024

the good news is that my amniotic fluid stayed steady this week.  the bad news is that third trimester insomnia is real.  the unsurprising news is that with less than four weeks left until d-day, my workload continues to be relentless, monumental, and ever-multiplying.  i am handling this the only way i know how- saying "okay, i'll take care of it", then sitting in my office thinking about how great it would feel to die.

dr. grisham reiterated that at this point- little j is considered term next week- another drop in my afi would result in delivery.  and i feel like i must've attended the andrea yates school of motherhood because i'm so remarkably unworried about the possibility of early eviction.  shouldn't i be feverishly googling opinionated blog entries about the clinical implications of early term delivery?  stressing about the possibility of a nicu stint or calculating how many neural connections he might be cheated out of?  at the very least, anxious about his tiny baby lungs?

i just feel...so okay.  calm, confident, accepting.  it is an alien sensation, to be so utterly devoid of apprehension with regards to this massive field of icebergs straight ahead.  the possibility of induction, the unknown due date, the pain of labor, the plot twists of delivery, the unfathomable arrival of a little stranger and the wild new world he will bring- the absolutely unforeseeable, unpredictable foreignness of it all.

i worry less about my baby than i do about my work.  

the sleeplessness of this last month is a physiologically induced shitshow, but it doesn't help to be constantly preoccupied with a never ending list of unfinished tasks and unsolved issues and unaddressed behaviors, scrolling through my brain with ludicrous length like ending credits for the extended version of a lotr film.  but it's my mind that's mordor and my job that's mordor and my clinics that are mordor and i can't diversify these metaphors because i am running on very little sleep.

i can't blame it all on the pressure of leadership.  there is also the pressure of my bladder.  james, 调皮 even before birth, sleeps all day and parties all night.  when i clamber into bed for the merciful relief of being horizontal, he immediately recognizes a cue to get turnt.  he headbutts my bladder like a woeful drunk trying to squeeze the last two drops out of a defeated franzia bag.  his elbows flail sharply, forcing me to roll over so frequently i look like i'm pantomiming a charade of restless sleeping.  i try listening to audiobooks.  i try taking benadryl.  i try reading through a year's worth of status updates from my most posturing and boring facebook friend.  nothing works and i scrape together two hours of sleep after a night of whining "cut it outttt" to my belly.  it is lucky that ian slumbers with the tenacity of a coma victim.  lucky and also infuriating.  

and speaking of being highly uncomfortable, i reneged on my indignant self-loathing and actually opted to do maternity photos.  it was a pretty painless process, despite the fact that i threw a literal tantrum the morning of my shoot and laid facedown on the bed weeping about my pointless hogbody.  i was an actual cathy comic.  i think i literally sobbed "i have nothing to wear!"

but of course i wore three different dresses for the shoot and felt monstrously enormous in all of them.  i applied the wrong foundation color, failed to blend my eyeshadow, and half my close-up shots prominently feature excessive eyelash glue.  the photographer was an expert in the maternity portraiture field- she was patient, practiced, and provided the relief of non-stop direction.  i sweated like a pot roast and performed the suggested poses with the gracelessness of a dress barn mannequin discarded in a dumpster.

but the important takeaway is, i did a thing that made me uncomfortable!  because it's not just about me and my whack body image and the fact that my maternity look is less ~serenely hugging my belly nearby a sunset lake~ and more lying in bed with cheeto crumbs in my hair.  i wanted to bypass my discomfort and memorialize this pregnancy for ian, for our little family, and for a future me that will hopefully look back on these nine months and maybe really believe that they were graceful, beautiful, washed in pink light during golden hour.

lol who am i kidding i'm going to still be mad at myself for applying my eyeshadow like i had a fucking seizure.

023

dr. grisham beams when he looks up from my chart.  "i've never been happier to see you," he says warmly.  today his glasses frames are small and scarlet; he looks exhausted, but i am his star pupil, the easiest biophysical profile to round off a stretch of long clinic hours.

i am 35 and a half weeks, but my uterus doesn't quite seem to know it.  "you might be hiding this baby sideways," dr. grisham remarks while struggling to measure my belly.  it continues to flatten out while i'm horizontal, dr. hughes' enduring legacy of a magic trick.  "your fundal height is lagging behind, but that could be because of your surgery."

fundal height is a term, like so many others, that has superseded papa john's coupon and dogs posing like humans in my google search results.  it's one of a thousand iterations of measurements logged in the course of pregnancy, measured from the top of my uterus to an area further south that makes me rather relieved to still be clad in cute underwear at this point.

it doesn't feel like my uterus is any smaller than it should be.  it has finally managed to balloon up to my ribs, compacting my stomach into a thimble that exists purely for the collection of acid.  last night i achieved my ultimate nightmare- forced to sleep sitting up to fend off the imminent threat of choking on reflux.  several times a day, the burn crawls up my esophagus, threatening to become a whole thing.  several more times a day, i promise myself that i will immediately switch to an exclusively yogurt diet for the next month.

instead, i bake and eat two dozen chocolate chip cookies. 

i have now gained 25 lbs, which is still on the conservative end- but there are some days when i look at my thighs and feel panic creeping up my chest, faster and more volatile than the worst episode of esophageal reflux.  when i step on the scale at dr. grisham's office, i wipe my mind blank like i've been placed under the imperius curse.  you will lose the baby weight, i tell myself sternly.  you will always lose the weight.  it has become a daily mantra.

and i think about sitting down to exercise the pressure of this off my chest, this heavy subject of pregnancy and body image.  but then it metamorphosizes in my mind to a more nebulous fear that i can't quite wrap a narrative around.  will i ever get my body back? becomes will i ever get my life back?  so i try to find the right words, the most elegant ones to express four years and ten thousand dollars and half a million deficit calories and these 180 degrees between 24 and 28 but it feels so insurmountable to explain and even more so in the context of pregnancy- a time in my life that draws a definitive line between my ego and my responsibility.  and in the exact same headspace of high-strung narcissism there's a chiding reminder that will probably become my mom voice- this isn't about you, mimi.  

so then i decide not to delve in, not to keep exploring how wretched and baseless my fears get.  i try not to envision myself with brows unfilled and bereft of lashes, dead-eyed with sleep deprivation and uncomfortably lumpy in an ill-fitting cardigan, showing up to the office in flip flops, saying lol this is motherhood i guess idk someone please kill me.  i talk to ian about division of labor, draw up a night schedule, slowly shift away work responsibilities like i'll ever really be able to unbury myself from the avalanche that awaits me.

