Humiliation

What, you may be wondering, is a photograph of the back of my master bathroom's toilet tank doing on my blog?

And what's the deal with the oil diffuser and all those packets of matches?

I have two words for you, my pigeons: Pregnancy Gas.* But, while that is indeed moderately humiliating, it is not the topic of today's blog post. Or at least, it is not the SOLE topic. Today's blog post is reserved for all the little symptoms of pregnancy that cause you to kneel down over and over again and sing the Pregnant Woman's Hymn (#63): Please God, Let Him Still Find Me Sexy When This is All Over.

Certainly, the gas is a part of it. Not even a small part of it. But it is as NOTHING compared with some of the others. Due to the fact that I have no shame, I shall be sharing them with you. Aren't you lucky?!

1. Peach Belly:

I've got a cousin right now who is also pregnant. She and her husband are referring to their fetus in utero as "peaches" - a moniker hung on it by her very small nieces. At first, I could not understand WHY they chose that name out of so many possibilities...but that was before the first time I removed my shirt and suddenly realized that my previously-hairless, (and quite possibly blameless), stomach was covered in a fine down. And since it's quite round at the moment - it resembles, in point of fact, nothing so much as a perfectly ripe peach.

So far, I've been pretty lucky as regards new and startling hair growth - my hair is naturally very fair and fine, and I haven't got it growing on my face, back, or palms. (Take THAT, Sister Mary Francis!) But to have a slightly furry tummy was a bit of a shock.

Luckily, my husband is an animal lover. I think he thinks it's kind of cute.

2. Proto-Lactation:

22 weeks pregnant and, (one way or another), I couldn't help but notice that my breasts had gone from purely decorative to functional. Or at least, a stage prior to functional. I appear to be producing tiny pin-drops of clear fluid under certain conditions, (which shall remain unnamed). My reaction to this was, obviously, totally calm and relaxed.**

Evidently this is fairly normal, although usually occurring a bit later in pregnancy. It's the equivalent of my mammary glands doing some warm up laps and stretching off to the side of the track before running a marathon. That still doesn't make it okay though.

Sandy's reaction, unlike mine, was hysterical. Okay, that's a lie. He took it very calmly. His exact words were, "well...it's a little weird. But we knew it was going to happen at some point. I mean, the baby has to feed..."

For the record, I'm adding "the baby has to feed" to the list of phrases now verboten in this household. Right next to "just wait til your milk comes in" and "you think you're big NOW?" Blargh.

3. Pregnancy Gas:

When your body is pumping out vast quantities of a hormone that goes around relaxing all your smooth muscles, and therefore slowing down your digestion considerably, perhaps it is not shocking that gas would be a side effect. All the pregnancy books warn you that you may burp or pass wind more frequently than you did pre-pregnancy. They also suggest that you cut out foods that cause you to become gassy, etc etc. What they DON'T tell you, is that when foods are kept an unnaturally long time in your intestines, being processed at a snail's pace, the gas isn't just more frequent or more bountiful. It is also completely poisonous.

I've never smelled anything like it. There's a rotten egg sulfurous quality to it that would, I'm pretty sure, lead Sam and Dean Winchester to immediately suspect all pregnant women of being possessed by demonic presences. And maybe they wouldn't be completely off base about that.

It makes the phrase, "what crawled up your butt and died?" utterly apt.

It means that whenever a pregnant woman is out, in public or even in private, around other people, she has to treat herself like an unexploded grenade. Every so often you'll see her break off in mid-conversation, and then without explanation RUN to another room. Preferably one with a window or an exhaust fan. And a box of matches.

If she's in a moving vehicle, you can anticipate moments where suddenly all the windows will be summarily lowered, regardless of the exterior temperature. I flew on a plane a few weekends ago and if it had been possible to open the windows on THAT, I would have. I seriously considered popping the emergency exit. (So if you plan on traveling with a pregnant woman in winter, bring a warm coat for the car ride. You will need it.)

