11 weeks

We're almost out of the first trimester!

Yesterday's sonogram shocked and delighted us by showing that, in the past two weeks, Cletus the Fetus' arm- and leg-buds have grown into actual (spindly) arms and legs, and that he/she has doubled in size ... but even more astonishingly, the little sucker was wiggling around like there was no tomorrow. I didn't realize that they did that so early ... it was practically doing backflips.

"It's saying, 'Hi Mommy!" said Dr. Wong, unpersuasively.

So here's the latest portrait:



And a smaller version for Mimi:
click here!

We were so giddy afterwards that Greta forgot her bottle of water in the examination room, and when I went back to get it, I almost barged in on Dr. Wong's next patient. That would have been awkward ...

The princess and the pea, and city serendipity

The other day, I decided it would be a good idea to buy a new futon mattress, since our current mattress is approximately 75% dust mites and as flat (and as comfortable) as a pancake. The mother of my child deserves to sleep comfortably while she's gestating, I thought.

So I hiked up to the World of Futons (not to be confused with the House of Futons! -- there may be many Futon Mansions in there, but the World of Futons is, you know, the whole world).

The process of picking out a mattress was very awkward: the proprietress (I believe her official title is "Queen of the World of Futons") watched impatiently while I prodded and sat on various beds, smiling apologetically ... at one point, I wanted to lie down on one of them to try it out, but with the Queen watching me and all, I just sort of reclined onto one arm for a moment, then stood up again. "That one's very good," said the Queen dismissively.

The next problem was getting the mattress home. My brilliant plan was to stuff the mattress -- which comes conveniently folded-up and wrapped in plastic -- into a cab. After about ten minutes, a cab finally stopped for me -- on the other side of the street. The cabbie stared through his side window at me like he was sizing me up as the next victim in his serial-killing spree. I waited for a break in the traffic and sprinted across the street -- not an easy feat when carrying a slippery, mushy, fifty-pound package. I tried to open the rear door of the cab, but it was locked. I leaned into the front passenger-side window, and informed the cabbie of this: "It's locked," I pointed out.

Rather than pop the electronic lock, he yelled, "It won't fit."

I stared at the cabbie. I looked at his roomy back seat. I looked at the folded-up futon. Clearly, it would fit just fine.

"Yes, it will," I said.

"Is too big," he retorted.

"Buddy;" I said, "it'll fit -- with plenty of room left over for me, too!"

"No! Is too big!" he said angrily, and then sped away.

It occurred to me later that if he had put as much time into driving me to my building as he had into arguing with me, he would already have dropped me off by this point.

Now I was in a quandary. It was a quarter after five on a weekday, and all of the cabs rolling down Broadway were either off-duty or taken. So I did the only thing I could: I grappled the plastic package and staggered off down the sidewalk.

For about a block, I thought, Hey, this isn't so bad -- I can do this! Only ten more blocks to go! By the middle of the next block, though, I realized that I was in trouble. It was a humid, ninety-degree day, and my sweaty hands and arms were slipping off the plastic. I stopped and reconsidered my position. A skateboard, I thought -- that's what I need! I could balance the package on the board and push it, and I'd be home in no time. My kingdom for a skateboard! I looked around me, in the wild hope that I might possibly be a couple of doors away from a store named "World of Skateboards". Alas, no such luck.

I considered trying to MacGuyver some sort of handles onto the plastic, since the awkwardness of it was a bigger issue than the weight. If I could just get ahold of some shopping bags and duct tape ... but soon I developed a more realistic Plan B: I balanced the package on top of a fire hydrant, squatted down, and balanced it on my shoulder, on its longest narrow edge. Standing up again was slightly challenging, but once I got the center of gravity right and leaned it slightly against the side of my head, I was able to get some forward momentum, and continue southwards.

By the time I reached City Hall Park, though, I was hurting. I was just three blocks from home, but the futon was now resting more on my head than on my shoulder. I was drenched with sweat and weaving somewhat. The tourists, understandably, were giving me a wide berth. After one more block, I could do no more for the moment. I had to put the package down and rest.

Hoisting it onto my shoulder again proved problematic. To an outside observer, my efforts to do so no doubt looked like some sort of busker comedy routine: "Look, honey, that mime is pretending to be in a wrestling match! That's hilarious! What is that he's wrestling? It looks like some kind of bedding! How creative -- take a picture!"

At this moment, deus descended in his machina, in the form of a street vendor pushing a hand truck. "Would you like to borrow this?" he said. I stared at him in disbelief for about five seconds.

"Yes," I said. "Yes, I would."

The last two blocks of my journey were joyfully uneventful. Soon the futon was deposited inside our apartment, and minutes later, I returned the hand truck to the vendor's curbside souvenir-hawking table. I tried to press a five-dollar bill into his hand, but he smiled and said, "No -- I wanted to help you, and if you pay me, then I wasn't really helping you, was I? Thanks is enough." I thanked him profusely, and promised to remember his kindness. So thank you, Abdoul, West African immigrant, licensed street vendor, and kind-hearted human being. Greta now sleeps soundly as I write this on a (for now) firm and dust-mite-free bed.

