annals of pregnancy, part two

Back in April, I had a very vivid dream where I suddenly began to expand—much like Violet Beauregarde when she blows up into a giant blueberry. In my dream, I remember being pretty freaked out as my body suddenly no longer fit into its former dimensions, and very frustrated when my none of my clothes fit. 

This was several weeks before I knew I was pregnant, but looking back now, I must have subconsciously suspected something. That same week I also had a very vivid dream that I visited Emily Hale and we drank fancy cocktails in a swanky jazz club that was also (somehow?) a student-run cafe. She later assured me that, sadly, no such place exists. I guess in my subconscious the pandemic and my pregnancy manifested in sad but vivid dreams about expanding waistlines, cocktails, and faraway friends. 

In retrospect, I have been sort of surprised how I have not expanded like Violet Beauregarde turning into a blueberry. I mean, I am definitely unable to wear my pre-pregnancy jeans anymore, but for the first 4 months I didn't have much problem fitting into them. I'm sure this is different for everyone, right? Also, when it's your body changing day-to-day the changes probably seem subtle when to other people you look obviously pregnant. I don't know. I keep thinking that one day I'll wake up and suddenly be enormous. I'm not looking forward to it. 

My most glaring pregnancy symptom has actually a lack of interest in food—until a couple weeks ago I found it almost impossible to finish a full portion of anything, and early on I had to force myself to eat. This is not—to put it mildly—normal behavior for me. I'm not too far off from my third trimester now, and I feel like I'm just now back to my pre-pregnancy appetite. 

I confessed in my last post that I had more than a few cocktails early on, before I knew I was pregnant. I will confess here that I have not been very strict in following the food guidelines that everyone (society? marketing? blogs? I don't honestly know where these rules come from) insists are required. I still drink coffee daily, I still have an occasional glass of wine, I just this afternoon ate a turkey sandwich. I did give up eating canned tuna, but that was mostly because up until very recently it would have absolutely made me gag. The single piece of guidance my doctor gave me was to avoid eating or drinking anything unpasteurized, which I have done, since it seems prudent. And I figured if she had only one warning, I should take it seriously. 

I'm not particularly proud of any of this—or of my pre-pregnancy diet, either. There is nothing virtuous about eating cold cuts. It's just...what I've done.  

A friend of mine in grad school worked at the popular campus bar, and during his training he shared this fun factoid with me: it's illegal to refuse to serve a pregnant woman alcohol. I remember being so surprised! Not that a pregnant woman would want alcohol (seems logical to me) but rather that the government has not yet made it illegal for her to drink it. The overwhelming message I've received—since long before I ever became pregnant myself—is that pregnant women are to be treated as vessels for their unborn children. Telling pregnant women what to do with their bodies seems to be as normal as telling them what to do with their infants, and serving an infant alcohol would, of course, be illegal. I remain glad that the distinction between a pregnant woman and her child has not entirely collapsed. 

the annals of pregnancy, part one

It's worth noting up front that most of my pregnancy-related thoughts have nothing to do with COVID, except for the fact that it is very awesome not to have to wear work appropriate pants while pregnant. Every woman should be able to wear sweatpants and leggings without judgment every day of her pregnancy.

So far, what I've been most surprised by is people who have asked me if I got pregnant by accident. (Not a large number, but more than one.) If they thought about it for a minute, wouldn't they realize how unlikely it is that a 35-year-old woman who has been married for 5 years would get accidentally pregnant? I suppose it's possible, but really pretty unlikely, right? I can't figure out if people are asking because they think it's crazy to have a baby now, in the middle of a global health crisis, or if it has something to do with me having a baby? Probably some combination of both. I don't take it personally. 

Strangely, while the pregnancy wasn't an accident, it does kind of feel that way. I was (and still am) surprised to be pregnant—since my teens I've had a condition that my doctors always insisted would make it difficult for me to have children. So when someone asks me if the baby was an accident, I almost want to say yes—it does feel that way! I was so sure it would take many months or years to get pregnant, if it happened at all, that other than going off birth control I didn't really pay much attention—there were no prenatal vitamins, no ovulation tests, not even the slightest attempt to stop drinking. (And I do hope the baby likes bourbon because there were more than a few pandemic cocktails early on there.)

