THE HALCYON DAYS

I wrote this quite a few weeks ago...

These are the halcyon days.  Sitting on the grass in the late summer sun, no nausea or fatigue, my husband working on the vegetable garden that will one day soon provide food for our baby.  Me with my legs outstretched, my loyal anti-nausea friend (a bottle of sparkling mineral water) by my side, the baby book of 75 000 names lying in my lap.

“Ohhh, Eden.  That’s lovely,” I say, “what do you think?”

“Sounds like a porn star,” he says, turning the soil in what will be the strawberry patch.  “My job as her father is to keep her off the pole.  Not help her up onto it.”

“Ok, how about Mannix?”

“As in Mannix depressive.”

“Zander.”

“From the planet?”

“Tuaco – it means the eleventh born child in Ghana.”

“We are not having eleven babies!” We both say in unison.

“Miles?”

“Like the singer?”

“Faze?”

“Are you ok today?”

“Rania?”

“Definitely not.”

“Ravin.”

“Sounds like a pro-wrestler’s name.”

“Rex.”

“Like the dinosaur.”

“Sheldon?”

“Nerd in glasses.”

“Silvester?”

“Stallone.”

“Soren.”

“We are not Vikings.”  He stops shoveling and turns to face me.  “There are seventy-five thousand names in that book and this is what you come up with?”

“Seventy-five thousand just means that seventy-four thousand of them are dreadful,” I say and shut the book with a sigh.

Perhaps this is why Mother Nature gives you nine months.  In the vein hope that by the time the baby arrives the parents will have at least decided what to call it, if nothing else.

Apparently when you are expecting a baby in Germany, you take your name suggestions into the name deciding office and they tell you if you’ve chosen wisely or not.  In Denmark there’s even less freedom.  There, you pick your baby’s name from a government-approved list. 

Maybe we should try this with celebrities, then we wouldn’t have these poor kids walking around answering to Tree Bark, Thank-heavens-it’s-Sunday-Petunia, Stargaze-ray and Tarragon. 

It is a very serious thing to pick your baby’s name.  I mean forget the fact that you also have to rear it and teach it to be a good human and spell and make its bed and what-not, but the name picking is crucial indeed.    Choose badly and you can really screw things up for them.  You must consider the name’s meaning, make sure you say it with their surname and think of every conceivable nickname so you can try to avoid your kid being picked on in the playground.

With a newfound respect for the sanctity of the task, I reopen the book and start at A…Aba meaning born on Thursday.

Seventy four thousand nine hundred and ninety nine to go.

WHEN OH WHEN WILL I FEEL PREGNANT?

When do I start to feel pregnant?  I mean really pregnant.  Not nauseas or hormonal or starving or exhausted, but pregnant.  Glowing and maternal with a lovely bump in my front.  Currently all I have is a pooch when I stand and a big fat roll when I sit, which does nothing for my self-esteem and is making me start to believe all the baby books that tell us mamas-to-be that any weight we don’t lose naturally post pregnancy is because we overate during the 9 month gestation period.  Harsh isn’t it?  Particularly when I was convinced the peanut wanted plates of creamy pasta for dinner and packets of tim tams for dessert.  Initially I was doing alright because I wasn’t drinking but those lost calories seems to have been easily replaced with copious amounts of legal hard cheese, bread, vitawheats and banana bread (which we all know is cake masquerading as something healthy).  Ah well, it’s a journey, just like our three month food-and-drink-orgy road trip and I bounced back from that ok.  It would help if it wasn’t always raining of late, I would be far more compelled to get out there for a trot if I knew I wasn’t going to have to swim part of it instead.

This sounds distinctly like I’m having a whinge, so I shall stop right here and go and have breakfast.  Scrambies, mushrooms, homemade baked beans and fresh sourdough bread topped liberally with fresh salty butter.  Delish, though i suspect it's also part of the problem.  Any clues bloggies?

BANNED FOODS FOR PREGNANT WOMEN

You know, it’s not the alcohol I’m missing.  Which is odd when you consider the love affair I was having with gin and tonics.  Great, glorious, stiff gins, a dash of tonic and plenty of fresh lime.  Delish. 

I think your body helps you out by making the taste of it quite repulsive (at least to my taste buds) and the same thing has happened with my other vice…coffee.  Don’t even want to smell it these days, yet less than four months ago, I’d happily consume three, even four cups in a single day.  Mother nature is very clever indeed. 

What she didn’t do, however, is cure my love for soft cheeses, turkey melts, (I don’t know what my chef husband does to make it taste so good, but somehow sourdough bread, avocado, tomato, swiss cheese, mayonnaise – another baby no-no – and mustard are combined to produce the most scrumptious lunch or late night snack) medium rare steak and sushi.  I wonder if Japanese women give up sushi?  We know the Europeans don’t give up wine.  Or cigarettes for that matter, and their kids seem to be doing alright. 

