How would you respond?

So I'm afraid that Dr. Koshary's fear has been realized: I had a baby and stopped blogging. I won't say that this was Dr. K's greatest fear, but it was, at least, a minor, trifling concern that he expressed in the comments to one of my posts.

Anyway, I've compounded my unreadiness to post (because of having a baby) by convincing myself--as I always do--that I need to have some earth-shatteringly clever post to mark my re-entry into blogging. And then I would compose mildly amusing posts in my head, decide that they would be said earth-shatteringly clever post, forget how they went, and try to reconstruct them (still in my head) with little success. And then I'd, like, go to sleep or something. And so it went.

Whatever. I'll just jump right in here with this little incident from the afternoon:

I was walking down my quiet, residential, small-town street to a meeting. Two girls (around 12ish? I couldn't see them very well) were sitting in the open cargo space of a van at a house on the other side of the street, with the door open. One of them yelled, "Hey, girl, you want some milk?"

I figured that she was talking to someone in the house and ignored her. But when I drew abreast (ha ha) of the house, I saw that they were looking at me. I smiled, as one does in a small neighborhood in a small town. One of them repeated, "You want some milk?"

"No, thanks," I replied uncertainly, since milk seemed like a weird thing to be selling out of a van.

Then, when I was a little bit past them, one yelled at my back, "Those are some big boobs you've got there!"

!!!

In my inner monologue, I used the fact that I was running late for my meeting as reason not to turn around and demand to know why these young women were heckling women about their breast size, but in fact, I still haven't come up with a witty retort, and this is the reaction I almost always have when other people (= men, up until today) shout comments about my body. I'm curious: What would you have said to these girls, if anything?

All I can figure, honestly, is that they've seen me (discretely, let's note) nursing my son on the front porch of my house, because "want some milk?" is a pretty weird body-heckling comment, isn't it? The truth is, though--well, they're not wrong. But still, I'm not endowed to the point that it would like call to you from across the freaking street to comment.

Anyway, isn't that just strange? I have never been yelled at by girls. I'm rather appalled, to tell the truth. But I do expect that they'll grow out of such behavior, and maybe even be embarrassed about it one day. (Perhaps on the day when men start yelling at them. Unfortunately.)

Pregnancy colds are extra special

Did you know that? Did you know that, when you get a cold when you're pregnant, it sucks extra*? I'm learning. Wow. Three days I've been miserable, miserable, after two days of am-I-getting-sick? fatigue and sore throats and one more day of yes,-I'm-sick,-but-still-up-and-about.

I canceled classes on Tuesday, but not today, because next Tuesday is our last day and so there'd be no possibility of catching up if I'd canceled today, too. They were not my shiningest teaching moments ever, but at least some progress was made. (= judicious use of passive voice; it would be going too far to say that I truly led this progress. It's entirely possible that the only thing that progressed was the syllabus, not actual, you know, learning stuff.)

I think that I can safely say that I feel better today than yesterday, so maybe this won't last absolutely forever? But good lord. This is the worst cold I can remember having.

*This fact has been confirmed by my doctor's office. The body is working harder than usual to make the baby, so it's not really focused too much on healing itself; plus, there's all that extra mucous production! Good times!

AP Credit

I just read Dr. Crazy's thought-provoking post about women "forgetting" to have children (go read it, if you haven't yet; it's good). I haven't articulated much of a response, but a good bit of it resonated with me--I've often thought that, yes, I'd like to have a baby, but I like the way my life is without a baby, and there are other things that I want to do, so.... In fact, it seems a little startling that we did decide to have a baby. It was sort of like, Well, we want one, so why not now? And once we started thinking in terms of "trying," it became a priority. So it wasn't actually a priority before we committed to the attempt (if that makes sense), but the attempt itself made it one. Or something.

But that's not at all what I was going to write about (as evinced by my inchoate thoughts). Instead, I'm thinking about the phrase "Advanced Maternal Age," which Crazy uses and which is all over my paperwork (as I'll complain to anyone who listens).

Dude, I'm 35. I'm no spring chicken, but I'm not geriatric, for Pete's sake. Seeing that "Advanced Maternal Age" label was one of the first things that's actually made me feel old. And also a little...I dunno, behind? In need of remediation? I started feeling like, How did I make it this long, to this outrageously old age, without having a baby?? Obviously that's freakish and strange; I should have at least been pregnant before now. What, therefore, is the matter with me? People must be staring at this ancient, wizened crone who doesn't even know how to change a diaper. Good Lord. Freak!

It was a weird feeling.

