The Main Event

7-5-2010

I call in sick Monday. I am beyond exhausted and starting to get freaked about our lack of a nursery. Despite my doubt of the whole nesting phenomenon, I apparently fell prey to it. My to-buy checklist goes mostly unchecked even after two baby showers. We haul ourselves to IKEA to put my jumpy mind at ease. I have faith that the Swedish are not as wedded to their gendering of décor as the pink v. blue Americans. I am not opposed to the pink and blue as colors, but the weight of their gender signifying ruffles my feathers. It’s odd that the choices seem to be pink, blue, or green. How did green become the Switzerland of gender colors?

As we peruse the walls of Scandinavian knick-knackery, a stuffed bunny rabbit driving a carrot catches my eye. I pick it up. I shake it. Rattle rattle.

“Look, hon,” I hold up my new furry friend. I shake it. Rattle rattle.

“Cute,” Mr. Crud says.

I put it back. Dare I fall in love with this bunny rabbit driving a carrot rattle? I pick it up again. Rattle rattle. I continue along the wall of stuff, directing myself back to the necessities: a rug, curtains, a night light. We peruse the curtain patterns. My mind is stuck on the rattle.

“Do you think it’s silly?” I ask.

“What?”

“The bunny in the carrot? I mean it’s totally silly to get it for a baby. Yeah, I thought so. I mean it’s not like he’ll want to play with a rattle fresh out of the womb.”

Mr. Crud squeezes my arm. “Honey, you can get it if you want. You’re allowed to buy toys.”

I realize that I have been holding back on the toy front for the same reasons I got teary-eyed when my mother-in-law lavished us with baby clothes during their previous visit. Superstition. The idea of an unused rattle stuffed in a box makes me want to break down crying.

I rush back to the bunny and toss it in our basket along with a few other animals driving various household items. I let myself get excited.

That night I lay down to bed a little later than usual. I’m feeling crampy, more menstrual crampy than contraction, but definitely crampy. Shit, I shouldn’t have called in sick. What if I’m coming down with something? I have so much work stuff left undone. I imagine the piles on my desk.

“You okay?” Mr. Crud asks after my tossing and turning enters its second hour.

“I’m feeling kinda crampy,” I say.

His eyes go wide.

“No, not like contraction-y, more just cramps.”

He reaches for his book, The Expectant Father, and turns to the list of pre-labor symptoms.

“Cramps can go on for days or weeks before labor,” he reads, breathing a sigh of relief. “It’s a pre-labor symptom.”

“Or labor.”

“Probably pre-labor though.”

“Yeah, that’s probably what it is. I just hope I can go to work tomorrow.”

He massages my shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. Just try to relax and get some sleep.”

I nestle back in with my body pillow. The cramps aren’t exactly painful, just uncomfortable enough to keep me from drifting off. I have a few is-this-it-?!!? moments, but I reassure myself that the cramps would be getting stronger and more regular if this was indeed it. I look at the clock. 11:45. Mr. Crud is sleeping soundly. I resign myself to a sleep-deprived day at work. Then I feel a twinge in my gut. Probably more Braxton Hicks. My guts start to roil. Onward to the bathroom. Diarrhea. Great. Are the cramps getting stronger or am I psyching myself out? I return to bed and nudge Mr. Crud.

“I’ve got the cha-cha-cha-s,” I say.

He grunts, flaps his hand around for the light and his book. Groggily, he reads, “Diarrhea can be a symptom of labor or pre-labor.”

“Yeah, I know. Don’t worry about it. You go back to sleep. I’m heading to the couch.”

I grab my copy of Caveman’s Valentine and make a pillow nest on the couch. I might as well get some reading done if I’m going to be up. I try to focus on the words, but every few minutes I am pulled away by cramps. I read the same page over and over again. I glance up at the VCR clock. The cramps are coming in 1-2 minute bursts every few minutes. I think back to our birth class. Contractions start to last longer once you enter labor. They don’t seem to be getting longer. Maybe this is just some intense pre-labor. Could it be? Nah. Pre-labor. Pre-labor, for sure.

