37 weeks

On the fence about whether the last month of this pregnancy is going to be worse than the first trimester. With Jonah the last month was by far the worst, but I wasn't nauseous with him at the beginning. Months two and three were brutal with this pregnancy. All I did was gag, and I had to do it discretely because no one knew I was pregnant. Ugh. 

With Jonah I remember feeling like my pubic bone was going to break in half during the last few weeks — I haven't felt that way this time (yet). I'm thinking this baby is either in a different position or he's got a smaller head. Fingers crossed for both. 

The worst parts right now are: 1) it is so hot and I am so sweaty and 2) acid reflux. Also, while I like my doctors much, much more than last time, I am getting really tired of being told that I'm old and fat every time I go in for an appointment. They are very nice about it and use words like "over 35" and "higher BMI" but the upshot is the same. Very much looking forward to 2024 when I will (hopefully) only have to go to the doctor once, and I can enjoy being old and fat without anyone commenting on it. 

Next week is my last week of work, hooray. With Jonah, it was covid and I never left the house, so I worked basically up until my due date. In retrospect, that was not a good decision. All I did those last few weeks was work and watch Criminal Minds, which strikes me now as a truly insane combination. 

(Criminal Minds, in case you don't know, is a terrible and unwatchable tv show about serial killers. It's pretty graphically violent. For some reason I was obsessed with it during the last few weeks of my first pregnancy. When I came home from the hospital I watched it again and realized how terrible it is. That was the first time it really dawned on me that women who are very pregnant are not always totally in their right minds.)

This time I plan to actually take a break before I have the baby. No work, definitely no Criminal Minds. (Suggestions for good tv shows or novels that are NOT about serial killers are appreciated.) I am also training myself to forget about my due date, because I find the countdown to be entirely unhelpful. Either I will go into labor or I will have a c-section at 41ish weeks, and that's that. 

Also: I really like my boss, but he's been worried about finding coverage for me while I'm away and that's been stressing me out. I sometimes feel like I need to apologize for going on maternity leave, and I hate that feeling. I am grateful to have 4 months of paid leave, but nothing I do is all that important! The university will continue on just fine without me. I think my boss needs, as the 90s kids say, to take a chill pill. 

33 weeks and the fun continues

The baby will not stop moving, and it's driving me crazy. The first few months it's impossible to concentrate because you're trying not to puke, then the last couple months it's impossible to concentrate because you are constantly being thwacked from the inside. I'm up at 3am trying to figure out what kind of dance he's doing. Such a weird feeling. Take a damn break, kid! 

I'm trying very, very hard not to think too much about the size of the parasite inside me. Also trying very hard not to think of him as a parasite. But he is a parasite. He's just in there, floating! In a bag! Growing limbs! Feeding off me through a weird tether, made possible through the formation of an entire organ that didn't exist 9 months ago. And that I will summarily shed as soon as he is expelled from my body. 

The whole thing is just so damn creepy. Nothing makes me feel more like an animal than pregnancy. You know when you watch Animal Planet and there's a special on the horned toad, or whatever? And you're totally amazed to learn they have some crazy organ that sprouts when they're breeding 10,000 eggs? I feel like I am at least as strange as the horned toad, possibly more so. I deserve my own special on Animal Planet. 

And did you know that no one has any idea why or how labor is triggered? Every single person on this planet is born (somehow!) and yet we have no idea what gets that process started! So I have all these instagrammers telling me to eat dates to trigger labor. Like this is the fucking 14th century and we're still using fruit to perform medical miracles! I just cannot. 

A definite symptom of this pregnancy is overwhelming grumpiness. I don't remember my mood being quite this bad last time. I'm not sad, just extremely annoyed. Most of this is directed at my boss and my coworkers, though I also hate all the drivers in a 30 mile radius, every doctor I meet, and, sometimes, my family. 

My leave from work starts in a month, which I'm hoping will cut down on the grumpiness, since work has been a main source of frustration lately. But it's possible that I will just start to redirect my bad mood towards other areas of my life, once I'm no longer working. My poor family will just have to deal with me, I guess. 

Optimizing the children

As I get closer to the end of this pregnancy, I've been thinking more and more about what this little person inside me will actually be like. There are the usual idle thoughts about hair color and sleep patterns, then the more insidious worries about various illnesses that are more common for babies born to older parents. Intellectually I know it's unlikely he will be just like Jonah, either in looks or in temperament, but Jonah is the only little boy I have, so I find myself assuming they will be similar. 

It's easy to forget just how much I do know about this baby. I know an amazing amount about this baby, more than anyone ever knew about their unborn children until just a few years ago. I remain amazed that a simple blood test revealed not only his sex but also whether he carried a number of genetic diseases, and all before I was out of my first trimester. 

Even when I was doing these tests, though, I wasn't entirely sure they were a good idea. Josh and I had decided a long time ago that we wouldn't terminate a pregnancy because of something like Down syndrome. With some other diseases it was harder to imagine what we would decide. But I wasn't sure I really wanted to know in advance. 