So I decided that I ought to reclaim the term, to make it a badge of honor somehow. And as soon as I entertained the wish to do so, it was so easy! The label invites reclamation. For lo--I am Advanced! Yes! Without ever having even tried to be Maternal before, I've skipped the Beginner and the Intermediate stages. Advanced Pregnancy Credit, man. That's what I've got. It makes sense, really. I've always been a quick study.

The fact that my blood type is A+ just makes it all the more compelling.

I Want a Syllabus:

--a common want,
When each semester seems to need two new ones,
And after slogs through books and sites I flaunt
My stacks of photo-copied true ones.
But this one differs: The course I must invaunt
Is opaque, obscure, like a few tons
Worn round my neck all winter. So I moan
And hope a draft arrives by fax or phone.

(OK, that's a pretty dreadful bit of doggerel, I admit, and I even had to make up a word. But I've had that first line running through my head for days and I had to do something with it.)

Actually, I want two syllabi: The first is for a writing course that is still a blank page, but I'm not going to talk about that one. The other is for my own benefit--to make sense of this:


I've been given or otherwise collected this entire stack in the last few weeks, and am more than a little overwhelmed. On the surface, it seems like there are pretty obvious ways of organizing all of this material: The pregnancy/nutrition/exercise stuff, the childbirth stuff, the breastfeeding stuff, the child-care stuff. But the breastfeeding books tell you what to do before birth in order to get ready to breastfeed, and there are childcare things to take care of before the baby is actually here, and at some point I need to look at birthing centers and talk to doulas and all that, right? So it's actually all quite interrelated and intermixed and I need someone to give me a syllabus so that I read the right bits at the right times and turn in all of my assignments by their proper due dates.

*******************************

Admittedly, I'm making this out to be worse than it is, and worse than I actually feel. It'll be all right. Right? People manage these things.

The more pressing problem is what I can wear to MLA. My nicest pants are now out of the question, and I'm pretty well lacking in the spiffy-professional range of my wardrobe at the best of times. How can I pull together something to wear for my paper--something that fits over my now-somewhat-visible baby belly--without actually going shopping? That's the question....

(And so intellectual concerns give way to the sartorial. It is break, after all.)

(And hey--MLA meet-up? When/where? If there was a conversation, I missed it!)

It's true what they say about the second trimester

I've decided to come clean. Here it is, folks: I'm pregnant, and due in June.

To be precise, I'm just over 12 weeks pregnant--which means that I'm at the end of the first/beginning of the second trimester. Judging from how I feel, I'd say that it's the latter. For, on Sunday, lo and behold, I got a few things done.

If, for some reason, you've read my comments on the Another Damned Notorious Writing Group check-ins, you may have noticed that I was...hm, not...happily productive? Maybe a little pissed-off and bitter sounding? Struggling to do even 1 hour a week of work on my writing? Well, now you know why. No--I was not pissed off and bitter about the pregnancy; on the contrary. But I was exhausted. All the time. And in the last 2-3 days, by virtue of the sudden contrast in energy level, I'm starting to appreciate just how exhausted I was. (Perhaps this also accounts for the total near-lapse in blogging this semester, but given what a lame blogger I am at the best of times, I'm not convinced.)

So it was a rough semester: 4 classes/4 preps, plus taking Greek, chairing a major governance committee, and running the Honors program--which grew enormously this year and last (it now has twice as many students as it did two or three years ago), and struggling through the crushing fatigue of starting to grow a person. Basically, for the last seven weeks, I had almost enough energy to do the absolute minimum that I needed to do every day to get by--which means that this week, I'm trying to catch up on lots and lots of loose ends.

All this by way of explanation, not complaint. TM and I are delighted, apprehensive, and hopeful (it's still early yet; miscarriage is always a possibility). I've been lucky to have only a little nausea and a weird aversion to cooked greens and tomatoes, which is totally unlike me, and 10 days ago we had our first ultrasound. It was amazing--way cooler than I expected--to see the little thingum in there, all person-shaped, kicking its feet and waving its fin-hands around. The heart was beating, and it even has a head!

(Yes, I know how that sounds, but I don't think that I was really convinced that I was growing a baby until I actually saw it. I spent the first 8 weeks or so half-convinced that I had psychosomatically given myself pregnancy symptoms and somehow stopped menstruating through sheer force of will. Oh, and the positive pregnancy tests? Clearly I was manufacturing pregnancy hormones through, um, the power of suggestion? I don't know. I didn't say it was rational.)

Anyway, that's all. The semester is almost over. I'm a little nervous about telling everyone about this whole thing, since of course it's not a sure thing until the baby's born. But I figured you all ought to know.