Then as if to finally, definitively answer my question I am sent to the bathroom again for another round of bowel emptying. I stand up and feel something gooey slip out of my lady parts and splat in the toilet. Hello, mucous plug.

“Oh boy,” I say to myself. I flashback to that fine May morning in the bathroom with my little pee stick. Here we go.

I hunt around for the folder with all the necessary numbers that I was supposed to program into my cell phone so I can bask in the temporary illusion of preparedness for whatever is about to happen to my body and life. I find the folder from the first pregnancy. Then the one from the second. Finally I find the correct thick folder with all my appointments and birth class information. Why didn’t I label these?

I try not to wake Mr. Crud too suddenly. Wouldn’t want to frighten the little feller unnecessarily before I terrify him by necessity. I nudge his shoulder.

“Huh wha?” He mumbles.

“It’s happening. I’m in labor.” I say.

“How do you-“

“Mucous plug.” I say and a stronger contraction grabs me in the gut.

Mr. Crud pops up, immediately awake. I crawl into bed with him. Our doula and the birth educator assured us that first time labors take a long time. “Ignore it until you can’t ignore it anymore,” was the mantra.

Mr. Crud reaches for his book then another, hoping to find some universe where the passing of the mucous plug does not equal labor. It’s not looking good for his case against me being in labor. I climb back into bed and try to keep “ignoring” labor. I think of work and all the undone to-dos. Would it be crazy to run down to the office to tie up some loose ends? Yes, very crazy. But it’s on the way to the hospital. Still crazy.

I roll over and feel a trickle of water head down my thigh. The trickle gets gushier. “I think my water just broke,” I say.

We look at each other. Shit. It’s not just happening. It’s happening happening.

“What do we do?” Mr. Crud asks.

“First call the hospital,” I say, remembering that they want to hear from you if your water breaks. I roll out of bed, trying to walk in a way that does not splash the floor with fluid.

Mr. Crud flips to another page in his book. “What does the fluid look and smell like?”

“Um, water, I guess. Nothing?”

“They’re going to ask about it,” he says, a growing panic in his voice.

“I know. I think it’s fine. Just clear and odorless.”

I call the clinic. They transfer me to Labor and Delivery. As I wait to be transferred to the attending doctor, who I call Dutch because he reminds me of the same named character from The Shield, I feel a stronger contraction. I bend over and support myself on the dining room chair. Oh Nelly, this is getting realer by the moment.

“Hi Kt, I hear you might be in labor.” Dutch asks me the requisite questions—how far apart are my contractions, how long have I felt them, when did my water break, if the fluid has any smell or color.

“We’ll need you to come in to do a speculum exam to see if your bag of waters broke.” (I much prefer the term “water broke” to “bag of waters.” The latter makes me feel like I’ve got some saddlebags full of fluid hitched to my sides.) “It sounds like you can talk through the contractions so you have some time.”

“Good because we haven’t actually packed yet.”

“Oh! You better get packing.” He says.

“So you think we’ll be okay if we come in an hour or so?” I ask. I’ve heard many stories about going to the hospital too early and the resulting boredom and pressure for labor to progress. I want to keep with my ignore it until you can’t ignore it plan.

“An hour is fine. But don’t wait too long.”

I hang up. Another contraction. This one a bit stronger, a bit bite-ier on my sides. I catch myself on the hutch.

I call Dr. Awesome who asks many of the same questions and comes to the same conclusion as Dutch. I call our doula who assures me I’ve got time to pack. “You don’t need to rush.” Meanwhile Mr. Crud has dragged our suitcases up from the basement and commenced to packing.

Why didn’t I make a packing list? Why did I put off packing after numerous people and the freaking childbirth prep class urged us to be ready? Why didn’t we prepare our nursery in time? Shit. The contractor is supposed to come this Thursday to install the ceiling fan that looks like Earth from outer space, the one piece of décor that Mr. Crud was adamant we purchase.

