Moments after I step in the door from the office, my wife, recumbent on the sofa, welcomes me with, "Hi Sweetie, what's for supper?" Her eyes are still affixed to CSI on tv. The original Las Vegas series. None of that knock-off crap.
"I just got home from work. Shouldn't I be asking you this question as you bring me a beer from the fridge?" Dangerous, but sometimes my mouth is a pace ahead of my brain. Though I know better than to make a 'barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen' comment. Barely.
Her eyes, eschewing the grisly murder on the screen, skewer my own. "We never have any beer in the house, you know that." A brief pause as she again becomes absorbed in Gil Grissom's brilliant interpretation of this week's forensic evidence while she tucks herself deeper under her sucky blanket. Her lap is further weighed down with a double dose of canine indolence. "I think I'd like some pasta with alfredo sauce."
"Do we have any alfredo sauce?"
She waxes introspective for a moment. "I don't think so."
"I know we have regular spaghetti sauce, I just picked some up a couple days ago. There's also that red wine tortellini in the freezer. How's that sound?"
Our eyes meet again. "Oh! That tortellini would go really well with some alfredo sauce!" Her ebullience isn't yet infectious. I've built up resistance from the first time.
"What are you suggesting?" I'm evasive, not ignorant.
Again not deigning to meet my gaze, "Nothing at all, Love. Declan should be up in a few minutes. He's been napping since four."
"So I should go out and get some alfredo sauce before he wakes up?" A surge of pride as I manage to keep all hints of sarcasm out of my voice.
"That's entirely up to you, Dear." The killing blow.
"Do we need anything else?" The French didn't surrender as quickly as I did with those five words. **sigh**
Amy has been pregnant now for three months and the cravings are coming at unpredictable times. (The only really predictable thing about this pregnancy is that there's probably going to be another baby at the end of it.) I recall the virgin phenomenon from last time around the procreative track. Going out at odd times to satiate the gastrointestinal desires of a newly pregnant woman. A Dairy Queen blizzard at 10 PM. A Pepsi slurpee on a cold and rainy Sunday morning. Not Coke. Pepsi. You'll have to go to the 7-11 for that, Simon. The Reddi-Mart only has Coke.
Girded with this past experience, I mentally prepare myself for the next several months wherein my wife becomes a different (yet equally lovable!) creature and everything in my domestic field of view begins to morph in conformity while I remain an island of adequation.
This, then, is the First Trimester Report. So like, you know, there're gonna be two more. Duh.
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Reactions from all and sundry on whom we foisted the good news were universally cheerful and supportive. Not that we were expecting condemnation on our successful union of sperm and egg, but the good words made us glow a little brighter. Plus we, and more specifically I, had been bustin' at the seams to spill the news ere my ears started to fountain blood. (As cool as that would have looked.) Amy had successfully peed on a strip almost a month prior and, being relatively cautious, we chose to wait until after the first official doctor's appointment to spill the beans. Her doctor chose that same time to go on vacation, at which point I was spouting maledictions on his own progeny.
After the initial invasive investigation of my wife's innards revealed an incredibly healthy woman - and a foetus clinging tenaciously to her uterine wall - we let fly with phone calls, Emails, blog posts, morse code (one ping only please), smoke signals and poo-flinging monkeys. I think I made my mother cry at work when I called. Or at least plastered a 'stupid grin' on her face. Amy's mum made sure to ask that it was OK to spread the news; I think all of southern Alberta must know by now. The dads were a little more reserved but equally congratulatory. And one family friend began planning the baby shower before Amy even finished revealing the news. The outside support really is quite awesome.
One of my wife's conditions on, um, playing second period hockey without a goalie (nudge, nudge; wink, wink; say-no-more), was the acquisition of a bigger bed in which to accommodate her gestating self and, space permitting, her husband. Our first pregnancy (I'll always use the plural pronoun there; you'd have a hard time convincing me that husbands experience much less than the wife for those nine months) was conducted on a double bed which, while fine for Amy when she was single, and then for us together when she was not, revealed certain geographic constraints as Amy's equatorial girth expanded its realm of influence. Nearly influencing me right out of bed a number of times.
So we now have a queen in the master bedroom (for the princess) and our old bed has been relegated to guest status. It's still very good mind you. Pillow top, pocket coil and other cumfy goodness. We just won't tell guests that we've had sex on it.
Another by-blow of this pregnancy, other than the obvious one, is a state of chronic fatigue inflicted upon my stalwart wife. She is more than capable of sleeping from 9 PM through to 7 AM (when Baby 1.1 gets up), and then napping for three to four hours throughout the day. It gets so that it frustrates the both of us sometimes.
"Was I this bad last time Simon?" she asks innocently, her guileless gaze probing the windows of my pupils for any sign of aversion or deception. Or flight.
