Dramamine Queen

I knew that I pregnancy would unleash some hormones on me and last week while I teared up over coffee chain commercials I thought to myself  “Oh I am so hormonal.” 

I was wrong. So, so wrong.

At nine and a half weeks I lost the plot. I started bawling uncontrollably and have stopped briefly to go to work(HA! Who am I kidding I bawled at work.). The hurricane seemed to be called fear and it has been whipping me around inside it like a rag doll since.

It started simply by the the thought of how it has just been Jonathan and I for ten years. A decade of our lives spent together doing our own thing, only responsible for a dog and a cat. Our yearly trek to Montreal, our late nights listening to records and having drinks, our weekends lying in bed snuggling and falling in and out of sleep. Us as a duo. It is all going. The fear makes me doubt if I am truly ready for that.

What if my mother was right? What if children do ruin my life? What if I regret and resent our child for taking away something I loved? What if I am just not ready? I have not yet seen Paris. I have not done so many things. What if I become my mother? I am so afraid that I am making the biggest mistake.

I know how that sounds. Like I am a horrible evil person. I have always wanted children. I have spent the last 9 years knowing that I would have them with Jonathan, that I want them with Jonathan. We came up with names we talked about it. This was not something we decided on a whim. Now though, there is a large olive sized baby growing inside me and the hormones are drowning me in so much doubt.

I am so afraid. Afraid that these feelings will stay forever. Afraid that if I hold all of this in it will eat me alive because it hurts so much but I have to purge it because I am afraid that if I say it out loud it will become true.

I have worked for the same company for almost 5 years. It’s the longest I’ve ever worked anywhere. I started as a temp receptionist and now am work on a team of 4 people.

When I started there were about 80 or so people. As of today there are about 17.

See the company that bought us a few years back decided that we didn’t fit their core product and decided to try to sell us. In this economy we had no buyers so now they are just shutting us down. If we stay to the end we will get a nice little severance package. 

I don’t mind my job. What makes it good though is that I have one really awesome friend here. At least I did. Because as of next week there will only be 16 people in the office.

I’m happy for him of course, he’s going on to greener pastures.  But I feel so completely sad that the first night that I knew he was leaving I woke up in the middle of the night and had a panic attack about it.  I try to imagine what work is going to be like without him and I just feel like deflating. It’s not like there is no one else nice here but there is no one as awesome and we’ve spent the last 4 years or so cultivating this awesomeness. I see photos of guys he’s going on dates with and he knew that I was going to pee on a stick before I did.  We have even cross border shopped together and he didn’t blink when Jonathan bought 70 odd beers to bring back and I encouraged him to buy the Doritos we had never seen before. When I see hilarious things I often text him right away. When he travelled to Europe he IM’d me AND brought me back cool chocolates! That’s the kind of friends we are.

I keep forgetting that he’s leaving. I know he’s not leaving me but it feels like it.  Obviously we are still going to be friends but it’s different when you don’t see each other 5 out of 7 days. I’m pretty sure I spend more hours of the week with him than with Jonathan! Jonathan jokingly calls him my other boyfriend.

I’m happy though. I’m happy that he’s going to a job that is stable and pays him what he’s worth(well at least closer to it than here.) and I keep telling him that all he has to do is keep that job for about a year and 9 months and then he can make his big move and I can just take over his old job! I think I’m mostly afraid that he’s going to go there and find another me or a better, funnier me.

I remember I had this friend in public school. We were thick as theives. I went and sat with her for hours every time she got her hair permed, I sat through that eggy stench while her scalp burned and our eyes teared up. We were going to move to California, hopefully somewhere near Disney World and we’d date Hollywood actors. We were going to open our own marshmallow store in the woods by our house(seriously don’t ask!)  Our moms even worked together.

Then one day she told me she was moving away. Oh how we cried. We promised up and down that we would be friends for life and never lose touch. We would write each other every day and talk on the phone once a week. For a while we did. But as those things usually go every thing trickled down and eventually stopped.

I’m still afraid of that trickle down even though I’m 3 times as old as I was now and theres the magic of the internet. I’m always afraid of being replaced.