SHIT! Purvis was supposed to marinate another week or two before making his appearance.

The next contraction sends me to my hands and knees. I remember our yoga teacher Tina’s advice to just let the sensation move through you and to move and vocalize in whatever way helps you deal with the discomfort. I rock back and forth and moan in as low a register as I can. Calling out in higher registers can cause the body to panic, the breath to halt so I remember to keep it low.

Mr. Crud dashes out from the bedroom. “You okay?” He kneels to my side.

The contraction passes. I catch my breath. “I’m fine now. This is really happening,” I say. I probably say some variation of “This is actually happening” (embellishing it with more curse words as the contractions strengthen) about a hundred times in the next 7 hours.

I pack as best I can pack, tossing a week’s worth of tank tops, pajama bottoms, sweatpants and underwear into my suitcase. I don’t forget the lavender room spray or my nursing bra. I pause every few minutes, drop to the ground and let the next contraction ripple through my body. For a few minutes we time them and Mr. Crud dutifully tracks them on the chart in his new bible, The Birth Partner, until we realize that it doesn’t really matter. We’re going to the hospital. My waters have broken and left the building. Well, not all of them. As I move around packing I have some more leakage and am forced to change out of a few pairs of my men’s boxer shorts and my red velour sweatpants. I get weirdly picky about which sweatpants I want to wear to the hospital. It’s not like I’ll be wearing them when Purvis is born, but I don’t want to completely abandon fashion. I flip through my pants in search of my “good” Lululemon sweatpants. And another contraction makes the sweatpants issue seem small and unimportant. I settle for the ratty Gap ones.

Mr. Crud brings a handful of CDs to me. “Which ones do you want?”

“I don’t know. All of them. I don’t care.” And the invisible contraction hand wrings out my mid-section once again.

I toss my bathrobe into the suitcase and tangle with the zipper. I have officially packed for an extended vacation. I feel something new in my nether regions. Oh my, is that pressure down below that I’m feeling? Why yes it is.

“Hon, we need to go now.” I yell. “I’m feeling the urge to push.”

“Don’t push,” Mr. Crud’s voice quivers ever so slightly.

All I’m thinking about is my friend’s friend who had her baby in the backseat of her Subaru en route to the hospital because she was too leisurely in getting out of the house when she went into labor. I know few things for sure at this moment, but one thing I do know is that I really don’t want to have Purvis in the back seat of our Subaru. I love a good story, but this is one best left to tell about friends of friends.

Things get blurrier here. Mr. Crud asks if I want to stop and get some Gatorade to help me keep my strength up during labor. No sir, no I don’t. The pressure in my perineum is growing by the contraction and I am not having this baby in our car. I think of Hamim as we zip down Powell Boulevard. He worried about traffic. Ha! No such problem for us. Even though the streets are deserted at 3 a.m., the journey feels like we are traveling by horse and buggy. After we descend the Ross Island Bridge we are caught at a stoplight. I stare at the pedestrian light for the road running perpendicular, praying for the blinking red hand that means our light will go green soon.

White walking man.

White walking man.

White fucking walking man.

If another contraction hadn’t ripped through me at that moment I would have yelled at Mr. Crud to blow the light. He felt my mental vibes. Later he says, “You wanted me to run that red light, didn’t you?”

“Oh hell yeah.”

“I mean it’s the one time we could use that excuse, but I was worried about getting hit. You never know…”

It’s true. Even on a deserted street, some jackass racing his douchebag buddy could come tearing out of nowhere. So much for our one time to have a perfect excuse to run a red light.

We wind up the hill to the hospital. (No snow. Yay!) Mr. Crud pulls up to the Emergency Room and grabs the most important of our overstuffed bags. He deposits me in a chair to writhe and moan through the next contraction while he talks to the woman behind the glass. “My wife is having a baby.”

A woman in a wheelchair wheels over from the waiting area and parks herself next to me. “You’re having a baby?” She says.

