Sunday 25 September 2011

Pregnancy dreams: part 3

Update on my active dream world.  If you dare take a peek into my unconscious, feel free.  Again, any interpretations welcome.

I have a recurring dream theme.  It's a house with 4 stories.  It is old.  In the dreams, I live in the house but I reside mainly on the lower floors.  In the previous dreams, this was because these were the only floors I owned,  or in other dreams because the other areas of the house were being used for something else.

In the latest house dream, I am aware that there is something on the fourth floor that I don't want to see.  Something terrifying.  I am somehow aware that the fourth floor is small and contains only a small bed and a window.

In this house dream, I am on the ground floor and there is an old woman pottering around.  I want to avoid her and begin to climb the stairs.  I intend to hide in the toilet of the second floor, but she is quicker on my heels than I expect and opt instead to try to out-rush her to toilets that are on the 3rd floor.  I rush into a antiquated bathroom, decorated with frilly pink and lock myself in a cubicle.  It's a large cubicle with a toilet but also antique wall lighting, a chair, pink carpet, a basin and generally a lot of room.  The old woman is just behind me, but I manage to evade her.

I try to turn on the wall lights, but they don't work.  I suddenly become aware that the ceiling of the third floor is not complete and opens to the fourth floor.  I look above me and see a terrifying looking woman glaring back at me.  She descends into the cubicle with me.  I threaten her to stay away,  but she threatens me right back and shows a small blade.  She doesn't attack me but demands that I listen.

All at once, I am flying down the stairs, using the hand rails to slide and jumping from floor to floor.  I find myself in a basement that I didn't know what there.  There is a little girl and then it seems that I am the little girl.  She is playing with a doll's house and there is a man there with her.  He seems like a father or uncle.  The basement is dimly lit.  He states that she normally plays with the doll's house in a certain way, but she turns to him and says that she will do it differently now.

Suddenly I am in a lounge on the ground floor.  A man who is my husband (but does not look like Thom) is reading to our child on the sofa.  I am standing, looking at a stained glass window that contains the images of the people of the house, depicted against red glass.  The face of the man and the child are there but the face of the woman is not me.  It is someone who was in my place before.  I stamp my feet to demand that she leave the house.

And then I wake up.

Wednesday 21 September 2011

Sympathy for the fat man

I am ever amazed at the proportions I am developing.  Not having a round belly feels like another lifetime and I can't imagine that there will be a time when it goes.  This week's big news is the big belly.  The little fellas must be having a growth spurt.

Monday, I was feeling tight.  The commute played havoc on my back and I think I felt the beginnings of lordosis - a curve of the lower spine common in people with belly weight, such a preggos like me and beer-bellied men.  I came home and treated myself to a little yoga, a routine I used regularly before pregnancy and with only minor adjustments since.  But on Monday evening, my belly wouldn't fit into certain positions, even though it was only a few days previously that I last managed the poses with ease.

It is obvious to all that I am indeed a pregnant lady.  The people I know who had yet to mention my expanding waistline have started to suddenly declare that they can see I am pregnant.  This week I found myself standing on the Underground, which I didn't mind much on that day.  I had my trainers on and my handbag was light having been recently purged of all redundant lip glosses and bits of rubbish.  A fat man looked at me from his seated position near my belly.  He could tell and I could tell he could tell.

While the Underground etiquette is to offer your seat to the elderly, injured or pregnant, we commuters know this happens irregularly.  There was a debate in the letters section of the Metro a few years ago following a letter from a woman disgusted that no one offered a seat despite her big, pregnant appearance.  The debate took two distinct sides - those who agreed that we should all be more compassionate to those less able to stand and those who saw pregnancy as a woman's choice and no reason for the rest of the world to give a monkey's, let alone a seat.

I looked at the fat man's belly and wondered if he felt like me.  Crammed into my undies, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot when stood for a length of time, breathless at the sight of stairs and salivating at the smell of the patisserie.  Probably.  I realised that I never before had sympathy for fat men.  I knew the pain of the aching lordosis he must have.  As we sized up each other's bellies, him firmly planted in his seat, we might have been thinking the same thing:  that the discomfort was ultimately the consequence of the other's choice. My choice was not to have a big belly, but to have a child.  His choice was probably not to have a big belly either, but a chocolate éclair.  In any case, I stood until a much trimmer man offered me his seat, something that will never happen for my poor fat comrade.  I sat, fat and happily, across from him for a few stops looking pretty damn smug.  

Monday 19 September 2011

Pregnancy hair

Advice in the first 12 weeks from websites, magazines and books all encourage pregnant women to look forward to the second trimester.  A supposedly magical time when the fatigue fades, you grow but glow and you develop that lovely pregnancy head of hair.  Pantene has nothing on it.  Hormones mean that it is thicker, glossier and just better. 

