Week 33: Status Report

Most frequently asked questions:
When are you due? [Insert comment about how “huge” or “tiny” I am here.]
Do you know what you’re having?
Is this your first?

Uncomplimentary comments people don’t think twice about voicing:
Looks like you’re having a big baby.
I doubt you’ll make it to your due date.
Your stomach looks pointy. (From my husband.)

Current symptoms:
Itchy belly
Near-constant case of baby hiccups
Pinched nerve in my back that comes and goes

Current number of friends who are pregnant:
4 (not including T., who gave birth to a baby boy yesterday!)

My parents were visiting this past weekend, so I took the opportunity to ask them what they remember about my birth. The short answer: not much. It seems that by the time you get to the second kid, it’s old hat. Also, because my brother’s birth was so dramatic (18 hours of labor culminating in an emergency C-section), mine was sort of anticlimactic. As my father put it, “It was less traumatic the second time. It happened so fast and then there you were.”

I arrived early. My mom was scheduled for a Cesarean on a Tuesday. But when she showed up for her checkup on Friday, she was in labor. “They kept saying, ‘But you can’t be having this baby. You’re not scheduled till Tuesday,’” recalls my mom. “And there I am [huffing and puffing] saying, ‘What do you mean?!’” It soon became pretty clear that she was, in fact, having the baby.

The part of my birth story that has become part of family lore is when my dad almost got kicked out of the hospital for plugging in his Super 8 movie camera and spotlight over the hospital bed. He’s always been a big gadget guy, the first to get the very latest technology. My childhood memories are plagued with images of cameras and microphones being shoved in my face, awkward phases and non-camera-friendly gestures being forever preserved for posterity.

So, anyway, the hospital staff came in and scolded him, quite rightly concerned that his energy-sucking camera apparatus might short out the medical equipment.

As for my brother, he remembers absolutely nothing about my birth. Of course, he was only 2 ½ at the time. My parents say he did suggest once that they put me in the dryer. Apparently that seemed to him like a good way to deal with this new interloper.