Friday, February 11, 2011

THE FOURTH TRIMESTER

 The other day I opened the mail to find a loyalty card from a maternity store I bought a dress at…six months ago. Are they confused? I am not an elephant. The gestational period of a human is in fact 9 months, not 22. On the same day I got a text message from the agency I did some maternity modelling for, asking me if I was available.
Available, but no longer pregnant, if that’s what they were looking for.
To be fair, there is some argument that babies are born too early and their first three months on earth is actually their fourth trimester.
Just quietly, I don’t reckon I would have wanted to play a part in evicting the peanut from her uterine home had she been allowed to grow for another three months. It was tight enough quarters as it was.
But there might be something to that field of thought. Think about other animals – dolphins are born and they can already swim. Foals can already walk. Birds learn to fly pretty quickly, snakes can already slither.
But what can baby humans do? Not a heck of a lot.
To be blunt, they’re completely dependent. Cute, adorable, cuddly and all that.
But useless. Utterly useless. No chance at all that they’d survive without us.
How would the peanut get to the local café if not for me pushing her in her chariot?
How would she keep clean if not for her daily shower and massage with her doting father?
It’d be pretty hard for her to organise her own play dates without consulting me first. Talking – she’s rubbish at. Walking, crawling even – months away at least.
And as for changing her own nappy, not a snowball’s hope in hell.
Monday marks the end of her fourth trimester and I expect to see a marked improvement in her abilities. We can start low and slow. Feeding every three instead of two hours would be a nice start. So would sleeping during the day for longer than 35 minutes. I’ll continue to do the more challenging tasks for the next few months at least, but I’m on the lookout for advanced behaviour, the peanut might finally be ready for the world!

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