Preggers

When are you due? What are you having? I answer these two questions between 10 and 50 times a day. I have a hard time feigning enthusiasm anymore -- 33 weeks, we decided not to find out. At the end of a shift at work, when I have answered these questions closer to 50 times than 10, I started saying 33 weeks, and I know its not a monkey. People laugh and say, no really. And I say, really, it's not.

Being pregnant is such a mixed bag of experiences. It's the closest experience I'll have to being famous. People smile at me; they want to talk to me; they do things for me. At work, patients are nice to me. From a feminist perspective, I feel like its all a little strange. Fundamentally, our society loves women who are vulnerable, weak and doing what they are supposed to. I think the roots of our comfort with pregnant women are the inspiration for the extremely freaky Margaret Atwood classic, The Handmaid's Tale. From a biological perspective, child bearing and rearing are very expensive for a woman. My immune system is weaker. If my blood vessels do not dilate appropriately during my pregnancy, the fetus will release a protein that strips the lining of my vessels to get the nutrients it needs. This can lead to preeclampsia which will kill me if the baby is not delivered immediately. (great new yorker article on the subject). The fetus does what it must to survive, and this is hard on a woman's body.

At the same, creating a human being is clearly an awesome and powerful event. From the time of fertilization to the formation of a full term baby, there are an estimated 1 trillion cell divisions. Given world population calculations, this process has basically worked as it's supposed to more than 6 billion times in the last 100 years... with an estimated 3% "error" rate. (My midwives say that 3% of babies and kids have "challenges" -- but that all depends on definitions and cultural norms ) And I control none of it consciously. None of it. I control the creation of this child as much as you control your digestion.

I called this blog the baby monkey because that is what I call our little fetus-baby. Isn't baby monkey cuter than fetus-baby? It also has roots in the its-not-a-monkey joke. We did call it fifi the fetus for a while but that wasn't very gender neutral. I plan to write about the end of the pregnancy, labor, then the first year... mainly so I can remember it but also so I can share the experience with my community.. hoping that will alleviate some of the anxiety and isolation that seems to be part of the American parent story.