Sweet Madeleine

This Is Not An Update

Well, I mean, it is. But it isn’t. Not really.

Let me explain.

We drove down to the ultrasound clinic this morning bright and early. We got into a fight trying to find it, both our nerves stretched taut and close to breaking (oh wait, that was just me! Adam was mostly just calm and sleepy.)

I lay on the exam table, heart thudding, the room silent as the technician slid her little wand around in lazy circles over my belly. The screen was turned so that I couldn’t see it, every so often I would look over at Adam to check if he could see anything, he would shrug and shake his head, unable to make anything out.

This ultrasound felt different than the one we had at 18 weeks, where after getting the necessary measurements the technician showed me Baby G’s fingers and feet, pointed out the string of pearls for a spine.

This time I lay there and the tech didn’t say much as she clicked away. At one point she asked, “How far along did you say you were?”. I replied that I was 30 weeks.

A few minutes later she asked again, “Are you sure you’re 30 weeks?” “Yes,” I replied, “positive.”

Then again a few moments later, “When was your last period?”

I felt like shouting “What? What’s wrong! Just tell me! Is the baby too small? Is it not growing? Why do you keep asking me how far along I am?”

Well it turns out that I may be growing a little chunky monkey in this here belly ‘o mine, as all of the baby’s measurements are more consistent with a 32 week old instead of 30 weeks. A whole two weeks ahead of schedule! What an overachiever!

So now Demon Baby is MEGA DEMON BABY! swear I saw Adam swell with pride when he heard this, and now he thinks it’s quite amusing to make huge stomping Godzilla movements whenever he sees me coming. He’s also taken to growling “Me want FOOOD” and then cackling hysterically whenever I eat.

My self-esteem is doing great, why do you ask?

(I should probably note that my midwife says not to put much stock in ultrasound measurements this late in the game as they tend to be notoriously unreliable. Nonetheless I’d prefer a big chubby bub than a tiny one. Just sayin’.)

Despite mocking the size of his unborn child, Adam does deserve some commendation however, for staying strong whilst the technician hovered the wand over our baby’s genital area. Looking at me she asked, “Do you know what you’re having?”

“No” I replied.

“Do you want to?” she asked with a smile.

Time seemed to slow, then stop. Did we want to know? With all of this uncertainty - in the hospital, out of the hospital, vaginal birth, c-section, what if we just took one unknown off of that? What if we knew one thing for sure? What if we said yes?

She could tell us now, right now. We could choose a name, start saying he or she. It was tempting, so tempting.

I looked at Adam and he looked at me. We jointly shook our heads.

“No.” I answered, “No, we don’t want to know.”

The technician smiled and nodded her assent, resumed her measuring.

It felt so much like having one finger under the corner of the wrapping paper, knowing you could just tear a tiny corner and see it all, finally know everything. But as an experienced present-snooper I knew what comes after that initial jolt of adrenaline - it’s a blank sort of empty knowledge trying in vain to fill the hole that just seconds prior was stuffed to the brim with possibility. I’m glad we voted for uncertainty. Mystery.

Now. The main event. Ye olde placenta. I don’t really have any news on this, hence why this isn’t an update, not really.

The tech did remark in passing that it’s still low-lying, which isn’t necessarily a great sign, but she didn’t get much more specific.

My midwives have said that the placenta needs to clear the cervical opening by at least 2 cm in order for them to allow you to a vaginal birth. They haven’t received the report from the ultrasound clinic yet with exact measurements, but they’ve promised to call me and let me know the details as soon as they do.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t googling all day. I would be lying if I said my heart didn’t drop and my eyes well up a little with disappointment when the tech said it was still low, that it hadn’t miraculously - through the force of my visualization and reiki and acupuncture and my little sister’s placenta dance - migrated into its proper position atop my womb.

I am preparing myself for bad news. Adam calls this crazy, I call this self-preservation. I’m hopeful, I mean 2 cm! That’s nothing! Surely I can manage 2 cm? But I am also reading up on c-sections, trying to find out how late I could push it, what the baby’s birthday would be, trying to figure out game plans for if I have to be put on bed rest.

At this point, please believe me when I say that I am with you in hoping that soon I never have to hear about my placenta ever, ever again. Hear that placenta? We’re all sick of you! Just go away! (preferably upwards and more than 2cm please!).