Well my parents came over on the weekend.
To tell them I put my due date 10.4.10 in a frame and wrapped it up in Christmas paper.
I told them it was a present I had forgotten to bring them over the holidays and handed it to my mom. Who then took about ten years opening it. She stopped and told a story about some guy they know and I kept looking at my sister and she was like “MOM JUST RIP THE PAPER OFF!!!” and eventually she did.
“Oh what a nice frame! Now we have something to put a wedding photo in!”
Oh this was going to take a while.
So I go “Theres already a photo in it.” and she stares at it and says “Oh it’s your wedding date?”
“Noooooo. It’s ten, four, ten.” and she just keeps looking at it and my sister and I are wondering if we actually came from this woman. Who for some reason thinks that we got married last year in the future. I suddenly see that my dad gets it and were all talking really slowly to my mom trying to get her to figure it out on her own. Finally Jonathan goes “How many months away is that? Is it about eight months?” seriously it was painful.
Finally she gets it and literally bursts into tears “Oh my god are you pregnant?” for a fleeting moment I thought of saying that I wasn’t and that we were actually moving out of the country on that date but I supressed the urge.
Barely.

I told her how I was meeting my midwife this week and how I was planning a home birth.
She said something about how she was great with midwives because that is what her mom used and I told her right then and there that she was not invited. I knew I would have to tell her eventually and really the quicker the better. Even though I know she will still lie to everyone and tell them I she is attending. There is no way in hades that she is going to be near me when I give birth. She drove me crazy when my sister was in labour, my sister had me basically push my mom out of the room on several occassions or block her from meddling. My sister wanted to kill her. My mom wouldn’t listen to my sister and refused to believe that she wanted her to leave. It was incredibly frustrating to deal with.

I don’t even plan on calling them when I do go into labour because my mom joked that they would just sit outside in the car. Except I doubt she was joking.

I realise I sound like an uber bitch. An ungrateful brat whose mom just wants to be there for her. I do love my mother but she spent too many years trying to be the cool friend and any mother daughter bond that we might have had when I was little was warped by her need to prove she was young and cool and could party. Iam not calmed or soothed by her and really she does not do well in certain situations and child birth would be one of those. So she’s not invited. End of discussion.

I got my hair cut a few weeks ago. I knew what I wanted. I have had pretty much every hair style and colour under the sun, seriously you name it chances are I sported it for at least 5 minutes.  Actually no, I lie, I have never had green hair, green hair looks good on no one.  My problem is I have not been able to find a stylist that I love in the city. I have had exactly one good hair cut the whole time I have lived here and of course it just happened to be the most expensive hair cut too. So I go to a new stylist and tell her I just want my hair cut all one length. Easy right? I needed about an inch and a half off and that was it. Somehow she talks me into some light layers and even though I know I do not want them I find myself agreeing. I swear the salon shampoo has some sort of mind control drug in it that makes you agree to things you normally wouldn’t. This would explain a lot of hair I see actually. So she cuts the layers. Except the first/top layer is chin length, about 4 inches shorter than I wanted it. But its cut so what can I do? Except when my hair is chin length it does this forward swoop thing naturally so when its dry and not straightened its like I’m wearing a bob wig over the rest of my hair. At least I can still get it all back in a pony tail.

Its not my worst hair cut. In grade 8 my mom brought me to a fancy salon and I brought a photo of a short bob. Instead the woman gave me about a million layers. Sort of like this one:

At least in my head that’s how I remember it, maybe a bit longer. It did look good as I strutted out of the salon. It had about a half can of Paul Mitchell hair spray on it and had been painstakingly blown dried with a tiny round brush for the better part of an hour. It was my first real hair style. Up until grade 7 I had never even had anything more than a trim. Thanks to my pseudo hippy parents I had Crystal Gale style hair.

I would have been 12 or 13 when I went to the fancy salon. Which is about 15 years too young to have a hairstyle that involves more than 3 minutes worth of effort to get it to look nice. Oh I tried. I got up extra early and tried in vain to coax it into anything that resembled its salon state.

After about a week of failed attempts I finally figured out the only way to style it that wouldn’t reduce me to tears was to use a silver barrette I had and pull back the top layers and pulled the rest into two tiny ponytails or leave it to fend for itself. I wore it like that until it the top layer reached my chin and I went and got it cut all one length.  I probably made Goodie clips stock sky rocket that year because it was the longest 7 months of my life.