A Midsummer Night's Retarded Husband, or, HCG Is A Helluva Drug, or, Sandy Made Me Write This

So these are some of the magical changes that pregnancy hormones have caused in Greta:

- Aversion to most foods -- breakfast cereal is the staple, and even that is reluctantly consumed
- Constipation
- Fatigue -- she sleeps ten to eleven hours a night, and is tired the rest of the time
- Hellacious flatulence -- and I mean vile. Like mustard gas. Satan himself doesn't fart like this.
- Irritability and sensitivity -- a couple of weeks ago, she burst into tears of rage when I gave her food that was too hot.

Obviously, this has been much more unpleasant for her than it has been for me ... it's just been difficult for me to remember that. As a mnemonic, I've been trying to visualize the hormones raging through her body as tiny, evil clowns, screaming with laughter as they zoom through her bloodstream.

I forgot to rely upon this mnemonic one night recently, when Greta pulled her hair back into a tight, folded-over ponytail. Watching her do this, I said to her contemplatively, "I don't like your hair like that." Before I could continue, "... all pulled back tight like that," she hit me in the side of the head with a bag full of oranges. No, not really -- but despite the lack of physical violence, it sort of felt that way. By the time she was done expressing her displeasure at my comment, I was sitting speechless on the couch, stunned and fuming. I had to go take a long walk to cool off, and we didn't make up until the next morning. I hate it when that happens.

The main lesson I learned: I am an idiot. First of all, it's foolish of me to take such outbursts personally; I must remember that my wife has been kidnapped by the HCG Faeries and replaced with a changeling.

Secondly, there is no doubt Greta's lot is much worse than mine (wherever she is ). Here's what pregnancy seems to be like for a woman: first you lose your mind for a few months, then you swell up like a biscuit in a hot oven, and finally you have to pass a bowling-ball-sized human through the most sensitive part of your anatomy. After which, a tiny, insatiable parasite latches on to another very sensitive part of your anatomy every two hours for many interminable months. My point is: compared to living with pregnancy, living with a pregnant person is nothing.

Actually, I'm pleased to report that Greta has slowly returned over the past week -- right on schedule. Tonight she was able to eat two black-bean-and-guacamole tacos and a piece of chocolate-covered marzipan. And she's a little sweeter and more patient every day.

I'm also pleased, if a little freaked out, to learn that this is Midsummer Eve -- when I started in on the Shakespeare references above, I had no idea!

I hear some laughter and door-slamming going on in our hallway ... perhaps it's just the pothead kid next door having some friends over ... or perhaps there is "dancing or leaping or diabolical chants" out there, as Saint Eligius promises. (By the way, how is it that when the devout issue their sternest warnings against sin, they always seem to actually be providing extraordinarily effective advertisements for the behavior they condemn?)

Nine weeks

Another week, another appointment with Dr. Wong (whose first name I misreported last time: it's Raymond, not James) and his magic wand.

This Thursday's ultrasound once again showed everything progressing normally. The inch-long fetus even wiggled about a little bit while we were watching the monitor, and once again, tears came to my eyes. Parenthood is going to be very difficult for me if causes me to cry as often as Greta (who sometimes, even when not pregnant, weeps during phone company and pet food commercials). "That's crazy," I marveled at the technological miracle of being able to spy on my offspring in what was, until the late 20th Century, the most private of locations. "Crazy wonderful," said Dr. Wong with a grin.

My only concern is that the child, as you can see, bears an uncomfortable resemblance to Mr. Met. Was Greta at Shea Stadium about nine weeks ago, by any chance? I'm going to check her credit card statements for ballgame-ticket charges. (Come on, would you trust this mascot freak with your spouse? Just look at that lascivious gesture he's making!)

In other news, I ran over the Brooklyn Bridge at dawn yesterday morning. No, I was not being pursued by zombies, which is the only reasonable excuse for behaving in such an insane manner -- I am enrolled in Stacy's Boot Camp, a group-fitness-program-slash-torture-cult. (The albino from The DaVinci Code would love it.) Or, more accurately, Greta enrolled in the program, but then found out about her delicate condition after the refund deadline had passed -- so I am pinch-hitting for her. Pinch-suffering.

First, my fellow enrollees and I ran the entire length of the bridge's walkway (1.5 miles, according to Google Maps) -- while being urged onwards by a friendly, granite-hewn sadist named Mauricio (one of Stacy's trainers). Then, we ran the entire way back -- but this time, we had to run sideways for 100 yards, stop and do pushups, run while bringing our knees up to waist level for another 100 yards, stop and do situps, and so on, for the entire return journey. On the first leg of the run, I was somewhat able to marvel at the transcendent beauty of the scenery; on the way back, I was mostly focusing on trying not to vomit from the exertion.