Especially those of you that read this jumble of words and aren’t family members and aren’t pregnant and maybe don’t ever want to be - those of you who must, occasionally find yourself wondering why you are wasting so much time reading about the internal reproductive organs of a stranger - thank you for wading through this with me.

In the meantime, more waiting. More waiting! UGH.

he said/she said

Last week I told you about how I had a sappy mama-moment while staring at the grainy image of our future son or daughter flickering around the ultrasound screen.

I forgot to mention that if I had asked Adam to share his version of events, the story would have been approximately eleventy-seven times less sappy and 100% times more ragey.

Ragey? RAGEY you say? Who gets rage at an ultrasound appointment? The answer, of course, is my darling husband. Obviously.

It began as we left for the hospital, when he asked me to grab the camera. “Why?” I asked. He replied that he intended to record the ultrasound for posterity. I remarked that they probably wouldn’t let him, and he huffs, affronted “Why wouldn’t they? It’s MY baby!”

This was a “Yes, dear” moment so I simply grabbed the camera and off we went.

I found out later, after telling this story to a few friends, that apparently our local hospital has a reputation for having a nice ultrasound tech, and a not-so-nice one. We had the nice one at our 8 week scan. Guess which one we had last week?

We get there, and Adam begins to get the camera ready as I settle down on the examination table. As soon as she sees the camera she immediately snaps at him, “What are you doing? You can’t take pictures in here.”

Adam explains that he was going to take a video, and is visibly disappointed when she still says no, and he then asks why. She replies snappily that this is a diagnostic test, (unsaid but implied: IDIOT) and he reluctantly stows the camera in his lap.

Then we sat in a deeply uncomfortable silence for what seemed like HOURS as she squirted warm goo on my stomach and set about taking measurements. I am so horribly bad with confrontations of any sort, I was desperate to smooth over what I imagined was a horrendous rift between my husband and this ultrasound technician whom we would probably never see again - how could I let them continue on like this?! It was terrible. I was starting to sweat. Every fibre of my being was screaming at me to fix it, FIX IT!

So I began to make awkward small talk, commenting about how incredible it was that she could make out anything at all in the murk of the screen, how many patients she sees in a day etc. It was painful. It was the most excruciating small talk you can have with a person while she nudges a lubricated wand around your midsection.

Finally I decide to make a joke and I say with a forced laugh, “It’s probably just as well that we can’t make anything out, my husband has been studying ultrasound pictures for weeks, trying to see if he would be able to guess the gender of the baby.” (It’s our hospital’s policy not to reveal the sex)

And shockingly, it worked! This lame, forced, not-even-funny joke WORKED! The she-bitch actually let out a small chuckle, I felt like WINNING! but if this was Adam’s blog and not mine, he would take this opportunity to insist that her chuckle was not, in fact, a reluctant reward for all of my hustling, but PROOF of the fuckery she was planning to unleash upon him as some sort of inexplicable punishment.

The rest of the scan, for me, was incredible. She began pointing things out on the screen, and visible body parts floated in and out of view. I was gratified to see that our baby was not a legless, armless trunk as I had had nightmares about for weeks; amazed to see a butt, feet, arms that seemed to be flexing for our enjoyment.

I walked out of the hospital on cloud nine, printed images in hand, with a grin plastered ear to ear. I turned towards Adam as we walked to the car to share the printouts with him and that’s when I saw him glowering at me from a few feet back.

Like, evil-death glare, if-looks-could-kill type glowering.

It was like seeing a child leave the biggest candy shop in the world with a belly fully of sugar but still in a bad mood - unpossible!

“What?” I asked, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk.

“What?!” he exclaimed, “WHAT?! Why did you TELL HER I had been studying ultrasounds?”

“What?” I said again, utterly baffled.

He began to flap his arms with agitation as he went into some tirade about how he was certain that she was skipping over the baby’s genitals quickly on purpose to fuck with him, because HE knew that SHE knew that HE knew what to look for.

“Every time she got close to the legs or the feet - WHOOSH!- she would speed past them so I couldn’t see anything!”

Seriously.

(He’s 32. I like to just throw that in there for context occasionally in stories like this.)

(For the record, I did not notice any change in speed or detail when it came to our baby’s genital area. I was also not obsessed with the genital area, so that may have impacted my perception.)