When the doctors became concerned about markers for spina bifida, they suggested we get genetic counseling. I still don't understand why, because spina bifida is not a genetic condition. But I met with the woman, mostly because I was curious. She went through all the heritable diseases on our family trees — an exercise that revealed we actually have pretty good genetics. I tried to be polite, but mostly rushed through it so I could get to my actual question: why did we need this counseling when the baby's genetics were already determined and most of the diseases she was asking about had no cure?

Even as I the words left my mouth, I realized that the answer was obvious! The point was to help us determine whether we should be intermingling our genetic material in the first place. Just like the point of genetic testing in your first trimester is to see if you should remain pregnant at all. The point, in other words, is eugenics. Right? A softer, more modern version — a version that happens before you're even born — but eugenics nonetheless. 

In the midst of all this I had a conversation with someone who told me that she would definitely abort an autistic fetus. But there was no prenatal test for that, I said. Not yet, she replied. She didn't know I was pregnant at this point, but I imagine she will feel pretty bad if my baby ends up being autistic. I guess I should just try and forget this conversation ever happened. 

Catholicism has a very good answer to all this, which is that eugenics is wrong in all cases. But if you want to accept that argument, you need to accept everything that comes with it, including the prohibition against all abortion and birth control. I commend the Catholics for being philosophically consistent on these points! But I do not favor the absolute prohibition of abortion or birth control, so I guess I cannot say I am against eugenics in all cases. 

I don't know what other philosophies there are about modern eugenics — everyone else seems either mildly or extremely muddled. The modern position appears to be two-fold: first, abortion for any genetic abnormality is totally fine. Second, for those abnormalities that are not yet identifiable through genetics (autism, obesity, schizophrenia) we should conclude these are not actual illnesses but special gifts to be celebrated. 

I guess most people don't think much about this weird muddled argument because we never end up having to make these decisions. But it's not hard to see that as these tests become easier and cheaper and more advanced, more and more pregnant women will need to figure out if they favor eugenics, and on what grounds. It's a big responsibility. If there is a genetic screening for autism some day, will it no longer be a neurodivergence to be celebrated, but instead, like Down syndrome, something we can eliminate from the gene pool? 

When I was dealing with the genetic testing and genetic counseling, I went back and found an essay by Michael Sandel that I remembered reading many years ago. It's still good:

To appreciate children as gifts is to accept them as they come, not as objects of our design or products of our will or instruments of our ambition. Parental love is not contingent on the talents and attributes a child happens to have. We choose our friends and spouses at least partly on the basis of qualities we find attractive. But we do not choose our children. Their qualities are unpredictable, and even the most conscientious parents cannot be held wholly responsible for the kind of children they have. That is why parenthood, more than other human relationships, teaches what the theologian William F. May calls an "openness to the unbidden."

2020 vs 2023

It's very hard not to compare pregnancies, just like I imagine it's very hard not to compare children. This pregnancy has been different so far mostly because of the terrible nausea I had for the first 16 weeks or so. I was nauseous with Jonah, but only slightly, and only for the first trimester. 

With this pregnancy I also had an extremely strong craving for hotdogs in the first couple weeks, which was one of my first clues that I might be pregnant. I do like hotdogs normally, but this was an unusually intense level of hotdog desire. I remember the first OBGYN I saw (before I switched practices) told me I couldn't eat hotdogs while pregnant and I burst out laughing. He was not amused. 

I also have a hard time remembering the timeline of my last pregnancy — like, did I feel this out of breath last time at 30 weeks? Did that weird hip pain I had with Jonah appear at 35 weeks, or earlier? The problem is that everything in that final month feels like it lasts forever, so it's hard to remember when things got really uncomfortable. 

The most remarkable difference between these pregnancies is covid. I don't remember being worried about getting sick, so for me the difference is mostly just being able to do things. Like, I can actually get a massage this time! I can see my doctor's face, because the office no longer requires masks! Even better: I've been able to go out to dinner with friends and see movies in a theater and visit family. A friend from grad school that I haven't seen in 8 years (8 years!) is coming over for dinner in a couple weeks. I'm even taking a trip to Boston this weekend. (Which most of you already know since I'm going to visit you.) 

One of Josh's best friends would like to come visit and meet the baby when he's born. As much as I hate the idea of someone seeing me in a hospital gown, I was really touched by this! Last time I was grateful just to have Josh there. The idea that a friend could stop by is pretty amazing. 

I don't remember feeling bad about not seeing people during my last pregnancy — I'm a true introvert and am genuinely fine without much human interaction. But as annoying as it's been to get up and have to go to work most days of this pregnancy, overall it's been a lot easier, and gone much more quickly, than last time. And that's saying a lot, because it's now a million degrees here and I have nothing to wear and I really hate having to get up and leave the house. 