"we have to make sure we talk about everything," i say for the 400th time while reading an article about how to babyproof a marriage.  

"we do talk about everything," ian says happily, still scrolling through pictures of dogs on instagram.

but in a month our conversations about personal accountability, burgers, and black twitter are going to be stalled in favor of a running dialogue focused on diapers and webmd fearmongering.  ian feels fully prepared for this, but i worry that i will no longer retain the mental capacity for cool jokes.  where other couples tend to their marriages with reminders to keep it sexy, i make mental notes to keep it funny.  

fineness.  funniness.  fucking up some commas.  these are three of the four quadrants on my personal coat of arms.  the last one has yet to be filled in, lagging behind like my uterine growth probably.  it'll likely germinate into something about being a good parent.  one who has her priorities fully sorted.  a responsible, conscientious mother who, for example, does not reschedule her labor & delivery tour in order to play more coin pusher games at dave and buster's.

in unrelated news, my tour has been pushed back to next thursday.  i still haven't packed a hospital bag, because i enjoy living on the edge.  my amniotic fluid, which has been consistently low, has made another sharp decrease this week—which likely means more exposure to cool glasses frames during this last month.  if it drops another two centimeters, i'll be seeing the maternity ward sooner than originally anticipated.  

i am less nervous about this potential turn of events because james’s biophysical profiles have been so routinely outstanding.  the minute dr. grisham's ultrasound wand makes contact, we visualize perfect breathing movements.  

"i love you, little baby" he says gratefully as james flexes his lungs and scores 8/8 immediately.

i'm getting pretty fond of this kid too.

022

my bosses' wives threw a baby shower for me at the stoneleigh last weekend, and it was the stuff of feverishly shared pinterest boards- beautiful, detailed, thoughtful, no expense spared.  amy, my eternal ride-or-die, flew down from nyc just to attend (and took these gorgeous photos, at my annoying behest).  the experience of being pregnant has been synonymous with the experience of feeling deeply humbled by the enthusiasm, generosity, and love of my friends, family, and colleagues.  everyone is so happy for me and ian, so excited to meet this little dude of ours.  i hope he lives up to the warm and wonderful reception that has already preceded his birth, that he emulates the loving thoughtfulness of the people in his life.  if he grows up and becomes a total loser posturing about men's rights or pickup artistry i'm gonna be in his face like "look at these baby shower pictures you fuckin' dork, jessica east- an actual angel- spent an entire thursday evening perfecting several iterations of a blueberry lemonade recipe just to celebrate your impending arrival on earth and this is what you chose to do with your life."

less than six weeks left now.  shit is getting way too real.  little j's nursery closet is fully stocked, thanks to our dear friends.  he also has an eames-inspired travel system that is already more expensive than anything his father owns, a changing pad that's smarter than his furry siblings, and a lightweight travel crib that guarantees his second home will be a medical clinic what's constantly blasting trap music.  but all the gadgets in the world couldn't make me feel ready for the scope of responsibilities that lie in waiting just around the corner.  a whole person!  that we made.  

i remember the first time i played pokemon blue, when my squirtle grew to level 8 and learned bubble.  i was in sixth grade and round-eyed with the joy of growing and training something.  i amassed a collection of tamagotchis and promptly neglected them all to die in waves of their own pixelated feces.  i thought maybe i could grow up and become a mother.  i thought a lot more about cute boys i wanted to marry.  and i guess here i am now, married to the cutest one of them all, sometimes having nightmares about losing my baby in a laundry hamper.

i'm 85% of the way through this pregnancy, and still feeling great, still at work every day scooting up and down the hallways scolding people.  i walk with a distinct lordosis, though my belly has yet to protrude crazily.  it's there and i AM still slowly evolving into a final oblong form, but it hasn't reached an intensely distended, sentient presence.  no one guesses that i am nearly 8 months pregnant; they say things like you're still so tiny! and you are glowing! and i know they are pharmaceutical reps trying to garner more goodwill with my clinic but i am still real pleased with myself and unloading ever more layers of highlighter onto my sweaty face.

tomorrow, ian and i will attend a tour of the hospital's maternity ward.  my only concept of what it's like to give birth in a hospital stems from like, two episodes of friends and one episode of sex and the city, so i'm eager to preview what my own experience will actually be like.  super excited to start packing a hospital bag and teaching ian which lenses to use for photographing the birthing process (from the business end only, not some national geographic real shit photojournalism).  people ask me if i am nervous about the impending agony of labor pains.  i am actually more nervous that i will forget to bring my urban decay setting spray.

 

021

the weeks rush by, peeling months off the calendar faster and faster.  my workdays stretch out even longer (and they still don't feel long enough) but each weekday topples into the next one instantaneously like a cascade of dominos.  i have a little over seven weeks left until due date, but this deadline looms with the rapidity of something dreaded.

90% of the time, i'm so excited.  i've never been quite so eager to meet a person, not even george r.r. martin (though any nerd i kicked or elbowed in my haste to meet him for dinner during san diego comic-con 2014 would testify otherwise).  even though i know newborns basically look like tiny old men suffering from allergies, i can't wait to see his puffy, wrinkly face transform into something so recognizable that i'll finally understand why i paid so much blood money for two degrees in genetic science.  i can't wait to hear him laugh and pretend it's because he's already really into my cool jokes, and i can't wait to find out if he's got any good ones of his own.  i'm psyched to see this fine and funny badboy i married- who is so detached and obfuscating towards the things that don't matter and so deeply committed and enamored with the things that do- read nursery stories to his son.

and y'all, i'm not even going to lie to you.  i can't wait to lose weight and wyle out on bottomless mimosa brunches.  everyone's out here leaning hard into this mom identity but i just want to feel like myself again, albeit with reorganized priorities that shunt replaying video games while ordering cheetos via amazon prime now delivery to the bottom of the list. 