I got that.  It is thicker and it would probably be shiny if I could be bothered to wash it more often.  But I can't as truthfully I am far less happy about it than the literature claims I should be.  I have stopped dying it, after deciding that it was best not to take chances, especially with something so vain and periphery to my ultimate happiness.  At least that was the noble, just-found-out-I'm-pregnant-me.  Before the reality of 5 inches of roots, in a colour I assume is my natural shade.  I can't recall, as the last time I saw it I must have been 10 years old.  Being an all-or-nothing sort, I've been letting my undyed locks go almost all-natural.  No straightening.  The natural waves sometimes being a friend and sometimes being a cantankerous distant cousin of dreadlocks.

This past Saturday, me and my nature-mama hair rolled our of bed and threw on a bathrobe.  A lazy morning ahead of me, I didn't pay a thought to the tangled afro on my head.  Thom and I pottered about on the decking in the morning sunlight, he sipping coffee while I inspected the plants.  I pulled out some offensive bind weed and returned inside to the sofa, content that I had been an instustrious little morning person.  

Half way through the morning talk shows, I started paying attention to the tangles, half-mindedly easing them apart with my fingers.  As a worked through the mess, eyes glazed and fixed on the television, I was startled to find something hard and cold among the knotted tresses.  It even felt a little wet.  My fingers brushed past it at first and I struggled to back track and locate it again.   

Was it a pebble? A bit of last nights dinner?  Some strange skin problem?  I was more horrified than all of that to pull it out and see it was a tiny baby snail shell.  Disgusted, I let it fall from my fingers to the bathrobe.  Thom thought it was cute.  After landing, I was even more shocked to see a tiny baby snail timidly raise it's antennae out of the shell and start to explore my lap.  Thom quickly saved me, or perhaps saved himself from my protests of 'Eww!' and 'Gross!'.  He released the little guy outside. 

So, pregnancy hair.  One of the highlights of this experience and also a handy net for catching garden pests.  

Saturday 17 September 2011

Men and boys

Something strange happens to men when Thom tells them he is having twins.  Something even stranger happens when he tells them it's twin boys.  It seems that in the male version of the story of life, bi, manly men make boys. And therefore the manly-est must make twin boys.

I sit back and shake my head at the masculine logic, in all its base and Neanderthal-like glory.  Thom revels in it, and I guess he deserves it.  The poor guy copes with his pregnant wife like a real trooper.  It is generally all about me and my cargo (spent 3 hours on the sofa today, snoozing and watching Spartacus while he cooked curry form scratch), so it's ok that he's been able to puff his chest out a bit over this.  Even though I think his all-male cheering squad are mistaken.

Like a lot of things, this might all start with the story of Adam and the Garden of Eden.  The fellas seem hung up on the idea that being male is the stronger and preferred form of humanity.  Backed up by the Bible which tells us that God made Adam and only knocked together Eve as an afterthought, at Adam's winge that he was a bit lonely.   Excuse the heresy as I put my rough ideas together, but what if men didn't come first?  None of us were there.  History is always written by the victors, and men, having more physical strength in a dangerous world ruled through brute force.  Perhaps it is their interpretation of creation we now have.  So how can we be sure?  Maybe men and women arrived in the garden at once, or even, what if woman came first!

If woman did come first, the story makes just as much sense.  It might have been more likely for a woman to ask for a companion to share the Garden of Eden with, and someone not as good looking as her, as well.  Someone to talk to.  What disappointment when the companion happily sat in silence and loathed to be asked what he was thinking.  Especially if he when did answer, it turned out he wasn't thinking about her!  Oh well, either way, we come in two types and its debatable if one is stronger or preferred. 

To counter the male banter, sex is determined from fertilisation.  Pure chance.  There are sperm that make females and sperm that make males.  Although the male sperm swims faster, the female sperm is reputed to be stronger and longer-living.  So much for the big and tough argument.  Click here for handy answers from the web on how sex is determined

I will now have to reign myself in and resist all this man-woman power struggle stuff.  Maybe I'm feeling just a little worried about how to cope with being completely out-numbered when the twins arrive.  Is it wrong to hope for at least one mummy's boy?  I think I will be able to be reasonable now that I've off-loaded my thoughts on all of you.  After all, Thom and I are hardly ascribing to the traditional gender roles in our household.  I have just ploughed my way through a huge plate of curry; yet another meal cooked by the man of the house.  And now I am sat nursing by huge belly and letting out some very unfeminine burbs as they arise.  From the sounds of this, I should hope for the twins to be just like their dad.  