It’s very hard to keep it all straight in your head.  I was taking a multi-vitamin thinking I was doing the right thing (since I was allergic to the iodine in the special baby vitamins) but I’ve since discovered vitamin A can damage your baby.  Then I had some salami and realised later it’s probably in the same category as sliced turkey.  I’ve also been tempted by my late night shopping habit (when all the specials go into place) to pick up a bargain with the roasted chickens.  I rationalise that the peanut knows a bargain when it sees one too, which prevents it from catching whatever it is you can catch from a roasted chicken sitting on the shelf from god knows when until I pick it up at 11pm that night.  Oysters I had only recently acquired a taste for so I’m coping without those, but trying to navigate the minefield of pregnancy-authorised fish is another thing entirely.  Nothing deep sea, which means no swordfish and most likely a dozen others I accidentally ate, and tuna only once a week.  Do you think that includes tinned tuna, because I lived on that for 7 years in New York and it is very dear to both my heart and my stomach.

So far the peanut seems to be coping with its mother’s tardy eating habits okay, but I guess we won’t know for sure until it pops out.  Or tries to learn to read.  Blimey, the parenting mistakes I can make are absolutely endless.  Whatever made me arrogant enough to think I could pull this off?

I OWE IT ALL TO BABY PEANUT

A never before encountered incident has occurred in the life of baby-carrying Naomi.  My mammary glands are kicking in for some hard labour towards the end of the year and as a result have expanded to something a woman can almost be proud of.  Having been somewhat challenged in that department my entire life, this is a startling and most welcome change.  I’ve even had a couple of honks while I run and I like to think that this is the reason and not because I’m now running so slowly it looks concerning to a passerby.  I planned this deliberately folks.  Baby due right at summer time so I can make maximum use of my new chest and indulge in a secret long-time longing to wear plunging, v-neck, cleavage showing tops!  I love you Peanut, bring it on!!!!

RELAXIN JACKED ME UP

I have just returned from the physio.  It appears that all the relaxin steaming through my pelvis (nature’s way of helping me get a bigger cavity to extract the peanut) has had a conflict with my running.  I have jacked up my left hip.  That’s not the technical term the physio used, but I can never remember those latin muscle names, it was one of the many reasons I gave up on dreams of medicine.  Kindly, he has given me a free bottom lift and taped up my right butt-cheek, which I suspect is not going to make my running any easier.  But never fear, last time I went to yoga they taught me to breathe through my left nostril which apparently is anti-anxiety breathing, to which my big brother replied “I’ve got a deviated septum and haven’t been able to breath through my right nostril my entire life.  Stop oxygen depriving my niece or nephew.” 

This exercising while pregnant thing is more complicated than you would think.  Which is why im considering returning to the pool.  Though, it’s been so long since I swam the black line that my goggles have turned into a sticky mess that once resembled rubber and I only own a bikini top and swimming shorts for wear.  But I think a bikini is a perfect option given that my middle is going to do nothing but expand.  It may well overwhelm my fellow paddlers (I will probably look like an albino whale) but that’s ok.  Once the peanut is out, ill be back to running and never see them again anyway!

TOO LATE NOW

My husband and I went to the Birth Centre today to check out the location for our peanut’s arrival.  It doesn’t look too bad if you forget what it is you’re meant to be doing in there.  Double bed with side tables, huge bathtub and shower.  Couch, exercise mat, (that’s a bit ambitious I would have thought) outdoor private verandah, (with a wall too high for my husband to climb and escape) but no music player.  I will have to bring my own, as I suspect I’m going to need Eye Of The Tiger on repeat to get me through this experience. 

No mini-bar, no decorations and no carpet.  It looked like the cheap, Spartan motel you might stay in to break a long drive, and if I’m not too distracted when I go back, I’ll be sure to check the nightstand for a Gideon’s copy of the bible.

I was concerned at how quiet the centre was, until another mum-to-be (who was only a few seconds pregnant but had already done an embarrassing amount of research) told me that the walls are deliberately sound proofed.  Sure enough, when I listened closely, I could hear the dull, but unmistakable anguished cry of a woman in a considerable amount of pain.  I don’t know which is worse, muffling it so you don’t know the full extent of their misery, or just letting us mums-on-the-way hear it like it is, since it’s too late for us to back out now anyway.

The midwife who gave us the tour was a nice, no-nonsense German lass who hid her disapproval of assisted births behind her thick, formal accent.  She didn’t outright condemn them, she just said things like “of course, we can’t stop you having an epidural, you just won’t be given one here.  For that, you are moved into the labour ward,” she says.