and then there are pockets of time like now, when i wade into the panicky realization that i might never actually feel like myself again, because in a handful of weeks i'll be a parent and there is no backing out of that identity no matter what happens.  maybe nothing will ever be the same again and i will remember this beautiful, idyllic life i've had these past couple of years and ask myself jesus christ why did you make another human being you weren't even fully cooked yourself.  and maybe my relationship will become difficult or strained, because no one ever talks about marriage improving after the addition of children.  ian blithely shrugs off my gloomy predictions, because ian has been confident and optimistic about us since maybe the beginning of time itself- and he's probably right because he's always right, but i'm the one over here thinking about death daily and asking him increasingly stupid hypothetical questions about car accidents, divorce, grief.

what i like to consider as pragmatism is probably just tempered morbidity.

realtalk, i think some things will be amazing and fascinating and some other things will be miserable and painful but we will both still be two badgirls trying our best, as we have always been.  i don't exactly know where that goes or how the equation factors out.  i'm relinquishing my favorite skill (control) and replacing it with an entirely unknown quantity (¯\_(ツ)_/¯).  

on a less heavy note, my pregnancy has proceeded with its characteristic ease.  baby sails through every biophysical profile beautifully, i've experienced no symptoms more uncomfortable than achy hips and occasional reflux, and i am sitting still at 19 lbs gained even though i feel like a manatee that has just swallowed another manatee.  a unicorn pregnancy, aided by a good little dude who is already in formation- head down and extra wiggly when he hears the law & order gavel sound.

"i still don't really even feel pregnant most of the time," i tell dr. grisham today while he measures my amniotic fluid index.  today he is wearing tortoiseshell ombre frames i haven't seen before.  "my husband probably thinks i'm just faking it for more food.

020

at 30 weeks, i revisited dr. albert for my level 3 anatomy scan.  my final visit with the perinatologist turned out to be a flurry of his rapid-fire questions about mongolia while i searched desperately for breaks in the conversation to ask my own questions.  important ones, like "does he have all his limbs because last night ian did just watch this documentary about thalidomide babies" or "what is the hair situation looking like currently do you see a little pompadour starting up."

(and as it turns out: four limbs, not much hair.)

"it's a good thing he hasn't inherited my whack heart," i observe.

"what's wrong with your heart?" dr. albert finally asks me a question unrelated to genghis khan.

"i have left ventricular hypertrophy," i shrug.

if i were the product of the character creation tool in a roleplaying game, my constitution would be a joke.  it would be abundantly clear that whoever built my specs didn't think to allocate much in terms of defense or hp- inexplicably hypertensive, nearsighted beyond the saving grace of lasik, capable of falling down magnificently with absolutely no impetus.  as dr. albert would frame it, i'd stand no chance of surviving to adulthood during the golden era of the mongolian empire.

but this cruel bethesda virgin who designed me to be so bereft in constitution and also skipped over strength, charisma, and dexterity- they allocated every possible skill point into luck.  i am rikku with both rabite's foot and key to success equipped.  i am that baby cruising through a construction site in baby's day out.  i am a 1987 fire rabbit.  i am unstoppably, inexplicably lucky.

season six of sex and the city features an early episode in which carrie reunites with her high school boyfriend, only to find out he has committed himself to psychiatric rehabilitation.  david duchovny, deeply unconvincing in this role, tells her i'm trying to figure out why somethings are harder for me than they are for other people.  this line resonates with me from the other end of the spectrum.  and i wonder why things seem so much easier for me than they do for those around me.  from family to friendships to career to love, everything has always fallen into place.  my hardships are short-lived, my obstacles become doorways, my theatrics stay low-pitched and unimpressive.  i never know the dopamine rush of instant gratification, but eventually i always get the things i want.

i catch myself thinking about it a lot these days, when i explain how easy my pregnancy has been.  from conceiving on the very first try, to coasting through each trimester with no real discomfort, to the immeasurable support and love pouring in from those around me, the words i'm so lucky have risen through the ranks of my vernacular to be the most frequently invoked phrase.  previous champions have been distinctly less gracious (e.g. lol i hate myself, fuck this gay earth, is the grilled cheese food truck here today).  i won none of this on my own merit.  i didn't hustle hard for this comfortable cocktail of hormones.  

i know that childbirth and childrearing are incredibly difficult prospects.  i know that they will probably not be imbued with the golden glow of felix felicis as so many other things have been for me.  but i am still ron with my keeper's gloves on, uplifted by the perception of luck.  i have a feeling that life's trickiest equations will still always find their way to factoring out completely.

it is this blessing, above all others, that i want to bequeath to james.  and i know it can't be allocated to an allele or learned behavior, but i so badly for him to know a life buoyed by both optimism and certainty.  i want to see him maneuver through setbacks and letdowns and heartbreak with aplomb, knowing that things will eventually magnetize into place.  and if he doesn't inherit my ridiculous luck, i hope he gets his father's endless resilience.  both paths have lead us to the very same road- two happy cyberbullies living a charmed life.

at 75% of the way through my first pregnancy, i still struggle to detect nearly anything on an ultrasound.  for all i know, they could be looping a grainy winamp visual and i'd have no idea.  so i can't really tell what my little guy is shaping up to be like, but my physicians both reassure me that he is clinically perfect.  

and that may be an indication that he's starting off with his very first skill point in luck.

019

today i realized that the only baby-related photo i've posted thus far featured a plastic stick i urinated on, so it was high time for some intentional photography.

(not maternity photos, never maternity photos.  when people try to dissuade me from this decision, i am tempted to unearth pictures from 2011 and wave them around angrily.  i already know what i look like with some extra chins and a swollen belly, i can just run my old selfies through a lightroom preset to add hazy light and they'd become serviceable maternity photos.  the trauma runs deep in a former fat girl.)

we're still not done with the nursery.  there are some great circular shelves sitting in their packaging, supplies and toys that will be acquired during the baby shower, and i'm considering a little more art.  today i attempted to hang the framed "formation" lyrics (baby's first beyhive) by first making some lopsided measurements, then trying to utilize pushpins, finally giving up and accepting that i am terrible at everything and probably have primary motor cortex damage.  ian, defeated by a cold, sleeps all day in a nest of blankets and lukewarm tea.  i mope around the living room and wonder how i'll ever learn to hang things or do any home improvement. 

