It’s been a few days since I wrote, so I figured I should spout off a few paragraphs before I turn in.
There’s this woman at work who’s pregnant — hold on, let me stop there. First off: is anyone else weirded out by calling your peers “women”? I mean, yeah, that’s what they are. Late 20’s, early 30’s… you’re not a girl anymore. You’re a woman. I’d rather call my female peers “chicks,” but some of them might not take kindly to that. And using the term “lady” is kind of weird, too. “Lady” always has the connotation of “bitch” somewhere in my mind. Like, “Hey, lady, get outta the way!” You know.
ANYway. There’s a chick at work who’s pregnant. There are a lot of them, actually, but I’m thinking of one in particular who’s got a personality that jives with mine. Irreverent, cool, blunt, and totally floored that she got knocked up by her boyfriend. I mean, no one thought of her as the motherly type before — not even herself.
She had her first ultrasound this week, and brought in the “baby pictures” for us to see. Thankfully, the printouts were labeled with body parts, to give us a frame of reference. One was a full-body shot, with the head and arm labeled, and one was an image of the head, with the eyes labeled. What’s really weird? This 21-week old fetus has teeth! Really visible teeth, obviously still in the gums, but still. I hadn’t thought of such things before. It was kind of cool, seeing an ultrasound photo where I didn’t feel all self-conscious about saying, “What IS that? What am I looking at?” Usually I feel kind of awkward about the whole thing.
At the ultrasound, she found out that her child is a girl. She told us all about how her unborn was doing friggin’ backflips, and the nice ultrasound technician was having a bitch of a time getting all the images she needed. One that she did manage to get, though, was a total spread-eagle of the kid with her feet up by her ears. We all had fun with that — I made some sort of comment that we’d have to get her daughter some big hoop earrings.
The more pregnant people I deal with on a regular basis, the more comfortable I get with the concept of *being* one of those people someday. I mean, you guys know me. Candlemaking and wearing the occasional pink shirt is as girly and frilly as I get. Something about pregnancy just harks back to my days in church, where there was always someone pregnant, and all the womenfolk could make perfect pie crusts and sew their kids’ halloween costumes and their favorite paint color was mauve. I’m not like that. But I guess moms don’t necessarily have to be.
I’m really tempted to share too much about my private time with Aaron… but I’m not going to. There are some things that, although really fucking funny, are just a little too personal and weird to share with the entire internets. If, however, you want to know what Aaron says after unprotected sex now, feel free to ask privately. 😉