Right now at this very moment I am so mad at my bra. It is so uncomfortable. I might as well be wearing one made of coconut halves because that I’m sure would be a million, trillion times better than this. I’m sure it doesn’t help that my boobs feel like they are full of giant marbles of pain and they don’t feel at all like they belong to me.  It’s like I’ve got phantom boobs. Phantom Dolly Parton boobs.

Right now I have 3 comfortable bras and 2 of those are sports bras.  Out of the two sports bras only one is actually somewhat wearable outside of the house. Double bleh.

Do I go and buy cheap comfy bras like every two weeks? Will I ever stop talking about my tits? Oh my god.

My in-laws have been told. Except they didn’t have the reaction I was hoping for. There was no crying or screaming with joy. Instead my Mother in Law asked where the photo was, she couldn’t understand why there wasn’t an ultrasound photo. Then she said that they figured it was something like that and that at Christmas she thought something. She obviously forgot that on Boxing Day I had to go to Walmart to buy pads and tampons and was bed ridden with a sore back and cramps. They said the same thing when we eloped, that they had a feeling that we were going to in Montreal. She asked when we were going to find out if it was a boy or girl and I told her we weren’t going to she said “Oh well you’ll probably change your mind.”  oh. ok. Thing is I adore my In Laws. A-D-O-R-E them! So it’s kind of odd when they do things that make me think “Reeeeealllly?”

Maybe it’s because I’m not their daughter. 

My parents will find out on the 21st. My sister thinks they will cry and freak out. But in a good way. Not like when they found out she was pregnant and my mom burst into tears and told my sister she was so disappointed in her. Yeah nice. My sister thinks that because were married and I’m the first born and we were trying that my parents will cry and freak out with joy. We shall see.

Oh fuck this is turning into a pregnancy blog. (Sorry Lynn!)

6 weeks. I have never counted anything in weeks. When people tell me their child is 28 months old I feel like banging my head against the wall. Because you know what? That child is 2 years and 2 months or just over two.  Now I’m counting things in weeks. I cannot very well say that I’m a month and two weeks. Oh well.

Which means that I’m something like 34 weeks(give or take) from adding to the population of this world.

I’m excited but, also I’m fucking scared and freaked out. Not all the time but sometimes it creeps over me and suddenly I’m thinking about how there is actually another human being growing inside me and seriously it freaks me out. Why cant we just sit on an egg for a bit? Actually never mind I just visualised that and that was even more freaky. Plus we don’t have beaks so we would have to crack open the eggs with little hammers or big spoons. Humpty Dumpty come to life.  I try to remember that its not some freaky mad science but instead its something amazing and wondrous that’s happening.  In the end I get a child. Its truly mind blowing.

The part of me that is not thinking about scenes from Alien is excited and planning and missing red wine. That part of me is for the first time bringing out this woman who is already trying to do everything just right for her child. Trying to give them the best possible start at this thing we called life. I’m eating almost all organic foods, I’m taking all the vitamins and supplements I should be, I’m drinking so much water, which is a pain because whoa do I suddenly have to pee all the time. I’m doing yoga and light weights and meditating. I’m trying to keep calm.  Its funny how these are all things I should have been doing before because they are good for me but now I do them because they are good for the baby and I suppose me.

I spent the weekend in my home town visiting my best friend. Her son has sideburns now which made me giggle. I had these grand plans to tell her all about my new baby friend which involved finding a photo booth and telling her between photos. Except the mall we were at only had those awful digital ones that does all sorts of fancy things but doesn’t take a strip of photos. So instead I told her while we were walking through the food court so I could recycle. It worked out pretty well because we walked by this little baby who smiles at us and she said something she always says when we see a cute baby “Ohhhh can you have a baby please?” so I responded with “Sure! How about October?”  I guess it’s on par with her telling me on my front stoop all those years ago. We went and told my sister at her work. I asked if she could keep a secret from our parents and she said “ARE YOU FUCKING PREGNANT?!?!”  and then she burst into tears. So there we all are standing in the middle of the Canadian version of Hot Topic crying. Yeah, were hardcore. 

Some things I’ve noticed:

Boobs now rock hard. Like I’ve been given implants in my sleep. Which since I’m suddenly sleeping like a log(why do we say that? Logs don’t sleep!) is actually possibility.