but for now, i'm very happy with our furniture and design choices.  i'm even happier with the fact that i purchased every single piece online, and thus avoided a handful of human interactions.  i'm marveling at the fact that i was complicit in putting together any living space that doesn't look like a serial killer's rented storage unit.  i look forward to the endless life of cleaning diarrhea off every carefully-chosen element of this room.

it's hard to believe that in a couple of months, i'll be bringing a tiny living thing in here and putting it down and sneaking off to the next room only to sit around and google horror stories about sids until my blood pressure becomes untenable.  no matter how often i think about the looming realness ahead, i still can't wrap my head around the fact that god and society and this handsome man have all decided to trust me with a brand new human life.  me, a person who legitimately has trouble telling time and still hasn't removed the jr bacon cheeseburger wrappers from her car.  i don't know why i think those two qualities are related.

 i know the running theme of this blog is just i am 12 and what is this but i'm always mentally exploring this new and curious implementation of imposter syndrome.  this dichotomy of feeling prepared but simultaneously feeling like a raccoon asked to become an astronaut.

but at least i've helped put together a bomb ass nursery.

018

little j stopped moving some time between wednesday and thursday.  after another 12 hours' steady hustlin' in the office on thursday evening, i realized i hadn't felt his predictable flops and thumps for quite some time.  so i came home, inhaled some cold watermelon, laid around in various configurations, pressed and prodded my torso.  i curled up next to ian, who trotted out the nursery anthology and read goodnight moon and caps for sale to my belly.  his enthusiastic narration earned him a couple of sluggish kicks.  they weren't anywhere near as exuberant as james’s regularly scheduled movements, but enough to put our minds at ease.

friday morning, one of my physicians is unable to detect the fetal heartbeat via stethoscope.  a couple of hours later, my ob's office calls me to confirm my monday follow-up.  due to a low amniotic fluid index, dr. grisham has decided to up the frequency of my visits in order to monitor me weekly.  he cautioned me if my fluid level dropped lower, he would need to see me twice a week.  i mentally calculated the potential lost time away from my office and did not enjoy the equation.  on the other hand, i would get to see dr. grisham's endless rotation of trendy glasses frames more frequently.  he has a striking hexagonal pair that remind me of honeycomb.

i am particularly fond of my obstetrician.  he's efficient and sparse in his mannerisms, and never resorts to a paternalistic bedside manner.   i do not want to be coddled just because i'm pregnant.

(except by ian.  i want ian to bring me pizza and pet me and tell me i'm pretty.)

"you need to come now," dr. grisham's medical assistant informs me swiftly when i mention that i haven't felt fetal movement recently.  i know that everything is fine, but for the sake of peace of mind before the weekend, i gather up my purse and drive to the hospital.

true to form, dr. grisham does not placate me nor does he comment on the hypervigilant anxiety of first time mothers.  he merely starts the ultrasound machine and begins to scrutinize little j.

after a few minutes, he remarks "typically, it takes about 20 minutes to do a biophysical profile, but he's immediately scoring so high across all the categories, we're done."  james's first test, and he's already achieving top marks.  some tiny, latent part of me that knows i'll be wearing a visor and a fanny pack regularly in three decades' time feels like a proud asian parent.  

"i'm sorry, i feel silly that i mentioned it.  i figured it's normal for them stop moving from time to time." as if to punctuate my sheepishness, james finally issues a kick so pronounced that dr. grisham's ultrasound wand is jolted.  we both marvel at children's propensity to embarrass their parents, even before birth.

"it's fine," he reassures me.  "it's always a good idea to come in and confirm if anything like this happens.  but you look great."

i preen a little, even though i know he's talking about my uterus.

by friday night, james is fully awoken from his dormant state.  as if indignant that he had been clinically diagnosed as a little lazybones, he proceeds to bop around ceaselessly to prove a point. his sharper movements catch me off-guard, his slower ones feel like something creepy is moving directly under the surface of my belly and straining to escape.

still, it is the best feeling in the world.

 

017

there are times i feel like i'm drowning, absolutely staggered by the volume and size of all the moving pieces i am responsible for.  three clinics, an ancillary healthcare investment company, a biomed startup.  the number of people who depend on me daily for decision making has swollen to a barely manageable sum, and i scroll through 26 separate text message threads before i reach one that isn't work-related.  my name is called so frequently and continuously that the utterance is often appended with an apology.  dr. east lights up my phone, and his custom ringtone is drake's "right hand," starting and stopping repeatedly throughout the day like a scratched vinyl.

i am humbled and overwhelmed by the scope of my responsibilities.  i try to scrutinize it in manageable pieces on a week-to-week basis- but on days like these when my shoulders feel like the weakening base blocks of a neverending tetris game, i begin to feel swallowed up.  like i can never outrun it.

but this isn't stress.  this isn't an unhappy sensation.  i don't internalize or grapple with my inadequacies in the face of so much volume—and there are so many inadequacies.  (sometimes i feel like it's a miracle that anyone let me pose as a functioning adult, let alone a person in a position of power.  like one day two men in crisp grey suits will come into my office, explain it was all a big mistake, hand me a gameboy color, and march me back to the sixth grade.)

but even if good enough isn't good enough, i always feel like everything will be okay.  after all,  i am a person doing her best.  it doesn't get deeper or more complicated than that.

this isn't a particularly eloquent way to explore where my mind has been recently, but on a daily basis someone asks me how are you feeling? and i say great! because it's harder to communicate how i am okay with the storm.  and i imagine this might be somewhat of a primer for parenthood.

but there is a lot less going on there.

my body is treating me much better than i deserve, after the years of abuse and neglect i've put it through.  swollen by taco bell, swaddled in shapewear, starved by bloody mary mix, surgically tampered with—but despite my boneheaded nutrition and 0% fitness, it has really been determined to carry this pregnancy gracefully.  i am nearly 6 and a half months pregnant, and there are still long stretches of time every day during which i feel completely unremarkable.

no nausea, no backaches, no braxton hicks, no relentless hunger, no significant discomfort.  my belly has stayed manageable and entirely concealable in the right outfits.  a few days ago, in an appalling display of scumminess, i wore a loose sweater to a restaurant solely so i could order a single glass of white sangria.