(Pop quiz: when your wife is pregnant, do you dole out answers with blunt honesty, or wrap them up in swaddling clothes of mollification so she hears nothing more abrasive than cotton balls and marshmallows in reply?)
"Um, yeah, you were," I say. I learned early on in our relationship that tip-toeing around topics just makes the floorboards creak more noticably.
"Damn, when I am going to stop feeling like such a tit?" A quick consultation with What To Expect When You're Expecting revealed that the end of the first trimester ought also to signal an increase in energy and a reduction in her feelings of 'tittedness'. We both hope our gestational bible is right.
(Too bad there's no chapter in the book called, What To Expect When You're Expectorating. But we'll get to that in the next report.)
This pregnancy shares with it an element that didn't enter into the equation last time: an existing son. His spot in the nursery is about to be usurped and, since we still want to keep him, we needs must find him another manger upon which to lay down his sweet head. This means re-doing what passes currently for the guest room. Which is to say, we clean it up for guests when we have them. Its present incarnation has it labelled as ironing room, vacuum storage, dog kennel repository, place where toys go when they've pissed off Mom and Dad, and it also plays host to my wall-mounted Anakin Skywalker Force FX Lightsabre.
This room has now been pegged for a fresh coat of paint and the acquisition of certain 'stuff' such that it is suitable for habitation by a young boy pushing two years and, occasionally, his parents' patience. It appears that guests will have to content themselves with a sofa, our unfinished basement or, the only other option, our deluxe six-man Coleman tent that can be erected in the backyard in the space of ten minutes.
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We had an ultrasound done for the first baby. Everybody does. (Everybody who's pregnant, that is. And doesn't live in a third-world country. And pays as much in taxes as we do for our subsidized health care.) And we were quite sure that we didn't want to sex the foetus. Amy was convinced that it was a girl anyway, so it was a moot point, and besides, we wanted the opportunity to see the baby arrive (not 'pop out' as I have been corrected on numerous occasions) and be able to shout, "Qu'elle surpreeze!" in our best outrageous French accents. Because, you know, that's what new parents do when a heretofore androgynous lump of squalling, vernix-coated flesh is emitted from the uterine bath in which it has nestled peacefully for the past 40-ish weeks. Imagine Amy's ejaculation of "Qu'elle surpreeze!!" when her first baby had a paddler where the canoe should have been...
Thinking about Number Two coming along (in a very non-Robert Wagner a la Austin Powers sort of way) has us both pondering whether or not we should check this foetus for a pibber since, really, we do have more pragmatic reasons to suss it out this time. The element of surprise, err, surpreeze, was taken care of the first time around and it would be nice to know if we have to invest in a complete new line of clothing or can begin the hand-me-down process that will invariably scar the youngster for life and inculcate a mis-placed hatred for his older brother that really ought to be directed as us, his cruelly frugal parents. (I have a younger brother; I'm quite familiar with that hatred.)
Amy sort of summed up the whole thing with: "Well, if it's a girl I want to know, and if it's a boy I don't."
Umm, yeah.
So right now we still don't know, but come time for the ultrasound we may just cave and check the blob for a yooooo-nit. At least if it's a girl we can know for certain that Amy will finally have somebody else to 'make pretty' and Declan can grow up knowing that his mother only put barettes in his hair up until the time he was two.
Foetus 2.0, Second Trimester Report: round about early December. ish.
Wow, I'm evidently far enough removed from the gestation years to hear the 'dad' point of view without a trace of defensiveness on Amy's behalf. (Mind you, I never had a trace of morning sickness or fatigue with either pregnancies). Simon, facing frustrations and the necessary adaptations is never straight forward, but your willingness to face them and name them is very ,ahem, mature. Now go hit the swings for balance ;)
Paula
Posted by: Paula | Saturday, 27 August 2005 at 03:36 PM
Hey great post! Very witty. I'm sure glad I happened upon you blog last week... because now I can live vicariously through you and your wife until we decide it's time for baby #3. (I was bothered that I was so tired with my second too. I wanted to be out and doing things but I just couldn't. By the time the 2nd trimester hit, I was a bit better, but liked the napping, and thought "screw it, if I can stay in bed for 2 more hours in the day, I'm going to.")
Posted by: Dixie | Monday, 29 August 2005 at 09:03 AM
You sweet man!!! My poor dear hubby had to traipse through grocery aisles at 3am often and he never once complained....until the kid was born, then every time he did something dopeish, he'd remind me of the sacrifices he made for me. Surprisingly enough, it worked... 'Appiness and 'Armony...that's what counts.... ;)
Posted by: Penny | Monday, 29 August 2005 at 11:55 AM
Oh, I loved this, particularly the pic of dear Amy. Even as I struggle with my own two tots, I'm still charmed and thrilled by the info from your world. Proving that parenthood does punch holes in the brain, rendering it a blobby gray sieve.
Posted by: Jenn | Monday, 29 August 2005 at 08:47 PM