I nod and grunt, “Uh huh.”

Mr. Crud goes out to move the car. I await my wheelchair escort to Labor and Delivery. My new friend continues to chat like we are standing at the bus stop whiling away the hours.

“You barely look pregnant. I can’t believe you’re having a baby.” She says.

“Well, I am,” I say. If that’s not totally fucking obvious from the writhing in pain that I am doing. Now please go away.

“Is it a girl or boy?”

I shake my head. “Don’t know.”

She claps her hands together. “Oh, I hope it’s a girl. I don’t know why, but I really hope it’s a girl.”

The security guard looks up from his desk. We exchange a glance.

“Do you have names picked out?”

Another big one grips my uterus. My fingers dig into the cheap green plastic arms of the chair. “I’d prefer not to talk now,” I say. Why so proper, Ms. Manners? If I had one time when I could tell a looky-loo to move along in stronger terms, now is it. First the red light and now this. So many missed opportunities.

The double doors near the reception window swing open and a young fellow in blue scrubs helps me into a wheelchair, hanging my bags on the wheelchair handles. I rest on my left buttock. Somehow this makes the discomfort less uncomfortable. We navigate a maze of antiseptic hallways littered with gurneys and equipment. This ride also feels like it lasts forever.

Labor and Delivery. Hurray! A nurse emerges from the clump behind the desk.

“I’m Sarah. I’ll be your nurse.” She whisks me to a low-lit room, hands me a gown and a cup for a urine sample.

Once in the bathroom I peel off my clothes and attempt to pee. Another contraction. No urine sample today, I’m afraid. I pull apart the gown and try to make sense of the buttons and hooks to no avail. Even in non-labor conditions, I’d be hard pressed to figure it out. I emerge from the bathroom, naked with the gown in my hand. “I need some help.” Our doula told us that the less modest a woman becomes, the closer she is to labor. My usual level of modesty lasted approximately 5 minutes from the hospital’s sliding doors.

Sarah gets me dressed and on the table. She asks me the same questions everyone has asked me—Yes, I think my water broke, no odor, no color. Contractions are lasting 1-2 minutes, no complications so far, etc. She pulls up my file, and checks in on Purvis with the Doppler. His heart is thumping loud and proud. Thank g-d for that. Although I am fully aware that what is happening to me is to be expected, that it is what is supposed to happen and we are well within the time frame for normal, the fear persists. I remember Elizabeth McCracken’s devastating memoir about her stillborn child, how she had to give birth to her child fully aware that the only thing waiting for her at the end of her hard labor was devastation.

Mr. Crud reappears, checks on me, then puts in our chosen birth CD, Brian Eno’s “Music for Airports.” Our old massage therapist, the much loved and missed Francesca, played this CD during our massages and it’s always had a calming effect on me. He drags our over packed bags to a corner in the room. He squeezes my hand. We breathe. Here we go.

Dutch comes in with a medical student in tow. “Is it okay of Dr. Fresh-face observes?”

“Sure,” I say.

Another contraction takes me out of communication commission. They wait for me to finish.

“You have definitely progressed since we were on the phone,” he says. “You were still able to talk through your contractions.”

“Not anymore,” I puff.

Dutch tells me that they’ll be checking my cervix before the speculum exam to check on my bag o’ waters. I pray for a good result. What if all these contractions have been sound and fury signifying nothing? At least 5 inches, I think. C’mon cervix!

He checks me out. (Not with a tape measure or some tiny ruler contraption as I had once imagined. It’s done by feel.) “Okay, so you’re 8 centimeters dilated. I’m going to call your doctors and let them know that they should go ahead and come down now. We won’t need to do the speculum exam. You’ll be ready to start pushing very soon.” He turns on his heel and pushes back into the hallway, cell phone already in hand.

I detect a slight note of surprise in Dutch’s voice. I am surprised myself. This is really fucking happening and it’s happening right the fuck now.