Also pretty excited that whenever I do eventually go to the hospital, this time they won't be sticking a giant q-tip so far up my nose it makes me cry. 

consumer joy

The third trimester has arrived. Hard to believe. 

Back in February, Josh and I spent an absurd amount of money on a new mattress. It's king size and made of a material that is apparently all-natural and never degrades. I am dubious about this claim, but suffice it to say: it's newfangled and fancified. (And comes with a 20 year warranty.)

We'd been eyeing this particular mattress for a long time, and even went to the manufacturers showroom in Manhattan to try it out. Judging by the proliferation of online mattress purveyors, we are apparently the last of a dying breed: people who insist on shopping for a mattress in person.

We hemmed and hawed over the purchase for months, but pregnancy pushed me over the edge. The memory of how badly we both slept in the last few months of my previous pregnancy convinced me we needed to try and improve something about the sleeping situation. If I couldn't gestate the baby like an egg, we would have to try the fanciest mattress in all the land. 

Dear Reader, I am here to tell you that this mattress is the best purchase I have made in an extremely long time. Possibly my entire life? I am struggling to think of a purchase that I have enjoyed as much as I enjoy my bed. Maybe my car wins out, but only because of its sheer utility. 

Do I still sometimes snore so loudly that Josh has to sleep on the couch in his office? Yes, I do. The mattress is not magic, after all! But it's so, so, so much better than any bed I have ever had. It actually has me wondering: what else can I spend money on that would drastically improve my life? 

This is saying a lot for me: I am not cheap, exactly, but it pains me to spend money on things that are not really necessary. Occasionally, the internet will convince me that some company has invented the most comfortable jeans or the worlds best bra or a face wash that fixes everything. These products are invariably 50-30% more expensive than whatever off-brand version I'm currently wearing/using, and there is never free shipping. But like any red-blooded millennial I eventually succumb to the marketing and buy whatever it is, only to discover that it pretty much sucks. Then I return whatever it is and I'm out the cost of shipping, vowing never to be lured in by marketing again. 

I'm not saying that I will suddenly start buying everything Instagram sells me, but I am suddenly open to the idea that sometimes you get what you pay for. For example: I have never spent more than $400 on a couch in my entire life. What if couch comfiness is actually correlated with cost?! What if I spent 10x that amount and every second I spent on the couch was 10x better?! I spend a lot of time on my couch, guys. 

But please, someone talk me out of this before I end up spending all my money on surfaces I can lay down on. 

update

20 week scan is done, baby is still fine. He did not cooperate at all for the scan and kept his arms crossed over his chest the whole time, making it difficult to see his heart. They kept me for nearly an hour to get all the information they wanted, but everything looks good. 

I'm getting better at telling the doctors to leave me alone. During the scan they wanted to do an additional, more invasive, procedure — something to check my cervix for risk of preterm labor. Given that I could not get the baby out at all last time, preterm labor does not appear to be a problem for me, so I politely declined. No one cared. 

The last couple weeks have been extremely annoying: it rained nonstop, everyone in the family came down with some kind of hacking lung disease, and then I found out I need to replace the transmission in my car. I have also been extremely busy at work, which normally I like but is less fun when I am dead from coughing all night long. So I am tired, sick, poor(er), and overworked. Not a great time. 

The good news: I am no longer nauseous! And gosh, it's glorious. I am still ravenous every 2 hours, but I no longer throw up if I don't get food immediately and in the exact right proportions. And I'm not yet at the stage where everything hurts, so we're in that nice middle period where I can eat and climb stairs. 

And I am somewhat sad to report that Jonah has started to move out of the baby talk stage. "Walla" is now "water." And for a long time he would say, "help you!" any time he meant to say "help me!" which was very, very adorable. But now he understands his personal pronouns. He also speaks in complete sentences, so if you ask if whether he wants dinner he will say, "Yes, I do." It's almost disconcerting, really. 

That's not to say he's always intelligible. He will get very excited about something and try to tell me about it, but the words that come out of his mouth sound like, "um yeah then trashcan and then um cheese whale ocean show swimming." I know he knows what he's talking about, which is cute, but no one else would have any idea. His friends at school appear to speak in this same toddler language and understand each other, so I'm glad he has them. 

He knows that "big boys poop on the potty" but that's as far as we've gotten with potty training. I'll be honest, I just really, really don't want to do it. It seems like so much work and there will be poop everywhere and I'll need to nag him constantly about going to the bathroom! Could I just ignore this until the daycare teachers take care of it? That's totally a parenting strategy, right? 

Buying people

Genuine question: why can you buy a baby in this country when you can't buy an organ? I would not be allowed to sell one of my own children and yet it would be entirely legal for me to sell my genetic material and rent my womb to create a child for someone else.

It would seem to me that on the scale of things you should not be able to purchase, a kidney would rank far lower than a human. 

I am confused by the logic here.