Being told at 17 that I was possibly infertile was, for me, less traumatizing than you might suppose. At that age having a baby seemed like the worst possible thing that could ever happen to me. And as I got older and that changed, I had already accepted that childlessness was one possible life outcome, much like it was possible I would never get married. I knew people who were single or childless and neither of these outcomes seemed to me like a true impediment to happiness or a full life. 

But here I am, unquestionably pregnant. I'm both glad I took the warnings of my doctors seriously— infertility issues are fairly common, after all, and more people should probably be prepared for them—and I'm also very relieved that I didn't take their warnings too seriously, otherwise I might very well have ended up accidentally pregnant long before I was ready. (I did sometimes wonder why I needed to also worry about birth control when everyone insisted I was unlikely to conceive without extensive medical intervention.) 

Yesterday was the baby's first sonogram, and it was amazing to see his little face, his tiny hands and feet, even the blood flowing in and out of his heart. I am truly amazed at what medicine can show us about a baby still in the womb, and I remain simultaneously confounded by how much of medicine appears to be guesswork. I have a lot of respect for medical science—hooray for vaccines and antibiotics and immunotherapy and all that jazz!—but doctors rarely acknowledge that while diagnostics may work very well in the aggregate, individual cases do not seem to be quite so easy to predict. I'm sure my particular case will remain a mystery forever—if only because the doctors ended up being wrong. 

slick mirror

Over the summer, when we were still allowed to leave the house, I was working in a very hip bookstore in my very literary college town, and there was one book that stayed at the top of our bestseller list for multiple weeks: Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino.

At the time I had never heard of Tolentino, but she is a writer at the New Yorker who is also an alum of the MFA program at the university where I currently work. In other words: she is a Big Deal here. An essayist for the instagram generation: mid-30s, stylish, slightly awkward, smart. She came to give a reading at the bookstore which produced a sold-out crowd, and I heard gushing reviews of her performance for weeks after. I was surprised to learn that her book was a series of essays: these are not typically bestsellers.

Essays are my favorite genre of writing. They are by nature concise and provide direct access to the mind of a writer: you don't just get a story or description or facts, you also get an argument. When they are good, even the most dispassionate, academic essays (e.g., Marilynne Robinson's), are personal, in that they demonstrate how the writer thinks about the world.

All this to say: I was excited to read Tolentino's work. Unfortunately, I ended up hating it more than I thought possible. I disliked the book so much I found it difficult to explain why without sounding unhinged. Somehow, she manages to make even the most fascinating personal experiences stultifyingly boring. Imagine something incredible happened to you: like, you cured cancer! And in an essay about that experience, you focused primarily on why you needed to wear a lab coat to work. Worse, Tolentino confuses the most basic terms and ideas—I remain genuinely concerned that she does not understand the difference between a marriage and a wedding, despite writing an entire essay on the topic. 

And reading the reviews made me feel insane, because every single one was unequivocally positive. Tolentino is the voice of her generation! A visionary! A genius! This view included every major book review outlet and all of my coworkers at the bookstore. Hating the book began to feel downright heretical. When a customer would ask for my opinion before buying it, I would lie and say I hadn't read it. My coworkers, with whom I had discussed the book extensively, found this hilarious. 

After selling hundreds of copies and reading dozens of glowing reviews, I started to worry that I was the problem. Tolentino had clearly touched a nerve, and maybe this was a sign that her work was actually brilliant? Were banality and confusion her whole point, and I was missing the joke? Aren't love and hatred closely intertwined? If the book was truly bad, wouldn't indifference be a more reasonable response? 