(One of my big disappointments from the whole birth experience is that I did not exercise my license to curse with impunity. My sis-in-law remembers her temporary sailor mouth while she was giving birth to my niece. I had planned on letting the fucking-shit-motherfucker-cocksuckers fly freely, but it just didn’t happened. Please indulge my pottymouth now. As a writer, I must perfect in literature what failed me in life. I hope you read that last sentence with a la-dee-dah accent.)

Then I start to panic that Purvis will come before Dr. Awesome and Dr. Adorable arrive. Dutch and Dr. Fresh-face seem nice and competent enough, but I want my peeps here. I feel like we’ve been working towards this thing together.

“You better call Kelley,” I say to Mr. Crud. He is already dialing.

“She’s on her way.”

When a contraction comes I contract my pelvic floor, (don’t fail me now, mulabandha!) fearing Purvis might squish out if I don’t actively pull up. I groan. Mr. Crud holds my hand and lets loose a low “oooommmmm” whenever he hears my voice get high and whiny. People come and go. A group of nurses wheel in a gurney and move it to another part of the room that was previously closed off by a curtain.

“Is everything okay?” I ask Sarah, suddenly terrified that something is wrong with Purvis but they won’t tell me.

“Everything is fine. That equipment is there just to be safe,” she says, eyes on the computer screen in front of her.

I am both glad it is there and unnerved. The hospital’s job is to prepare for the unexpected, but it’s still freaky to see warming lamps and unfamiliar instruments.

Things get blurrier. Time gets elastic. Dr. Awesome arrives. Dr. Adorable is running late. Car problems, but she is working on getting here. Kelley arrives and comes to my side. “How are you feeling?” I had also been looking forward to all the bonus massage time I would get during early labor from Kelley. So much for that. I know I should not complain about a quick labor after hearing the horrific tales of exhaustion from friends and family who had long ones.

Another cervix check. “You can start pushing whenever you’re ready.”

It feels novel at first, the pushing. How does this work exactly. I press down. Ah yes, something is happening.

Oh there’s Dr. Adorable. She is visibly pregnant now and wearing it oh so well. She has the pregnant look that I so coveted—slim all over with a perfectly round bump.

“Hi Kt, I haven’t seen you in awhile,” Dr. Adorable says.

“And now you can see all of me.”

Always the comedian, even while naked, legs wide open, and lady parts hanging out for all the world to see. I have never been less modest than I am now, and, wow, I’m not even drunk.

Contractions come like waves and I ride them with Mr. Crud. The ooooommmms are my oars.

Dr. Awesome’s “Yeah, that’s how you do it” give me strength. She tells me at one point that she was surprised at how rectal giving birth felt. Oh, so it really is like pushing out the hugest turd of one’s life. That helps. My pushing gets more effective. All those tremendous craps that I took during my pregnancy sort of make sense now. I do hope they will end once I am no longer pregnant for the sake of my ass and our plumbing.

Purvis starts to emerge. “Your baby has hair! You want to feel the head?”

“NO,” I say. Somehow that seems gross to me. Also I worry that I will press too hard and injure Purvis before she is even born.

At a certain point, I enter the fog of birth. I just want to get this thing out of me, to end the agony down below. Although I am not a fan of the movie Baby Mama, I do concur with the character’s description of giving birth: It very much is like shitting knives.

I push and om and shit knives and cry and barf and spit and relax for one precious minute. Dr. Awesome tells me that she wants to do more fetal monitoring than we planned because Purvis’ heart rate isn’t in the range they hoped. Fine, whatever, let’s just do this thing. I writhe and Sarah follows my belly around. I get annoyed at the fetal monitoring paddles. I push. And then the pressure lessens.

“The head is out. One more push.” Someone says.

And then they are holding her up. “So is it a boy or a girl?” Dr. Awesome asks.

My eyes go to the umbilical cord and think, a boy. A boy with a huge penis. Did Jeff Foxworthy make some umbilical cord-penis joke? Sounds about right.

I look lower on the squirmy, crying purple bundle of joy.