CRAZY DREAMS.  Like one where I’m an awesome tap dancer and I’m tap dancing EVERYWHERE I go, in the mall, down the escalator and I’m so happy that I’m such an awesome tap dancer. Because, who knew? Or the weird sex ones. I’ll leave it at that.

If there’s one grain of salt in something I can taste it. Things that normally don’t taste salty now suddenly as of this past weekend taste like they are covered in it. Like cheese and bread. Oh and oil. I can taste the oil in things. I guess that’s sort of good because now I’m actually forced to eat the good things I want to eat. Because everything else is covered in salt.

The pain in my right shoulder, the one that usually feels like it’s on fire, is gone. POOF!  Just like that. That’s a pleasant surprise. 

(I promise I won’t spend the next 9 months going on and on. )

My boobs don’t lie.

I got up at like 6:40am and peed on a stick. Counting for 5 seconds is a hard task that early. I was counting in my head and then thinking “Did I skip the number 4?” 

I placed the test on the counter and kept peeing for like the next 2 minutes. I glanced over at the test and there was a + bright as the sun telling me what I already knew.

I’m pregnant!

If everything goes smoothly I’ll be giving birth early October. Wow.

Tomorrow I will get up bright and early and pee on a stick to see if the first month of baby making fun has been fruitful. We had sex a lot this last month.

My sister has predicted that it will take us at 5-6 months. I am not sure why she thinks this. She got pregnant the one time they were lazy about birth control. History shows that the women on both sides of my family tend to get pregnant just thinking about it. I did a little more than just think.

I think I am though. My boobs are currently creating their own gravitationalpull. They are super sore. Im a bit frightened to think about what sort of size they are going to become. I am already a 36D.

My cousin told me that after her first child was born she was a J.

A FREAKING J CUP.

She said it was like having a watercooler strapped to her chest, except full of milk. She was a big double D to start with.

I admit I am a bit freaked out by that.

There are things I know about my mother that explain her. Explain my upbringing. Things that make it easier for me to understand why she might be the way she is. Things she should have gotten help with things she should have been medicated for.

The details of her own upbringing are at best hazy. She is one of 12, the 3rd or 4th born. Her mother gave her to her grandparents who raised her. I’m unsure why, I have a theory it was for post partum depression, since it runs in the family but, it could have been anything. My mother was raised until she was 5 by her grandparents who lived next door. Then her mother wanted her back. So she went back to a mother she didn’t know. A bond had never formed and never would.

She lived on a farm. She did chores. She took care of smaller children. She went to Catholic church and was schooled by nuns. She helped make moonshine and homemade wine.

She became an alcoholic by the time she was 15. She told me this once while she was lying on the sofa wasted. 

She doesn’t remember her life from the ages of 10 to 15. She has blacked it out from her memory. She says she can only remember a few things. Making moonshine with her brothers. Swiming in the ocean. Some bits from school.  Her cousins were all sexually abused by her Uncle, a man that was always around. Her sisters believe that my mom was too.

She left home when she turned 15. Hitch hiking across the country. She met her best friend who is a few years older than her. 

She travelled with bikers. She worked odd jobs.  She did drugs. She shacked up with a man. Who she caught in bed with another girl and beat him with a baseball bat.

Eventually she met my father. Two months later she was pregnant with me. Three months after I was born they got married.

She got pregnant again sometime later. That sister died inside her just before her due date. Once when she was high she told me that after that she lost her mind. I don’t blame her.

When I was 5 my sister was born. My mother always had her in lots of layers. She was sweaty all the time. Then she got pneumonia when she was 2 months old. She almost died.

My sister turned into a monster of a toddler. My mother cannot recall this either. My dad and I used to joke that if anyone ever kidnapped my sister they would pay us to take her back.  It was awful. My mother retreated to the sofa and slept. Which is how my sister remembers her youth.

Now she starves herself. Her never ending quest to stay young or perhaps to control something. She eats a tiny amount for show or mashes her food around on her plate. She smokes a lot of pot every day. Self medication.

These are all the things I know. She has had a rough life. A life that she has never properly dealt with. Which makes me sad. She could have at least tried. Instead she spends her life constantly lying to herself and everyone around her.

All these things make me understand.