I do love the idea of a so called natural birth, but I am also aware that this birthing gig really hurts and just like I intended to run a marathon this year, sometimes the best laid plans are better rechecked by someone who is a lot smarter than you.

“We offer hot showers to help with your pain,” the midwife says as if we’re just dealing with a bump on our head, “and some women find walking and breathing helps,” she adds, but trails off when she sees our faces.

Walking and breathing?  Is she serious? That’s what she wants me to use to get this thing out of me?

The good part is, there is always an out and I ain’t too proud to use it.  I can, at any point, raise the white flag and tell them I want the big drugs.  The midwives will leave the room in a huff of unrefined organic disdain and I’ll be left to pack up my high-energy ice cubes and heat packs all by myself, and do the walk of shame past the reception, across the lobby, through the swinging doors, (which could, I imagine, resemble the pearly gates of heaven) and into the hallowed, drug providing labour ward where I can get stuffed with as many and any things that might help me reach my end goal.

I take a glance at my husband, my birth partner, the man to bring me through this ordeal.  “Where’s the tv?” he asks, looking around the room, “didn’t she say this labour thing can last for hours?” 

TALES AND TUMMYS

Today our embryo turned ten weeks old and is now referred to as a foetus.  Weighing in at 4 paperclips, and with fully formed ears and upper lips, it has also started breathing (inhaling the amniotic fluid) and has decided (quite wisely I would say) to abandon its tale so it stops resembling a dinosaur and work on looking like its parents more desired result – a human. 

The book I am reading goes on to say that I may even be starting to show – which I am, a lovely little pooch that I am quite enamored with, but it follows by saying that has nothing to do with my baby, and is in fact, my distended bowel.

Now I’ve always eaten a lot (I remember as a little girl being embarrassed at sleep-overs as I always ate more than the other girls and still came home starving) and I will concede that growing your own penis or vagina (which also happens in week ten) sounds like terribly hard work, but does that really mean I need to consume the following all within a four hour period;

4 grilled asparagus

one hard poached egg (yes I did read the dangerous food sections and have abandoned my loves, the runny egg)

one grilled tomato

one slice of brioche

half an almond croissant

half a bowl of fruit salad (I had to share it with my friend’s two year-old son)

one orange

one tin of baked beans on a slice of sourdough toast and,

four large salt and vinegar rice crackers with spicy capsicum dip on them (which yes, I now realise is on the banned list and probably means my kid will come out with that tail after all). 

When my friend fell pregnant, her nutritionist told her all she needed in terms of extra caloric intake was the equivalent of half a cheese sandwich.  Half a cheese sandwich!  Pre-prego days I could eat that on my way to the table for dinner.  That’s not even a snack, doesn’t even count as an appetiser, it’s just something you grabbed on your way past the fridge.

The book continues by saying that if a woman only puts on the weight necessary for carrying the baby and breastfeeding, she will have no trouble regaining her pre-baby weight.  The additional one to two kilos most mothers tend to find difficult to lose, is not, the book claims, the fault of the baby, but the fault of the mother instead. 

Quite simply, it says, we have over-eaten whilst carrying our young.

That seems a bit unsympathetic to me and I beg to differ. 

I rarely eat pasta, haven’t even bought it in the last seven years, I don’t really like it, it tastes like glue.  But now I do.  Copious amounts of it, wrapped around homemade Bolognese or creamy carbinara. 

This is not me, this is the baby inside.

And brownies too, dangerously dropped off by a thoughtful friend.  Now those I would have indulged in pre-baby as an afternoon or evening treat with a steaming cup of caffeine included tea.   I would not have had it for lunch.  In main meal size portions.  Eating until there weren’t anymore brownies left to eat.

And then, after eating to satisfy the alien inside, I am lured to my bed, or couch or head first down on the desk if it’s all I can manage.  Anywhere I can shut my eyes and wake up ninety minutes later with numb arms, drool down my cheek and paper lines embedded on my face.

I’ve never been a napper, in fact I sort of considered people a bit of a daytime failure if they took one, but now I am possessed.  There is nothing I can do to prevent these afternoon siestas.  The worst part being that I awake and feel none of the refreshment such an afternoon luxury should provide.

Eating and sleeping, sounds like every person’s ultimate dream.  But it’s hard to pull off when you’re trying to keep the reason for your hunger and lethargy a secret.  The only thing I have thought of to say is tapeworm and a serious, but undiagnosed case of narcolepsy.  People seem to be buying it so far, which doesn’t say much for me.  Two more weeks and then I might post a list of activities my body has been up to and see if people want to judge my behaviour then.  I dare you to grow a new person’s limbs on half a cheese sandwich.  I reckon you’d get as far as the big toe and that wouldn’t do at all.