about 8:30 in the morning, trot across the hall to pee...and while I'm on the toilet, my water breaks. Happy birthday, baby! (Though actually he came just after midnight, following about 8 hours of active labor, so his birthday was the next day.)

At worship two weeks ago, Eric asked me to stay with him in the toddler room. I did, and there was a crying baby there, too. After awhile, I asked the teenaged childcare person if I could give soothing him a try, and she handed him to me. He wasn't a newborn, but a nine-month-old, but even so, as soon as my hands touched him, my limbic brain kicked in, bypassing conscious control, and went into full baby-soothing mode: rocking, swaying, jiggling, uttering soothing nonsense syllables. None of it helped, or for long, this particular baby really needing his mom at that point, but it reassured me. I worry that I have forgotten everything I knew three years ago about caring for a baby. And probably I have. But it doesn't matter. Clearly, the body remembers.

Posted by Su Penn at March 9, 2004 06:02 PM | TrackBack