Saturday 10 September 2011

Science vs Folklore: Stealing the fun

Up until the last few weeks, my local hospital had a policy not to tell the sex of babies to anyone.  Not some kind of politically correct plan to save babies from parents who might favour boys.  No, that might be acceptable.  It was actually a reaction to be sued years ago when a family kitted out their nursery at great expense for a little girl before getting a little boy.  Ooops.  But not really a reason for a lawsuit.

In any case, the hospital decided to cover its butt more in future.  Thom and I got used to the idea and even looked forward to the uncertainty and surprise that awaited us on the big day.  Besides, there were all the old wives tales about how to predict the sex to keep us interested and entertained.  I found a list of them complied on The Baby Centre and I ticked most all the boxes for boys.  People at work, mostly the women who have children of their own, told me they thought I was going to have boys.  They couldn't lay their fingers on why, exactly.

My mother-in-law said she also thought I was the type to have boys.  My brother-in-law, whose daughter just turned 1 years old this month, was told that he was the type to have girls.  I puzzle over how a person can look 'the type' to have girls or boys, but in his case it proved correct.

We have all come to rely on medical science so much.  Pokes and prods and biopsies offer up irrefutable answers.  And irrefutable answers are the most desirable kind of answers to us uncertainty-hating humans.  But all this folklore has come from somewhere.  Wise old women, traditionally the ones people had to rely on for midwifery and birth, must have taken note through the centuries of differences between boy-pregnancies and girl-pregnancies.  Their knowledge, not seen as scientific in today's world, must have been based on correlations and large numbers of test cases.

For me the folklore as been proved correct again.  Since the hospital's policy change, we found out for certain that we are having boys.  Despite the excitement of looking forward to finding out when they arrived, we were also sucked in by the promised calm of medical, scientific certainty.  The ultrasound operator asked if we wanted to know.  I looked at Thom, his eyes lit up and nodding away like an idiot.  It was all the permission I needed and we said 'yes, tell us'.

I feel a mixture of satisfaction and regret.  Satisfaction that I know what's coming.  Regret that I've traded some of impending excitement for a rock solid certainty.  Science gave me an answer, but kinda stole the fun.  I'd bet the women across the centuries would have done the same, given the choice.  It was just that those who would have wanted to know were left to the best they could rely on - the observations of the wise old women - which, as it turns out, were pretty damn good.

Thursday 8 September 2011

Take my advice....

I have made it past 20 weeks.  The halfway point in a pregnancy.  I still wake up some days and forget what’s happening.  There is a hazy dawn moment when it’s just me and Thom.  Then I realize in a few months these two will be here with us and I may not even remember what those hazy mornings ever felt like. 

Along with being past 20 weeks obviously goes the inevitable growing girth.  As I get ever bigger, and the world can see what's happening to me, baby advice is practically sprouting from ground I walk on.  Everyone has a supposedly good idea or an essential tidbit for me or the babies.  

Listen to gospel music, babies love it.

Don't dress them the same, it will screw them up.

Buy a dog, it’s good for kids.

Beware of teenagers, they are always terrible.  With two, you’ll struggle.

Don't buy a dog, get one from a rescue home.  It’s the only way.

Don't exercise. You could risk your babies.

Don't take the stairs.  It’s not safe.

You shouldn't be wearing those heels. 

Goodness knows how people come to these tips.  However, they hatch their ideas, I’m certain it’s not just for me, as the mother-to-be books have dedicated sections on dealing with the advice onslaught endured by pregnant women.  To be fair, it comes in all forms and although can be bizarre and annoying, it is not always so.  There is plenty of advice that is offered like a gift, from a desire to help, to be involved, to save someone from potential suffering or give happiness. 

I’ve noticed more and more how much the world takes pregnant me on as if I belong to them.  Not just people that are parents themselves, but a great range of people seem to take the project of parenthood as a something that concerns us all.  It makes me think of the phrase, ‘it takes a village to raise a child’, coined by Hilary Clinton in recent history, but credited to an African proverb traditionally.  While it remains true also that many others couldn't give a damn about pregnancy, or even have a palpable distaste for it.  This attitude is clear on London public transport, where I am greeted with looks of suspicion and annoyance, most likely for having the gall to bring another body into the already crowded Underground.  

But when it comes to the advice-givers, there are times when my bump certainly does feel like public property.  It’s open for comment, analysis and the occasional feel.  Even patients at the hospital have dared put feel up my bump.  My lifestyle and choices are open for scrutiny by more than just my consultant and midwife.  I begin to wonder if I look like a crack addict or someone who might unwittingly trade her child for an iPod.     

Even if the advice I'm getting is correct, which is plainly debatable, it is bizarre that everyone has something to contribute.  But when people do give advice, deluded or not, it seems to come from the knowledge that it is huge task to raise a child, and a responsibility that cannot be fulfilled by one person alone.  So while it can feel controlling, it is maybe a very human reaction to the enormity of parenthood.