There have been times where I've considered flinging myself out windows or through french doors in an act of purely altruistic self-destruction. It's THAT bad, you guys.

The above humiliations are not inconsiderable. Hideous gas warfare, unwanted body hair, and utterly unnecessary lactation - they conspire to put a pregnant woman on very uneven emotional footing. But of all the humiliations which I've endured this pregnancy, nothing. NOTHING. Even comes CLOSE to equaling the soul-rending horror of trying on maternity bathing suits.

4. Maternity Bathing Suits:

I am willing to concede that there must be women out there who get pregnant, gain like, 20 lbs total their entire pregnancy, all in their womb region, and elsewhere look exactly like they did pre-pregnancy. Tight, firm little buttocks - smooth, thinly tapering gazelle legs - breasts that, while bigger, do not require a degree in advanced architecture and the ability to construct flying buttresses to support.

I am not one of those women. A fact that was brought most horribly home to me during yesterday's attempt to locate a bathing suit.

The first one I wriggled into wasn't AWFUL, but it was cut on the thigh in such a way that I was forced, at thigh-point, to accept some painful truths about my body.

a) it is aging

b) it's not being particularly graceful about it

I poked my head out of the dressing room at Sandy, while carefully keeping the curtain pulled tight so he could only see my disembodied head, and said, "This isn't happening."

He said, "let me see."

I said, "no."

He said, "come out here, and let me see!"

I said, "there's no f*ing way that's happening."

He said, "Seriously, open the freaking curtain."

Me: "you really don't want me to do that."

He grabbed the curtain and pulled it open while I shrieked and danced in place attempting to conceal from him my flaccid and hideous form.

"it's really cute!" he said, encouragingly.

"It's a nightmare!" I wailed.

"No really, it's adorable," he enthused.

"Sandy. I love you. I do. But let's not bullsh** each other. The top may be acceptable. Maybe. But my thighs are a freight train barreling towards a broken railroad bridge. They're practically a natural disaster."

"What? You're crazy..." he said. But he wouldn't make eye contact.

"Sandy..." I warned.

"Well. Do you want to look for some cute sarongs?"

Doom. Doom. Dooooooooooom. It was totally that one moment from Bridget Jone's Diary where she makes out with the teenager and he feels up her stomach and then says, "mmmmm...you're all squashy." Considered suicide but decided it was beneath me.

Began considering liposuction instead.

Sandy, in an effort to be helpful, proceeded to bring me every single bathing suit in the store. Each was more hideous than the last. After trying on about 8 suits, I was a quivering, emotional wreck. I strove to hold it together. As is the norm when trying on clothing, I spent a lot of time in the changing room making muffled shrieking noises, unexplained bangs, muttering comments at myself, hysterical laughter, moaning...I can make a half-hour session in a changing room into a one-woman avant-garde production of Bring in the Noise, Bring in the Funk.

And I'm okay with all of that, but I was trying really, really hard not to cry. There were other women trying on clothes at that moment, and Sandy outside the curtain, and the sales lady bustling around yelling, "how are we doing?," as though the systematic destruction of my body image through the medium of bathing suit was somehow a group effort that we were all contributing to.

"Apart from the flaming failure of my self-respect I'm just fine!" I'd cheerfully call back. Sandy would make a snorting noise from the other side of the curtain, and I'd grimly attempt to work yet another monstrosity of sunny-weather couture over my (now perceived to be) grossly lumpy self. Choking back tears all the while.

Putting my own, beloved, jeans and shirt back on at the end of the experience was positively blissful. "Free!" I cried, as I emerged from the torture chamber. Sandy rolled his eyes at me. I had totally failed to find an acceptable suit. The first one, which had been, all parties agreed, the least horrifying, was just a little too small. And she didn't have a medium in stock. I was cheerfully imagining myself swimming in shorts and a tee shirt, the way I used to do at summer camp when there was a guy I quite fancied within a three mile radius of the pond. I should have known by the gleam in Sandy's eye that he had other plans. And sure enough, the lady was saying "okay, so I'll just call you when that comes in..." to him as I staggered toward the front of the store, still attempting to tuck the remaining shreds of my dignity around myself. Crap. Crap. She was going to hold it for me when she got restocked.