Ultimately, I think not. What drove me nuts was not the book itself, but the gushing response from people who should know better. And today, many months later, I finally, finally found a negative review! Just reading it made me calm. In a way, I'm grateful to Tolentino for writing such a terrible book, if only to give me the experience of feeling so strongly contrarian about it. Loving something everyone else loves is a nice feeling, but finding the one other person who hates something as much as you do is truly wonderful. 

cast update

Had lunch with a friend today. Ordered squash soup. Managed to spill a whole spoonful on my cast, and now there is an orange stain right smack dab in the center of my cast. And there is squash caked into the fiberglass weave. This is triggering my non-existent OCD! I just tried to use a toothbrush to scrub it clean and that definitely did not work. Now I am paranoid I got my cast wet and the cotton layer under the cast isn't going to dry and my skin will get infected and eventually turn gangrenous and my hand will fall off!

UUUGHH. THIRTEEN DAYS TO GO. THIRTEEN DAYS IS FOREVER.

The friend I had lunch with told me that as a kid she broke her leg during the summer and she somehow managed to get poison ivy under her cast! I told her that sounded like pure hell, and she assured me it was pure hell.

And my coworker (who rides horses) told me she's broken 10+ bones over the course of her life. Once, she broke her left arm and her right wrist at the same time! I was very tempted to ask her how she went to the bathroom with both arms casted, but I definitely don't know her well enough for that. (I'm trying to curb the inappropriate questions at work.)

I am also trying to focus on what doesn't suck, so instead of obsessing over the squash stain, I am reminding myself that: 1. I do not currently have poison ivy under my cast, and 2. My left arm is totally fine. I am so grateful for these things, and also I would really, really like my cast off. NOW PLEASE. 

wrist update

The specialist says the wrist is broken. I am in a cast for 4 weeks. The cast is purple (my favorite color). This is a very small consolation.

A greater consolation: the cast, unlike the splint they gave me at urgent care, keeps my thumb and fingers free. So I can pinch things! It's glorious.

Also: I no longer have to shake anyone's hand, a custom I have never enjoyed. So many damp palms in the world.

In closing, my suggestion to you all is that, if you need to fall, make sure you keep your hands and arms out of the way.

pity the one-handed

I fractured my wrist yesterday. I slipped on some ice while walking my dog and landed on my right hand. As far as they can tell from the x-rays—and still I'm shocked how much the doctor at urgent care couldn't tell me—it's only a minor hairline fracture. But it still hurts like hell and my right hand is in a hard splint, which means I'm typing this one-handed. (And very, very, sloooowly.)

It's a huge bummer. So I just wanted to share with you, Dear Readers, some things that are very hard to do with one hand (especially your non-dominant hand) so you can appreciate how nice it is to have two:

• Squeezing toothpaste onto a toothbrush
• Flossing
• Putting your hair in a ponytail
• Putting on a bra that has hooks
• Tying your shoes
• Applying deodorant (one underarm is easy, the other is real hard)
• Applying eyeliner
• Cutting your fingernails
• Putting on earring that require backings
• Cooking anything more complicated than canned soup
• Twisting off the lid of a jar
• Picking up dog poop (don't miss this one, but sometimes it's required)
• Washing dishes (same as previous)

Props to Josh for waiting with me at urgent care for two hours and also assisting me with everything on this list. There's nothing like being injured to remind you to appreciate your spouse.

I am going to see an orthopedic hand and wrist specialist tomorrow, and I'm hoping they tell me it's miraculously cured. This seems to be an actual possibility, since no two doctors ever give me the same information about anything. I wish I had friends who are (medical) doctors, so they could explain to me how medicine, which is clearly an art, has somehow managed to pass itself off as a science. 

famous friends

Though I started it a decade ago, I am now finally almost finished (re)reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. It is so, so good, and I have many Thoughts about it. But mostly I find myself thinking one very silly thought: how much I hope that that Hilary Mantel and Marilynne Robinson are friends.

They probably aren't, since Mantel has said she doesn't have many friends, but I can't help but wish it anyway. It's a wonderful time to be alive when there are two excellent writers obsessed with history and the reformation—and writing popular books about it! I like to imagine they have a whatsapp chat full of references to obscure early modern texts and jokes about various Cromwells.

In reality, they probably dislike each other. Don't we usually find people too similar to us to be grating? And I'm sure they aren't on whatsapp at all—they're too productive. But I will continue to hope they're friends. And that some day they invite me to have dinner with them, where I will be too awestruck to say anything.