“A girl!” Baby – 1, Intuition – 0. I guess all those dreams I had where our child was a girl were accurate.

I turn to Mr. Crud. “We don’t have to worry about circumcision! Yay!!” I realize how hugely relieved I am to not have to make that decision. Phew. Plus I have a daughter.

They put her to my chest and I gaze into her wide open eyes. Oh Purvis! You’re here. I look for any possible defects. Does she have Down’s Syndrome? (I remain suspicious that Purvis has some sort of defect that the doctors aren’t telling us about during our entire stay at the hospital. I reason that they wouldn’t let us go home without telling us about it so I finally relax when signing the discharge papers.) Does she have all her fingers and toes? Is she breathing right?

“She looks perfect,” Dr. Awesome says.

And she is perfect. 7 lbs, 20 inches, born at 6:59 a.m. on January 26.

I hear talk of Mr. Crud cutting the umbilical cord. I wait for the moment he does it to feel if it hurts. I don’t feel a thing. At least I don’t feel a thing umbilical cord-wise. Dr. Adorable is preparing to stitch me up and my downstairs is screaming in pain. Albeit less pain than a few minutes ago.

We attempt nursing. Purvis latches on a few times, which really fucking hurts. She gives me three hickeys on my left boob.

“She has a powerful sucking reflex,” Kelley says.

Oh my yes she does. And I will for the next three weeks have the burning nipples and visits to the lactation consultant to prove it. One doctor advises me to start pumping immediately and let Purvis feed from a bottle at night to give my boobs a break. Fearing nipple confusion, I do not heed this advice. Were I to do it over again? I would definitely heed this advice. All my crashing hormones and sadness is directed at my early troubles with breastfeeding. If it hurts, you’re doing it wrong, I hear and read over and over again. While I’m sure there was an element of doing it wrong at first, I also think my nipples just needed to toughen up.

They check Purvis out and she is great. A little bit of a racing heartbeat but that is common with babies who have such quick births. Dr. Adorable sews up some minor tearing. Dr. Awesome shows me the placenta. Pretty freaking cool, but I have no plans to eat or plant it.

They take my order for breakfast. Uh sushi and a martini? Nope, crappy eggs and a biscuit, but okay, any food sounds good at this moment. I give myself permission to eat without thought to fat content for the day. I must have burned some serious calories.

Mr. Crud and I are wired on love and fear. I can’t pinpoint the moment when we started being afraid that our precious Purvis would stop breathing, but it becomes the principle concern of our lives. We do not want to put her down for even a moment. I barely sleep the first night (and second and third) as I feel the need to check her breathing every few minutes. Even now 5 months later after one of us checks on her, the other will ask “Still breathing?” I have woken Purvis up more times than I care to count doing a breath check. Does this make me an attentive or crazy mom?

We stay in the hospital one day. Nurses come and go, giving their spiels on breastfeeding and the early days of motherhood. Yeah, yeah, I’ll sleep when she sleeps (except she only likes to sleep in our arms and we aren’t supposed to sleep with her in our arms so we devise a pillow propped position on the couch and only lightly snooze for the first month).

My biggest non-breastfeeding challenge is trying to pee after giving birth. It feels like I shat knives and then had to pore alcohol on the wound. The threat of catheterization is the only thing that gets my bladder to get working again and pushes me to brave the pain. I get way too excited about perineal ice packs.

Don’t get me started on the blood. The blood clots. The crime scenes I leave after each visit to the bathroom. I should have taken pictures for Chloasma’s first album cover. For the first few hours I share a room with a woman who had a c-section. I’m glad that she doesn’t have to use the bathroom because I don’t think I can apologize enough for the gross state that I leave it.

Mr. Crud and I are giddy and exhausted. It finally happened after so much. I am hormonal and teary. I think of Primo and Dewey and feel more loss than I thought I ever would for them, my poor lost embryos, but I’m also so glad that Purvis is here, breathing and crying and dotting my tits with hickeys.

