May I Be Frank?

Okay, here's the situation...

(My parents went away on a week's vacation, and they left the keys to the brand new Porsche. Would they mind? Mmm... well, or course not.)

If you got that reference, you're old, too. Just like I am.

Maybe that's why I'm so dang grumpy. Maybe it's just hormones. When I read the pregnancy journal I kept with Daphne, I was pretty disgruntled all of the time.

But here's the deal: With a maximum of a few weeks left in this pregnancy, I am over talking about it. It's getting redundant, and as much as I appreciate everyone's interest and excitement, it's starting to feel more like a burden than shared enthusiasm.

Here are a few of the things I hear nearly every day:

1) A version of: "Whose birthday will be first? Yours or the baby's?" "Do you think the baby will be early?" "Oh, you're hungry/grumpy/a cat magnet/cleaning/restless/lazy? That means it's almost time!" "When is your due date?"

Since it is in three hours, I feel pretty safe saying that my birthday will be first. The "estimated due date" (EDD) is September 4, but that means practically nothing. In France, the standard gestation for a human is 41 weeks instead of 40. I do not think I became pregnant 2 weeks after my LMP, which is how the EDD is calculated. I think it was probably a week later. I believe this due to the fact that if I'd become pregnant exactly two weeks after my LMP, the pregnancy test I took just after New Year's Day would have been positive, and it was not. It was another 10 days or so before it "registered."

In my real life, I'm often manic and I binge-eat stuff and I get in really bad moods and one of my cats is obsessed with me. It all happens. It's not an arbiter of impending birth or else I'd be dropping babies every few days.

I'm not sure how useful it is to try to guess when the baby will be born. I have no way of knowing. I know I'm not in labor NOW, if that's what you're asking. I've been having contractions for over a month, and that doesn't mean much, either.

I tend to share stuff fairly widely most of the time, and I'm not holding out on anyone. I can get pretty impatient myself, and having people prodding me all of the time to move things along just rubs me the wrong way.

2) Are you sure you should be doing that? / Let me carry that for you. / Bless your heart.

It's not that I don't appreciate politeness and helpfulness, it's just that I'm not a fragile, precious little thing. I promise everyone that I'm not only pretty darn self-preserving, but I'm also under the care of professionals to whom I disclose all of my activity, and they are excited about it. In fact, this week my midwife and I were discussing the fact that I don't have stretch marks yet, and she said a lot of that can be chalked up to my continued exercise (and diet, but honestly the quality of that has declined a bit over the past few weeks as I'm sort of taking advantage of the last bit of increased metabolism to indulge somewhat... but rest assured I'm eating the healthy stuff, too; just not exclusively).

My body has told me when to stop and when to rest, and I listen. It's fine for me to lift things. If I need help, I'll ask. Being fussed over needlessly stresses me out.

3) You must be miserably hot.

Well, I live in Austin and it's summer, so yes. But I'm no more miserable this year than I was last year.

4) I'll bet this is so much harder than it was 12 years ago. / I'll be you're feeling this pregnancy a lot more than you did in your 20s.

Actually, no, I'm not. I'm more fit, and I'm just as healthy, and being pregnant is pretty easy and actually even great for me.

5) Just a few more days... You must be so excited!

Must I? I read today that this is a common thing people tell super-expectant moms, so I guess it's just a sort of mindless filler thing to say, but I liked one woman's response, which was, "I'm more curious and apprehensive than excited."

I can relate. I mean, I wanted to have a baby with James. That part is exciting: our building our family together. But I'm not particularly "excited" about actually birthing a kid. It's been 12 years, but I remember how intensely painful labor was with Daphne, and I even got an epidural with that one. This time, that's not an option.

Also, there are still so many unknowns. I'm about to be very honest, and here's what I request: please do not respond with any assurances that these things are likely not to happen, or that 20 years from now Daphne and this baby will have a great relationship, or anything like that. I am rational. I know that things will settle into normalcy at some point, regardless of the specifics at any given time. But I'm telling you why I'm not just super giddy about the thought of ending this very predictable, healthy, easy pregnancy for the chaos to come.

Although we've had no reason for concern so far with the two ultrasounds we've had, we've declined genetic testing and don't know what to expect. I hope and pray for a healthy baby, but we are both older and the risk factor for many things is increased.

I had intense postpartum depression after Daphne was born. That's a definite possibility this time around, too. Not extremely excited about that.

The baby might be good-natured like Daphne (who still seemed to cry an awful lot, but that was probably due largely to my need to schedule, which is not something I'm going to do this time), but it also might have colic. My mental and emotional states suffer horrifically with sleep deprivation, and if we add postpartum stuff to that, it's a misery cocktail.

Also, if the baby is colicky, this is going to be a huge deal for the near-teenager in my house, who is already not looking forward to having a baby around. If I'm stressed and she's stressed and she expresses negative feelings enough that I take it personally and lash out, then she might get the impression that I care more about the baby than her and that can mess up our relationship.

I don't live in fear. I will be happy and love the baby when it's born, and we as a family will do whatever it takes to support and love each other. That's all good stuff. But to me, the more "exciting" part of pregnancy is at the beginning, when it's new and far enough away not to be quite so "real."

Now it's kind of like the week of finals when you're working for an advanced degree, and you've done everything that you can, and you're prepared, and you still have the final and then your life will change one way or another... except in this case, you don't know exactly when they're going to call you in to defend your dissertation. And you don't know exactly what they're going to demand of you, so even though you've prepared as best you can, it's not impossible that they'll make you stay in school for the rest of your life, when you went into the whole thing planning to pass and get out and move on to bigger and better things. So you just have to wait and see.

6) Do you know what you're having? / I think it's a boy/girl! / Would you rather have a girl or a boy?

Yes, we're having a baby (according to the 18-week ultrasound; hopefully it has not gestated into a dinosaur or anything, although that might present some creative and potentially lucrative opportunities). Placing a great deal of importance on the gender of a baby seems weird to me. Ask me what I "want" to have, and I say one thing but then have a baby of a different gender... and do you think I'll love it less? So why plant a flag in a preference? I can't control it and ultimately, I don't actually care. I do find people's rationales for believing that the baby is a certain sex to be wildly amusing, so you guys can keep that up. I enjoy it.

I do have to give mad props to everyone for not asking Daphne about the baby anymore. It's been weeks and weeks since anyone's talked to her about it, and I appreciate that greatly. I might request that you do the same for me over the next couple of weeks, resting in the full security that once the baby arrives, everyone will know about it.

I'm trying to stay busy, and focused on my family and activities. I am still blogging, still cooking, still making videos, still going places, still getting exercise, still a hopefully interesting person outside of the expectancy. And, yes, I have been blogging about the pregnancy, because aspects of it are funny and irritating and glorious to me, and I've seen recently, going back and reading the blog I started when I was pregnant with Daphne, that keeping a record of these things is important and useful. But it's not the sum total of my life, and having people continually focus on that, and redirect my focus on it, is exhausting. It's been the better part of a year already but these last few weeks are the longest. So if we can concentrate on other things, that'll be awesome.

Thanks, friends. <3