This is the sort of thing that it's better to have done than to do, and I do in fact feel proud of myself now for having done it. I've got one more session left, at 6:30 on Monday morning. I can't wait to see what Mauricio has in store for us this time ... perhaps we will have to scale the Empire State Building using only our pinky toes and our teeth.

Despite the pain, I figure that getting into better physical shape is good preparation for fatherhood, as is learning how to stave off one's urge to vomit.

Whiplash

So Greta's got this little thing in her that looks like a crawfish.

Greta took a home pregnancy test on May 10th, even though her Aunt Flo wasn't due for another day or two, because she remembered that we had, uh, "had relations" about fourteen days earlier. For those of you to whom this process is mysterious, that's right about the time that an egg would have come a-rollin' down one of her fallopian chutes, and then lurked about waiting to be assaulted by frantic sperms.

This was probably the hundredth pee-stick test that Greta had taken in the past year and a half, but the first in several months, because we had "stopped trying" for a while. "Trying" had proved too stressful and depressing, since it involved charting Greta's basal temperature, having sex-on-demand, checking cervical mucus, and innumerable pee-stick tests. These tasks are every bit as romantic as they sound.

This time, for only the second time ever, Greta's wee caused two parallel lines to appear on the peestick (the other time, almost a year ago, it turned out to be a defective test -- those bastards!). So she went to see her gynecologist on the 11th, and a blood test revealed that her bloodstream was teeming with pregnancy hormones. For the next two weeks, our conversations tended to run on one of three tracks:
- A cute little baby! We're going have a cute little baby!
- Our lives are over.
- Greta: I'm going to get really fat. Jim: For God's sake, shut up.

Actually, the crawfish picture is what the embryo looked like a couple of weeks ago, when things started to get extra-interesting. On our third wedding anniversary, Greta bled heavily for a few hours -- a terrifying experience. The next day, we went to see her OB/GYN -- a cheery fellow named James Wong -- again, and he did an intra-vaginal ultrasound. This is a procedure involving a small video monitor, a giant plastic dildo, a keyboard, and green goo. I would prefer not to describe it in any more detail.

I was standing at Greta's head (Dr. Wong was crouched elsewhere), leaning over her, peering at the monitor. Our child was visible as a vague, fuzzy, oblong cloud, and Dr. Wong informed us that a single, flickering pixel was its heartbeat. This, to me, was magical. Less magical was Dr. Wong telling us that he couldn't see the yolk sac, which feeds the embryo until the placenta forms, and is one of the many slimy, pulsating aspects of the miracle of biological life. He said that, based on the bleeding and the lack of yolk-sac visibility, he believed that the pregnancy was most likely not viable. Anything is possible, he added, but Greta should prepare herself for a miscarriage, which would likely be quite painful and last a day or two.

This is a little like being told, "I'm not completely sure, but someone's probably going to punch you in the face sometime in the next couple of weeks. Really hard." This tended to make the following week extremely stressful. Dr. Wong had scheduled us for another ultrasound on June 15th, but after a few days of hellish adjustment to the idea that we weren't going to have a cute little baby after all, Greta called and changed the appointment to June 8th (this past Thursday).

This time, we were expecting to see no more flickering pixel, and we were even prepared to hear Dr. Wong recommend a D&C. Instead, his magical electronic wand revealed a stronger heartbeat, an embryo that had grown to just the right size for eight weeks, and a clearly-visible yolk sac. "Perhaps it was obscured by something last time," said Dr. Wong cheerfully. Like, how much stuff is in a uterus anyway? Was the yolk sac hiding behind a sofa in there? In any case, it doesn't really matter: the verdict was, everything looked as it should. I felt an unexpected wave of relief (unexpected because I had convinced myself that I was fine with not having a baby), and tears came to my eyes. Then I remembered that I am a man and got ahold of myself. "I'll get out of your vagina now," said Dr. Wong. As he peeled off his gloves, he told us, "You're not out of the woods yet." He's still concerned about the fact that Greta bled that one day, so he wants us to keep coming back for weekly ultrasounds for a while. He also forbade us to have sex, which seems pretty unfair, considering what he's doing with that ultrasound wand.

This morning, I dusted off the stack of neglected pregnancy books that we had purchased a few weeks back, and began to try to get used to the idea of impending fatherhood once again. No doubt there will be plenty more opportunities for panic in the next seven months, but whatever happens, we'll get through it together. In the meantime, though, Greta feels nauseous all the time, and is living on breakfast cereal and Annie's Mac & Cheese.






PS: Because of the references to what she calls "her personal anatomy", Greta would like it known that she did not contribute to this entry. Hopefully she will soon be making G-rated entries of her own ...