little j now weighs over 2 pounds and scoots around nonstop in bursts of tireless energy that feel like a daunting premonition.  i've grown so accustomed to his little movements that they seem as natural and intrinsic to my anatomy as my own heartbeat.  over mother's day weekend, i had my very first 3d ultrasound (accompanied by ian and my parents).  james flopped around, trying valiant to continue sucking his thumb between photo ops.  my father, who had never seen an ultrasound of any kind, giggled "像个 alien baby."

fetuses in 3d sonos all sort of look like little swamp monsters, and james is no exception.  but it's a trip to realize he has a baby-shaped face now, complete with a pouty top lip that is almost recognizable as my own (bottom lip belongs to jay-z).  the ultrasound tech noted some hair coming in on the back of his head; i pray fervently that it continues to extend to the front of his head as well, lest he start his young life already on that receding hairline struggle.

every time i've asked "do they make wigs for babies?" people laugh like i've made a cool joke and once again i feel like a dog someone left in charge of a nuclear reactor because in my mind it totally makes sense to pop a cool little toupee on a bald ass baby before you take him somewhere drafty.

his nursery is now completed in the sense that it's fully stocked on totoro night lights and shel silverstein books, but devoid of anything actually involved in taking care of a baby—like diapers and wipes.  it is a joy to me, all soft whites and light woods, a round plush rug that our insufferable dogs immediately co-opted as a wrestling ring.

on that note, we've started working with a private dog trainer.  i don't actually think they will immediately spirit my son away off to eat like a hard-won snack, but the idea of layering jean-luc's barks and momo's honks over the daily looping of a baby's wails seems like a soundtrack played directly from the ninth circle of hell and i am not here for that.  dan is a short, muscular, tattooed man who looks like a tough little bulldog who reverse animorphed into a man.  he taught us some better communication techniques that will prompt these bad dogs into putting some respeck on our names, so i'm looking forward to the end result.

it's a good thing that my pregnancy has been so unmarred by complication or discomfort, because next week, i leave for a work trip to orlando.  though it's generally not considered the best trimester to board a flight during, i feel like i'm probably in good hands- surrounded by physicians.  still, hanging out at a spine medicine conference all weekend instead of fucking off to go play in the wizarding world of harry potter will be a cool lesson about the disappointing facets of adulthood.  

before i leave, i will leave ian some pizza money on the counter—but someone please check on him to make sure he doesn't lose his voice from disuse or get too turnt on his bachelor ritual of eating too much and then falling asleep at 7pm to a law & order svu marathon.

016

at 20 weeks, i had a level two anatomy scan on wednesday with the perinatologist, dr. albert.

(it took all my self-restraint not to type we had our anatomy scan like a basic ass married weirdo consistently employing the royal "we" for everything like our bodies and experiences have fused into one indistinguishable product.)

ian came to this appointment; i had promised him a very cool, lengthy ultrasound.   "so daddy's here for the show too," dr. albert remarked affably when i introduced my husband.   "oh, he's not the father," i said cheerfully.  i don't think anyone liked that joke.

"have you felt the baby move yet?" dr. albert quizzed me while squirting the entire contents of an ultrasound gel bottle onto my abdomen.

it has taken me a while to distinguish little j's somersaults from the general feeling of "idk maybe gas".  when you are a revolting food monster like i am, you basically live with the omnipresent but innocuous sensation of ate too much bullshit—gas, bloating, mild gastrointestinal discomfort, general sleepiness, self-loathing.  the movements are a bit different though.  two weeks ago, while inhaling a handful of peanuts and simultaneously reading a dreary-ass babycenter thread about fetal movement, i felt something like an inexplicable, deep muscle twitch in my lower abdomen.  a few hours later, deciding i'd be truly disgusting and load up on the free bread and jam situation at la madeleine (very cool pregnancy eating habits—completely indistinguishable from non-pregnancy ones), i was driving down preston rd when i felt another unmistakeable little thump.

at this point, the movements are not the butterfly flutters that these pregnancy websites have suggested, but more of a twitching or flopping movement that happens so quickly it wouldn't be difficult to miss.  they are sporadic, but sometimes happen in a series.  everyone keeps eagerly telling me about the late third trimester movements, which will be entirely visible as ripples and bulges under my my skin.  this is like, a particularly gross phenomenon that is not having the intended heartwarming effect on me; am now staunchly planning a never-nude campaign this summer so i don't have to catch a glimpse of my belly wiggling like a terrifying alien incubator.

dr. albert whisked us through the measurements and visualizations, and once again i found myself straining to do that magic eye puzzle, to see the grainy, isolated outlines of my child through dense layers of muscle and scar tissue—a foot here, a spine there, a tiny nubbin that was deemed to be fully a penis.  all four chambers of the heart developed, a good little brain ready to be filled up with ninja turtles lore and gossip girl plot points, no visible or discernible deformities.  again, another moment of tremendous relief that extinguished fears i hadn't been able to express.

"12 ounces- right on schedule," dr. albert pointed out.  it is nice to know that we're all putting on weight at the clinically appropriate pace.  12 ounces for baby, 10 pounds for me, 1000 pounds for ian (or so he complains but trust me y'all he has remained steadfastly fine and that body is still very banging despite the new job role he has bravely accepted—eating all the excess food from the times i order three dinners like an actual starving person but then immediately reject them because my appetite is oddly ambivalent).

my own body, however, went 0 to 100 real quick.  last week, i wore the same low-rise size 4 jeans i've been living in for over a year (steady trying to ignore my love handles spilling over the edges like a tumped over bowl of pudding).  three days later, a pregnancy belly fully emerged.  it is not particularly cute- the front is still strangely flat, my sutured abs trying their hardest to remain in disciplined formation while the rest of me gives into the easy lure of laxity and bulging and bullshit.  one day this rigid belly will fuse with my back fat and i will permanently become a donkey kong barrel.

but while pregnancy has been hard on my body image, it has been cooperating nicely with my professional and personal life.  i've been working a lot recently; this week has been a stretch of 12 or 13 hour workdays, a mad dash to handle practice management and practice acquisition, while scrambling to finish an endless checklist of marketing and design work for an upcoming spine medicine conference.  the workload is daunting but i've been remarkably cheerful about it.  i am not a particularly talented professional, but maybe i should set up "masochism" as my top linkedin skill, because i genuinely enjoy the challenge of working under pressure and i've never failed to pull it off.  sometimes, after a particularly long stretch of focus, i can feel the baby rolling around and issuing a series of small thumps.  i imagine he's cheering me on while i'm over here trying to get it how i live.

better still, i couldn't ask for a more supportive, empathetic, and enthusiastic husband. ian is as patient and kind as ever, even after the 15th time of me madly rifling through my closet, sobbing into a sweater that is now too tight for my chest.  during my late nights at the office, he fusses around the house and tidies up so that i come home to a beautifully arranged, clean home that smells like an anthropologie store.  i feel like one day, when my son starts complaining about his relationships, i will be an unhelpful but cheerful broken record of stories about how amazing his father is to me.  

