March 8, 2009

• Sometimes, most of the time, I feel like a parody of a pregnant woman. It’s a farce. A satire. All without words because words have currently been expunged, cleansed from my brain palate. Except today. Today I feel like writing. So, it’s like wearing a fat suit. I forget, when I try to squeeze past people, that I can no longer breathe in, make myself smaller like a cat oozing through a chink in a door. I have this hard lump like a sack of potatoes attached to my front that makes my ankles and my thighs ache. A friend said I looked like I was full term. I actually have six weeks to go. Six weeks, that’s no time at all for the sudden impact a third person is going to bring to this unit… It was pointed out to me by said friend that I was using my belly as a shelf to rest my cup of tea on. I hadn’t realized I was doing it. I’m making those groaning noises pregnant women and old people make when they struggle to raise themselves out of an armchair. I’m putting my hands to my aching back, sticking my belly out and saying ‘oh’ and ‘ah’ a lot. I’m like every other pregnant woman there ever was. When I’m sitting and I drop something to the floor, I pick it up with my feet if possible, because it’s easier than bending down. The midwife had a good feel and said the baby is a good size! I know that’s a good thing, for the baby, but please don’t let me have a ten pounder!! I dreamt that night I gave birth to a tiny thing that fit in the palm of my hand. It slipped out easy enough but everytime I put it in the pram it would slide down to the end and get tangled up in the blankets.

  Sometimes it’s like a slap-stick comedy. The embarrassment. Last weekend, my bag of shopping split open, just about outside my front door, and the contents fell to the floor. I watched, unable to do anything, as the 3 litre bottle of cider I’d picked up for the fella rolled slowly away and came to a stop underneath a neighbours car. Fuck. I rang their doorbell, thinking, practicing what I was going to say. Thankfully they weren’t in. So I got down on my hands and knees and managed to poke it out from where it had come to rest behind the wheel. I should’ve had a fag in my mouth for comic effect. I was just thinking, please don’t let any of the neighbours be watching. This is so undignified. I had to laugh. I had to laugh so much. I suppose anything you might call dignity actually went away when I first started to swell. And I know, once I have a child, that it is never coming back!!

  • 8:18 am
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