Well, maybe it wouldn't come in any time soon. Hope for small miracles.

We escaped, and Sandy dragged me into a shoe shop to look at boat shoes for him. I was sitting in a chair in the middle of the sales floor, texting Kara about the bathing suit dilemma, when I realized that I was losing my grip on myself. Tears were starting to roll down my face. I blinked, and mopped them off my cheeks, but they just kept coming. Sandy looked over at me from where he was examining a shoe.

"Are you okay???"

"No," I sniffed, with commendable accuracy. "I will never be okay again."

I again rammed my emotional upheaval down as hard as I could, and smiled at him to show I was sort of joking. He gave me the man-look that says, "I know this is because of your crazy woman hormones, which I do not understand at all but put up with because most of the time you're kind of normal," and went back to examining shoes.

When the shoe shopping was finished, and we were walking out of the store, he said, "where to now?" and I said, "lunch?" It was noon, and I was hungry. We walked to the nearest eatery. The hostess showed us to a little table for two against a wall and in a corner, and I mashed my bulk into the smaller space as best I could. Sandy said, "do you want me to sit there?" and I glared at him. Under ordinary circumstances he easily outweighs me by a hundred pounds. "No!" I seethed. I excused myself to use the restroom and wash my hands. When I got back, Sandy was smoothing his napkin down over his legs and opening his menu. He looked at me as I settled myself into my seat, and then you guys...then it happened.

He said, "what do you feel like eating? A salad?"

...

...

!

...

...

My brain, under considerable strain from my over-active endocrine glands, went "poink!" I stared at Sandy in horror, and then I burst into hysterical laughter. I couldn't stop it. It wavered into tears, back to laughter, back to tears again. I was a soppy mess. Sandy, helpless across the table, watched me dissolve into hormone-related insanity.

He said, "you're beautiful!"***

I giggled, then wailed, then choked.

He said, "you're beautiful."

The waitress arrived to take our order, took a look at my face instead, and stammered, "I'll just give you a...a few more minutes..." and beat a hasty retreat. Sandy looked like he wished he could run for it too.

I gradually got a grip on myself. The hiccuping sobs, lightly sprinkled with gulping brays of laughter, slowly eased. Finally, gasping for breath, I looked Sandy in the eyes, quirked an eyebrow, and said, "smoothly done, Romeo."

* For anyone reading that hyperlinked article in its entirety - please accept this caveat. I may have the gas. I may even have the incontinence, (although so far only twice, and only when I sneezed, and luckily I had just gone to the bathroom so nothing more embarrassing than me going, "holy cow, that was close!" and running for the restroom again has happened thus far), and I freely admit to having the Preggo Rage from Hell...but I do not. I WILL not. Have the Cheeseburger Crotch. W. T. F.

** My reaction was to immediately contact my best friend Kara, who has two children already, via text message in all caps, totally freaking out. She responded with "It's totally normal - it just means your pumps are priming." This did not help me to calm down. I replied, "AM HUMAN BEING, KARA! NOT WATER TREATMENT PLANT!! I DO NOT HAVE PUMPS! I REFUSE TO HAVE PUMPS!"

Then went into mental gerbil wheeling of "must keep husband somehow away from breasts. Must NOT squirt on husband or similar. Oh god. Oh god. Dooooooom!" and many repetitions of the Pregnant Woman's Hymn # 63: Please God Let Him Still Find Me Sexy When This Is All Over.

During a moment of intimacy a day or two later, I couldn't help but notice Sandy hesitating when he would normally have gone for that region. And I burst out laughing. (We have a very loving and supportive relationship, okay?) I inquired if he was scared and he replied, pensively: "A little..."

*** Sandy, upon reading this post, insists that I inform you all that he MEANT for me to order a salad as an appetizer, not as the actual meal. He was trying to make sure I got some roughage in my daily diet.