"the worst thing your dad ever did to me during our relationship was wear this really horrible camo hat into public," i'll tell him.  "and it was awful because nobody could tell he was wearing it ironically.  you know, because he's white."

"mom stop talking to me you're embarrassing," he'll say as he floats off to join his friends at whatever high school the first moon colony establishes.

015

sick for two weeks.

well for two weeks.

sick yet again for another week.  

fuck this cruel world.  i can't believe i used to take my immune system for granted.  i've been working through this past week with no intent of slowing down- and i've never been more grateful for our truncated clinic hours on friday.  by 3 pm yesterday, i was immobilized in bed shivering madly under blankets, watching my temperature rise rapidly while my terrible and useless dogs cantered around me, biting each other's snouts and barking directly into my ear for moral support.  an hour later, my sacral pain returned to join the body aches and chills and the simple task of ambulating became an excruciating impossibility.  ian came home from work early to help me walk five feet to the bathroom, wrapped up in a quilt like a tearful, pointless burrito.

really testing out this "in sickness and in health" thing during our first week of marriage.

so here i am: physiologically defeated by the mere suggestion of a virus and mentally stressed from juggling an endless buffet of responsibilities at work, but little james is still hanging out just being the chillest, most unassuming passenger imaginable.  he is almost the size of bell pepper, and all the pregnancy resources seem to agree that he should be very active by now.  i still haven't felt any of hallmarks of quickening- no flutters, no bubbles, no gentle swishes- so i assume he's probably as lazy as i am or maybe my uterus is plated with adamantium.  

in addition to falling behind on fetal movement detection, i'm also lagging in the growth department.  "you can't even tell that you're pregnant!" people tell me enthusiastically.  they stare at my flat stomach while i try unsuccessfully to hide my ever-expanding love handles and four new chins.  i have cheated the system, of course, with the bionic abs that dr. hughes gifted me two years ago.  i've always considered the surgery a better investment than my master's degree (which i think is a comparison that no self-respecting academic or intellectual should ever make, but also i am garbage), though it causes me some degree of concern when factored into my first pregnancy.  it feels like baking a zany new recipe with no oven light for viewing progress- i just have to assume that everything is expanding and growing according to plan.  i have read some message board horror stories about post-abdominoplasty pregnancy discomforts so now i assume james will be living somewhere behind my sternum in the third trimester while i sleep sitting up like the elephant man to avoid drowning in esophageal reflux.

but for now, with the singular exception of this infuriating immunosuppression, i feel safe grading this first half of the pregnancy as a solid 8/10.  no morning sickness, no moodiness, 6 pounds weight gain, broke ass bladder, still haven't exercised at all.

the anatomy scan is scheduled for thursday and i'm excited to see every part of him- and hoping his penis is actually detectable this time or else he might have some self-esteem issues later in life.  it'll also be ian's first time seeing him as an actual baby-shaped thing and not an errant little bean.  

we've been talking a lot about which facial features we'd want to bequeath to him and i think ian's google search history is probably all "how do genes work" or "will my baby have creepy blue eyes" but to be honest, the realities of creating a whole new person has been weighing heavily on my mind these days (when i'm not thinking of how to burn down the coppell clinic).  the harder things, the qualities we have to nurture.  his character, his inner strength, his moral fiber and work ethic.  i'm probably not going to be an amazing mom because i'm not particularly good at anything and i'm still refusing to figure out laundry, but it doesn't matter to me so long as he brings value to the world and knows how to love.

hope he gets his dad's immune system tho.

014

ian and i got married on wednesday, february 17th, 2016.

i haven't really digested this new milestone fully, because it seems so weird to consider the fact that i am now a wife, on top of a soon-to-be mother.  these are nouns i assume don't apply to idiots who spend their wedding nights trying and failing to install grand theft auto 5 on an ailing ps4.  

like, i am still muddling through life like a dog wearing a lab coat and tie.  but now i have someone who loves me madly despite my incompetence and self-doubt, who promised to be mine forever—for as long as both shall live.   those are the words we recited to one another in judge seider's courtroom, but i tell him time and time again that i will find him in my next life, and the one after, and all the lives beyond that.  after all, death is only a door and i have not waited 28 years to find him only to resign this love to one lifespan.  

"sixty years together would never be enough," i said last night. 

"i'm gonna live to be a hundred!" he told me confidently.

 

 

 

013

i've been sick for two full weeks now but there is a light emerging at the end of this congested, miserable tunnel.  today i ate a popeye's biscuit and could actually taste it.  and it tasted amazing.

the question everyone asks me these days is "how are you doing?" and i never fail to respond in an obliviously charmless way, steady talking about how busy i've been with the workload of clinic acquisitions.  it always takes me a moment to realize that no one cares about how i'm handling my professional obligations (poorly); they want to know how my pregnancy is progressing.

little j has been very, very kind to me.  the past 3.5 months have flown by with no nausea or major discomfort beyond a few weeks of fatigue and sore breasts.  

