33 Weeks Down, 7 (ish) to Go

So, the picture above was actually taken a week ago when I was 32 weeks, but I have it on good authority that I don’t look too much bigger this week. I do, however, look quite a bit different than I did at 28 weeks, as you can see. I’m also moving a lot more slowly these days, and feeling a little foggier. I think the medical term is “pregnancy brain”? On Sunday, Drew and I had plans to go to some friends’ picnic get-together at a park in Ft. Greene, about a mile walk from our neighborhood. I decided to make lemon bars to share, a treat that has become something of a specialty of mine this summer. I’ve made them, I don’t know, maybe five or six times since June, and have brought them along to BBQs and picnics, always to great fanfare from everyone.

So, anyway, I set out to make these awesome lemon bars and decided to enlist Drew’s help, even though they aren’t difficult to make, because he’s been showing an interest in being more active in the kitchen, and I want to teach him a few things so he can help with meals a bit more after Jasper* comes. So, we assemble everything and put the batch in the oven and 30 minutes later, I take it out and it’s all fucked up. It’s gooey and burned-looking and I don’t know what went wrong. I glance at the (very simple) recipe to see what I possibly could have missed and realized I never added the four eggs. Oh, the tragedy!! The utter disaster!! Everything would have to be thrown out.

I slammed the pan on top of the oven, ran across the apartment and dramatically flung myself across the bed and wailed and wailed.

“I’m so upset!” I hollered. “And I’m so tired! I’m tired of being pregnant!!! My stomach hurts and I can’t breathe and I have heartburn really bad and I’m just so tired!!! And I can’t believe I fucked up the lemon bars! They’re so easy! I’ve made them a million times. What’s wrong with meeeee??”

Drew was with me by this point, lying on the bed next to me, trying not to laugh. But he couldn’t help it, though; he snickered at me. And then I laughed, despite myself. And then I was laughing and crying at the same time and trying to stay upset so I could adequately convey the seriousness of it all.

In the end, it wasn’t such a horrible thing that the whole batch of lemon bars had to be pitched, because I couldn’t make it to the picnic anyway. It was hotter than Miss Piggy’s tits outside and the thought of walking two miles round trip, plus hiking up a big hill to get to the picnic location and then sitting, uncomfortably, on the ground for a couple of hours and probably eating more than I have room for in my crowded belly, didn’t sound like, well, like a picnic to me. So, I bailed. And I stayed inside and read and worked on a collage I’m making for the nursery, and I tried to nap, but I was in too much pain and discomfort to really relax enough.

Luckily, those types of days are few and far between. I’m definitely getting more forgetful, but I can’t say the emotional outbursts — or the physical pain, luckily — have been par for the course by any means. I guess my recent bouts of insomnia have caught up with me, and the muggy weather didn’t help, and I think the baby was situated in such a way that he was pinching every major organ in my mid-section that afternoon.

But at any rate, I felt much better the next day, and even managed to make it to some friends’ party where there was a tiny 2-week-old baby boy in attendance. I looked at him, and at his mother holding him so proudly and protectively against her chest, and I imagined myself in just a few weeks holding my own little baby boy. And then I tried not to cry. Because it’s all getting a little overwhelming… and intense. Some time in the last few weeks I’ve moved from a place of hypothetical to a place of absolute — indefinite absolute. Everything is about to change … forever. There’s no going back. And it’s scary and wonderful and thrilling and exhausting. And, yes, sometimes it makes me feel a little crazy, too. But what’s life without a little crazy thrown in, right?

Just don’t forget to add the eggs.

*Jasper is my Dad’s nickname for the baby. I think it’s kind of cute.