We call our parents. Surprise! We try to eat our hospital breakfasts. We gaze at Purvis and brainstorm middle names. Since I was so sure that Purvis was a boy (and would be born after his due date), we spent most of our time coming up with boy’s names. Luckily we had a girl’s first name picked out, but not a middle name. We end up naming her after a citrus fruit and the soda we drink our first night in the hospital. She was almost Pomegranate. (For such a gorgeous and delicious fruit, pomegranate is a hell of a clunky name.)

Now 5 months later, I can’t quite believe it all happened, that this little person so proud of her flipping over, who adores kicking on the changing table at diaper time to Girl Talk songs wasn’t always with us. It feels like she has been here forever. It seems crazy that we were once so worried that she wouldn’t arrive.

I still think about Primo and Dewey, most especially on Mother’s Day when their loss stung me anew. I’m so sorry you can’t join our family. We have such a good time. I think about the folks who struggle with miscarriage and infertility. I try to remember how it felt even as those feelings fade more with each passing day. I don’t want to dwell in sadness, but I want to stay connected in case I am called upon to be comfort to someone in pain. I don’t ever want to be the person saying “It’ll all work out” just because it did for me. Or worse, “It was meant to be.” But mostly I think of how to get Purvis to nap for more than 30 minutes at a stretch, watch her push up during tummy time and wonder when she’ll start crawling, and make funny faces at her so she will laugh. Mr. Crud and I are very much in the moment and most of the time, that moment is good.

**This may be my last post on this blog. Who can say? There is plenty to blog about with Purvis, but I haven't decided if this is the appropriate venue. Anyway, thanks to all of you who read, commented, emailed me with your experiences and words of kindness. We did it! Peace to all of you out there who experience miscarriage and infertility.

The Final Countdown

**The first few paragraphs of this months old entry contain what they call foreshadowing. Sorry I have been remiss in my blogging duties, but I promise to have a GREAT excuse. To be continued... (sooner hopefully rather than months later).**

1-19-10

“You’re like a ticking time bomb,” my yoga pal says as we tug on yoga pants, mine barely fitting over the increased thigh-ass-belly area that is my own personal Bermuda Triangle.

“I know. I could pop at any moment.” I say. A fact that has started to worm its way into my brain. As Purvis will be my first trip to the birthing unit, I had assumed that she would be late. I was 7 days overdue. Or as Mr. Crud says, the due date was 7 days early. He is correct. Due dates are at best guesstimates.

Sunday night I lay in bed contemplating the tightness in my belly. Another Braxton Hicks (a.k.a. practice contraction) or is this the contraction that gets the party started? Oh shit. I am so not ready. My mind races to work and all the piles of unfiled papers, the documents on my computer that I’ve yet to transfer to a disc for my replacement, the snack drawer that needs cleaning, and on and on. I make mental to-do lists. I vow to at least get my affairs in order enough so that if Purvis makes his grand debut earlier than guesstimated, my office will not go totally off the rails. Fretting over work is so much easier than all the other great unknowns. Will Purvis be healthy? Did any of the genetic diseases we tested for sneak by the blood work and ultrasounds? Am I really the tough guy I think I am? Can I handle birth? Dang, we should have taken an infant CPR class before now. I don’t know how to use the car seat yet. How is this 8-pound thing in my belly going to fit through my innocent (well, relatively speaking) vagina? Ack! We don’t have crib sheets or diaper covers or breast pads or burp cloths! How can we take care of a tiny baby without a brother or sister-in-law to hand him to when diaper changing time comes around?

I toss. I turn. I kick Mr. Crud when he snores. How can he sleep at a time like this? I feel my belly tighten again before Purvis lodges himself under my right rib and wiggles. I contemplate what Purvis knows, what her consciousness is like right now as she curls into her favorite spot: head in pelvis, legs and feet tucked into my right ribs and hips. When I poke at him, he sometimes pokes back or at least wiggles around as if to say “Off my ding, lady.”