(early on, i DID get real dramatic about a singular incident of nausea that mercifully turned out to be the trappings of food poisoning- i have never in my life been so thrilled to be the recipient of foodborne illness.)

jesso's nickname is continue because she's almost as bad at super mario 3d world as i am at communicating discomfort without hyperbole.

jesso's nickname is continue because she's almost as bad at super mario 3d world as i am at communicating discomfort without hyperbole.

i've also had some intermittent issues with sacral pain that can be blamed squarely on momo.  nearly two years ago, this awful dog caught fleeting sight of a squirrel while we were embarking on our morning walk.  the ensuing sudden, spastic chase dragged me down a full flight of stairs, fractured my tailbone, twisted my ankle, broke my car key, and decimated any remnants of my dignity while a handsome neighbor captured my terrorist animal and witnessed me lying on the ground like a busted sack of garbage.  it took several months and a bottle of hydrocodone before i could sit comfortably and begrudgingly cuddle momo again.  but now that pregnancy is loosening up my ligaments, my godforsaken sacrum is probably sliding around all wiggly-woggly (this is the clinical term) and causing nerve impingement.  this means shooting pain in my hips and glutes from time to time that causes a very attractive limp.  mobility has never really been my strong suit anyway.

the heaviness in my lower abdomen is an omnipresent but mild white noise type of symptom, a background reminder that i'm hauling around a large navel orange in my uterus.  the tightness of skin and muscle stretching, an old familiar friend from my post-op recovery days, is back and also ever-present; i imagine it will get more painful and intense as i transition into third trimester.  my abdomen is still stubbornly flat, but my chest and butt have ballooned to comical proportions more conducive to magic city than maternity.  this is less desirable than it sounds, because now i just look like a thick girl who needs to chill on the ranch dressing—and not the ethereally delicate mother-to-be i had envisioned.  by summertime i will actually become the final fantasy x land worm, just wistfully sobbing over faded photos of my former size 2 self.

but aside from the sporadic pain and dreaded hogbody, and for all the intense hormonal realness my body is serving in order to grow a whole new person, i am feeling great.  this is easily the best experience i could have hoped for in the first half.  i feel peaceful and comfortable when i think about this baby and these few months thus far of being an apartment for a tenant i'm excited to meet.  my favorite thing in the world right now is when ian stoops down to put his ear against my abdomen and asks "hello?"  

my second favorite thing in the world right now is the mcdouble.

 

012

i've been sick for a week, and i have to admit i haven't been handling it well.  the upper respiratory bug that has been plaguing my friends and colleagues recently is averaging 3-4 days in everyone else.  but it has chosen to opportunistically wreak havoc on my immunosuppressed body and it seems to be taking up permanent residence.  i can't remember what breathing feels like anymore.

this relentless sinus congestion sucks, but for me it's more psychologically than physically debilitating.  sure, the pressure of my sinuses pent up in an increasingly swollen and patchy face keeping me sleep-deprived and painfully dry-mouthed is a miserable sensation—but i'd argue that the claustrophobic, trapped feeling of severe congestion is harder to handle.  

under normal circumstances, i would be unabashedly drowing myself in a mountain of otc pills.  but now, everything that enters my bloodstream requires careful consideration.  the landscape of decision-making has shifted these past three months, and now i am first and foremost asking myself: how will this affect my son?

last night i cried a little from the frustration but dammed up the waterworks immediately when i realized it made the sinus pressure worse.  with no hesitation, ian grabbed his car keys and ran to the store to pick up some other non-medicinal remedies i could try.  he brought them back to me along with a box of ice cream drumsticks.

so i'm sitting here wrestling with biochemical riddles like, how will 600mg of guaifenesin affect a fetus at 14 weeks, but the thing bolstering me through this wretched haze of illness and stress and sleep deprivation is considering an altogether more important effect on my son.

he belongs to the most incredible man i've ever had the privilege of meeting.  he's going to be raised by a tirelessly thoughtful, measured, empathetic, and patient father.  like, i've dated guys i could describe fondly with superficial adjectives like funny and intelligent but i've never admired anyone's character the way i admire ian's.  if our son becomes even half the man his father is, i'll be absolutely proud.

but if he turns out to be a total useless fuckboy snapchatting girls on the moon colony a bunch of stupid shirtless selfies like wyd beuatiful ;) i'll probably look back on this week of my pregnancy and think ugh i can't believe i avoided decongestants for this.

010

it has been well over a month since my last update, which is a bit wild considering all the progress i've made.  well, not me.  i haven't made any progress—as a mother or just as a person in general.  i've been staying the exact same, eating a lot of pickles and thinking about work 24/7.  i've also been listening to the read, which mostly makes me wish i were black and gay and capable of producing a better podcast.

nah, it's baby who has been doing all the work.  while i'm sitting around doing nothing more productive than collecting hinterlands' shards in dragon age: inquisition, my little fetus is going hard in the paint on that growth game.  vocal cords, intestines, fingerprints!  it's hard to believe that there are already unique fingerprints developed inside me- but hopefully not ones that will be kept on file in the federal prison system or something.

my last ultrasound took place at 12+1 during my first trimester screening with perinatologist dr. albert.  it was a long appointment preserved for posterity on a cool dvd in case anyone ever wants to watch a long ass grainy black-and-white movie of my uterus.  baby was not cooperating fully and seemed unwilling to roll into the ideal position for the nuchal translucency scan, so there was a lot of pacing up and down the hallways in between ultrasound takes.  during the scan, dr. albert informed me confidently that it looked like a girl: "percentage-wise, i'd say i'm between 80 to 85% sure."

"girl!" i told everyone in a frenzy.  definitely what we were hoping for.  enamored with our chosen girl name and getting carried away with mental projections of what a tiny, female, asian version of ian would look like, i sat through a blood draw for the progenity verifi non-invasive prenatal test.  over the next week, ian surreptitiously googled daddy daughter matching leather jackets.

last week, wrapping up a crucial meeting at the new coppell clinic, my phone lit up with a familiar phone number.  it was only familiar to me because i had dialed it twice earlier that week, on some real eager beaver shit about the nipt results.  the medical assistant's news brought a surge of relief that extinguished latent anxieties i didn't realize i had: no trisomies, no sex chromosome abnormalities.

"do you want to know the sex?" she asked with a playful lilt.  "we can tell you if you want to know."

"yes, of course."  girl tho.

"it's a boy!"

i was lowkey braced for the contrarian news without really knowing why, and my immediate reaction was one of tempered disappointment.  i was just super hype on that girl name.

"we'll still use it," ian reassured me logically, with his characteristically indefatigable sanguinity.  "just a couple of years later."  he envisions four children for us.  i envision my body looking like a massive bag of trash what's been sitting in a hot landfill for a thousand years.  

but i realized slowly that aside from the name, nothing else i've projected for our baby really changes.  daughter or gay son, i would raise them the same way, with the same values, and ostensibly in the same clothes.  and it's not even a matter of feeling strongly principled about gender-neutral parenting.  it's just that the things that really matter to me about growing this child and releasing it into the world to bring value, happiness, and love to its environment has everything to do with strength of character and nothing to do with gender.

boy or girl, i'd still expect a dr. j.  or president j.  or grammy award-winning rapper j.