Anyway, Adam nursed this grudge for the greater part of the afternoon (which is huge for a guy who forgives and forgets as easily as he breathes) and every time I showed someone the pictures, or called anyone or told anyone anything having even the slightest bit of relevance to our child, he would release a deep sigh and without prompting, recount the whole sordid tale of how I maliciously and purposefully conspired with the Evil Ultrasound Tech to cock-block him from determining his baby’s sex.

Oh guys. I can’t even.

At one point as he was telling someone “…and then Madeleine warned the tech that I had been studying pictures online-” I shouted in exasperation “OH MY GOD Adam, our baby has arms and legs and a beating heart and a freaky little Voldemort face, and all you can focus on is the fact that you didn’t get to see its junk?”

And if you think he was even the slightest bit chastened, well Internets you do not know him at all because he  turned to me indignantly and exclaimed:

“YES! Of COURSE I’m focusing on that! Why did you have to say something?!”

So there you have it. Our baby’s first ultrasound, he said/she said.

God help us all.

Rorschach

We never celebrated Mother’s Day, Adam and I.

I mean we called our mothers, sent them gifts and celebrated each of them, these two strong, soft women who brought us into the world- but we never celebrated Mother’s Day for me.

“I’m not a mother yet”, I objected reasonably when people asked Adam what he had planned. I was much happier thinking of my “first” Mother’s Day as being next May, with a squealing, giggling seven-month old wriggling around in my arms, scooting across the floor.

I’m not a mother yet.

Ask me if I ever thought I’d be where I was yesterday, eagerly sending grainy, blurry Rorschach-like photos of our baby still nestled inside of me to everyone in my address book.

Ask me if I thought I would be one of “those” women.

I never understood it, that attachment to ultrasounds, the way women paraded them around, framed them and worst of all (or so I thought before…before) the worst of them all - put them as their Facebook profile pictures. Why? Why?

I never understood it.

I’m not a mother yet.

Something shifted in me yesterday as I lay there in the uncomfortable silence of the exam room and the ultrasound technician slid her wand around my slippery belly. There was a fourth person in the room, referred to and pointed at on the screen and felt. Clearly felt.

“There’s baby’s feet,” she said in a routine monotone, and my heart stopped. I watched in astonishment as two flickering footprints appeared through the murky haze, the grey outlines of arches, tiny ghostly toes.

“Oh, hello to you too,” she intoned drily as we were looking at the baby (my baby,our baby’s head) and a flash swept by its face, a hand, opening and closing.

And then finally, that profile, that classic profile we’ve all seen a thousand times, but different now. Better now. The tiny snub nose, rounded forehead. Lips that look an awfully lot like mine. A tiny reclining Buddha, peaceful, quiet. 

I am boring people. I’m a one-track wonder these days. I sit at work and go through the motions but my mind is elsewhere. I fear I’m becoming one of those women (again, one of “those” women..who are they? Mothers?) who is gently, fully engrossed in herself, her pregnancy, her child.

I try to limit my conversation on the topic, I try to avoid bringing it up unless someone else does first. I try not to make every. single. post. I write on here refer back somehow to my pregnancy, this baby. “Not everyone cares about this pregnancy, this baby” I try and remind myself. I try to limit the navel gazing, the self-absorption. I try and remember what I used to write about before, I come up blank, the past a blur.

It’s impossible, the subject impassible. I cook dinner and feel a nudge. Sitting in a meeting I zone out as I feel small pokes, the roller-coaster feeling of baby turning over. I am lost, lost to this world.

I understand. Even though I’m not a mother yet.

I remember staring at these same images when proudly presented by others, trying to make out what, exactly, I was looking at. I was excited for them of course, but excited for them. Seeing them again a few months later with an infant in tow I would be shocked - “Oh! You had the baby!” As though time had stopped in my absence.

And now I am that woman, one of those women. I understand. Watching the flickering heartbeat yesterday, watching those chambers open and close and open and close, Adam gripped one of my feet and I think he felt it too - the taking hold of a fierce responsibility.

“Protect this” I thought instinctively, “Protect this at all costs.”

I want to take these photos, these very first photos of our child, and I want to make a whole photo album out of them, show strangers on the street - I can’t stop staring at those feet, those fingers, those lips.

I’m sorry, I’m lost. I’m a one-track wonder, spinning and spinning in my own little world.

I understand now. 

I am sitting here with a nervous belly and a full bladder, waiting for Adam to pick me up to take me to our ultrasound where we will get to see (NO BIG DEAL GUYS) the tiny person living inside me.

I am so nervous. SO nervous. All of the nervous!