The first part of our weekend was more baby lessons. Mr. Crud and I arrive early and take seats in the back. One seat is covered with a thin pillow; the other with a blue-eyed plastic doll swaddled in a blanket. I move the baby to the floor. The blond woman in front of us looks familiar. She says over her shoulder, “I don’t feel right putting this under the chair.”

“Yeah, I guess you can’t do that with the real thing,” I say.

Where do I know her from? Then it hits me. Sara, our genetic counselor from the days of Primo and Dewey. She had the misfortune of counseling us for our two miscarriages, but somehow wasn’t in the office for our one success. Wow. This really is a walk down memory lane.

I lean forward. “Do you work as a genetic counselor?”

She turns to face me. “Yes.”

Recognition. “You were our genetic counselor. Last year. I’m Kt Crud.”

“Hi! Wow! It’s great to see you here.”

“We made it,” I say. Tears start to come to my eyes as I remember the last time we saw her, the box of environmentally friendly tissues she gave us to accompany us to our next stop to have blood drawn in preparation for my second D & C.

Mr. Crud returns and conversation shifts to our upcoming babies, the familiar laments about all the gear there is available and how we’re really not ready. The other couples filter in, most of them are from last week’s childbirth classes. Today’s mood is lighter, more optimistic. We’ve symbolically moved through the pain of childbirth and are on to the world of purple-faced wailing infants beyond. The fellows pick up the dolls and hold them in the crook of their arms while pregnant partners take the pillow seats.

The jinxing thought has the audacity to cross my mind: no Hamim and Azana. today. Right on cue, they shuffle into the room, taking the last seats as our teacher continues her introductory spiel about the benefits of breastfeeding. Mr. Crud and I exchange a look. Oh well. Here we go.

We watch videos of breastfeeding mothers and silently cheer when the babies successfully latch on. I am 100% pro-breastfeeding but my prudish side gets squirmy when I think of how my boobs will go public in the coming months. How will it feel to whip out a tit with my mom in the same room? Not to mention my father-in-law. My friends and sister-in-law breastfed with such aplomb and style that I feel I will be imitating them in the early days, faking it until I make it as the personal motivators say. How big will they get anyway? I’m still reeling from my first official bra fitting when the perky clerk hauled out the 38DDs. Moi?

The teacher warns us of growth when the milk comes in. “One guy said he went to bed with his wife and woke up with a porn star.”

A leaky porn star who had no interest in sex, but I get the idea.

We break for lunch. Cautiously I peer into the break room adjoining the conference room. No Hamim and Azana. Not that they aren’t nice people and all that, but it would be tempting to kindly request that they read a few pregnancy books and maybe not rely on the hearsay of their friends so much. Most of Azana’s questions begin with “My friend tells me…” and end with some claim about babies crying for 12 hours straight. “This is normal?”

Rachel and James, the couple Mr. Crud and I identified as people we’d most likely know otherwise in the class, invite us to join them. Rachel is high-risk. She knows her due date because she has a scheduled c-section. I am curious but I let it be. Are they fellow travelers in Miscarriage World? I’ll let that bummer ride for now. Now is the time to talk about crazy family invasions and incomplete nurseries and more wide-eyed holy shit moments. I jump the gun and imagine us as new parent friends. Rachel and I would meet for tea while our babies snoozed on our chests. Mr. Crud and James would exchange dude tips about supporting their ladies during the hellish first 2 weeks when a baby must feed every 2-3 hours. (“You mean we have to wake them up to feed them even if they’re sleeping?” a classmate asks. The teacher nods with curled lip. “Yep.”) At the end of the day I will trail Rachel and James to the elevator, wondering if I should ask them for their phone number and try to extend our birthing class comradery. We reach the elevator. Rachel veers off to the bathroom. James takes a seat and looks out the window at the foggy afternoon.

“Good luck,” Mr. Crud says.

James nods. “You too.”

If Purvis is a week late we may see them again. Guess we’ll be letting the chips fall where they may.