009

hi little baby,

i saw you for the first time last week and there was something that felt imperceptibly real about the visualization—even though you measured less than a centimeter from crown to rump, just a few blurry white pixels on a screen with my name horribly misspelled across the top.  i'm not citing any newly-awakened maternal instinct or spiritual realness that immediately divorced me from my usual routine of tempered pragmatism.  you were just a tiny blob that i could barely discern at first.  when dr. grisham and his assistant first prompted me with "you see it?  right there?  that's your baby!" i started to feel frantic, like a kid called on in class to answer a question she hadn't paid attention to.  i couldn't see you, despite my education and research and assumed self-confidence.  slightly panicked, i struggled to sit up a little bit more and scanned the screen wildly looking for something in that fluctuating, wobbly, monochromatic display.

"see that pulsing?" dr. grisham pointed out helpfully.  "that's the heartbeat."

i definitely saw that.  not unlike a dog, i couldn't discern detail but i could detect motion.  seeing the tiny pulse, seeing you on that sonogram printout attached to a little yolk sac—that was the first step in solidifying the reality of this journey.  pregnancy and childbirth and parenthood is so ubiquitous in scope but so personal in experience, i've started to assume a familiar self-deprecating mantle of "lol i have no idea what i'm doing."  and that's categorically untrue.  i do know what i'm doing.  i planned you.  i did my homework.  i always do.

but the thing that keeps me ambling through these weeks with an innocuous obliviousness isn't so much the concept of not know what i'm supposed to do.  after all, i've been preemptively taking my prenatal vitamins and switched off contraindicated medications before i conceived, before well-intentioned friends and acquaintances began peppering me with unsolicited advice.  i know what i'm supposed to do.  i guess, more accurately, it's that i don't know what i'm supposed to feel.  

sometimes i think of you as a very real person.  sometimes i think of you as a baby, other times as a child, and every now and then as the adult you will grow into.  the last concept is particularly terrifying due to my fear of aging visibly.  but most of the time, i think about you as potential.  potential but massive energy, on the precipice of coming into being.  and i'm sort of on a precipice myself too—my feet balanced precariously on the edge and caught between cynicism and maternalism, between being mimi and mommy.  i keep waiting to feel the whirlwind of sentiment and selflessness that comes from an unfathomably deep place and not just a crafted or pat cuteness.  and i know it'll come, i'm just waiting for the drop, the irrevocable shift in landscape—but right now i am also potential.  the potential for motherhood.

i hope you are happy and comfortable in there.  you look like a crazy gross alien spawn and you're on your fourth (and final!) set of kidneys and you've got a cartilage skeleton like a tiny shark but i hope everything is proceeding well.  i have faith you'll get pretty cute.  your father is a real babe, after all.

007

pregnancy forums are kind of the worst.  i've never seen a subsection of internet communities so dedicated to utilizing acronyms for nearly everything that each post is more inscrutable than the last.  you are grown women, stop referring to your period as AF and your family members as DH, DS, DD and your sexual activity as BD—you are having a baby, not encrypting highly sensitive military cables.

idk, the zeitgeist of pregnancy & motherhood communities is so fucking weird to me.  i don't feel motherly or nurturing or any of those qualities that would endear me to sisterhood and sentiment and emotional diarrhea.  i haven't cried or felt the irrational pendulum of mood swings.  i'm about as hungry and sleepy as i usually am—which is to say, a lot and always.  i feel like the same asshole i've always been, but maybe now approaching the cusp of something big.  i hope motherhood changes me as a person for the better, but specifically not into an unrecognizable mommy culture weirdo who spends her time scouring etsy for ugly knit hats for my baby's gigantic head and pinning diy princess birthday party decoration ideas.

my first ultrasound is scheduled for next week, december 15th.  

 

006

today i am exactly five weeks and four days pregnant, which puts me in the middle of my sixth week of pregnancy.  by thursday i will be halfway through my first trimester, or 16.667% through my entire pregnancy, or 100% pointlessly obsessed with counting progress like i'm tracking an elusive video game achievement.

nausea has yet to rear its ugly, quivery head but i've been reassured many times that a lack of morning sickness doesn't necessarily correlate with anything going awry—should just accept this at face value as a cool bonus award.  

i think by this point everyone who knew that we started trying to conceive has been clued in on the pregnancy. this creates a weird smattering of knowledge that ranges from close & personal (my mother, my best friends) to distant and perfunctory (my lash technician, my waxer, the IT guy at work—why?) but misses all the friends and acquaintances that fall in between.  this is entirely my own terrible shotgun strategy—ian doesn't talk to anyone or even know a person so he's been happily secretive by default.  

i'm still not sure how i feel about pregnancy announcements on social media.  i think maybe i will just have the baby and wait for it to reach an age where it will no longer look like an elderly man who has been accidentally laundered and then left in the washing machine.

005

i'm midway through my fifth week of pregnancy and the symptoms are clockwork.  i wake up every day with the looming threat of a headache tensing up the back of my head with an ominous grip, finally settling in slowly at around 11 am.  exhaustion trundles in after noon, and the peak of its compressing weight always arrives by 2 pm.  i've been physically tired, lazy, sleep-deprived— but this kind of fatigue is a brand new animal with bloodshot eyes and soporific mentality.  my boobs feel heavier and sore; am considering keeping them pent up in a sports bra for the next eight months.  i'm getting these weird little twinges in my lower abdomen that started in the middle of the night on my right side, then shifted to the left.  they're sporadic and a bit reassuring—a reminder that my body is rapidly changing to accommodate life, as opposed to just bloating up into an endless maw for ice cream for no good reason.

i told the boys at the clinic today, the reveal i dreaded the second-most (papa will be a harder sell).  instead of responding with "lol u r demoted to janitor," they congratulated me and seemed genuinely excited—not at all concerned with how maternity will affect my job performance.  i suppose i'm the only egghead in the practice sitting around shrewdly calculating insurance premiums and time off policies.