Category: Fatty

What Dreams May Come

Something I’d forgotten about the last time I was pregnant: the incredibly weird, incredibly vivid dreams.

You may ask, “What do you mean by weird, eden?”  Let me give you some examples and let you decide.

Weird Dream #1 (Current Pregnancy):
I’m at a three-star (at least) restaurant with some of my high school classmates and Trig/Calculus teacher.  Our food won’t be finished for a while, so we go to the “Ices” buffet to get a dessert-like appetizer.  Those clear-plastic, square drink machines that keep punch swirling and cold are set up in a circle for us to choose from.
“Try the beets,” my math teacher says.
That sounds delicious, so I get a DixieCup and ladle myself a helping of cold prawns and beets (making sure to pick myself out some extra prawns).  As I do, I notice a latte-colored substance in the next machine over labeled “Wife,” and decide that if my food doesn’t come before I finish my beets, I’ll come back and get a helping of that.
Back at the table, I start eating my prawns and beets, which are so delicious and so cold (WCWilliams reference #1), I realize that my chicken wellington has been delivered to the girl at my right by mistake, but someone has already eaten all the breading off of it.
“I think that was supposed to be mine,” I say.

Weird, right?  And when the dream isn’t just straight-up weird, it’s obscene.  Really obscene.  I don’t cuss, for reals.  But in these obscene dreams, I’ve got a mouth like a sailor or a dockworker or some other clichéd water profession that uses really bad language.  Creatively bad language.

Weird Dream #2 (Last Night):
My baby doctor has come to my grandpa’s house in Emden with another maternity patient so that this woman can live out her dream of something or other to do with a farm.  Since Dr. S is already there and it’s almost time for my appointment, I assume that she’s going to do my appointment at Grandpa’s house.  The patient before me is “Donating Flowers” (putting a bouquet of flowers in the pasture) and doing other generally weird things while my doctor follows her around.
Then, finished, they leave.  And I realize I’m going to have to go to Kirksville for my appointment.
Josh and I go outside, but I slip and fall in the mud.
“[Expletive Deleted]!” I yell, realizing I’m going to be late.  Then I realize that my OB ultrasound was scheduled for that morning at 10:30 at the hospital and I missed it.  “[Expletive Deleted] [Expletive Deleted] [Expletive Deleted], [and so on]!”

[Un]Interesting Side Note: My OB ultrasound and my next doctor’s appointment really are on the same day, the first at 10:30am and the second at 1:30pm.

The food dreams were the worst last year because I was unable to eat anything but cheese sandwiches without getting sick.  I’d dream about all those things I loved to eat (not about beets), but couldn’t have and wake up wishing I could.  The strangest thing about those dreams was how vividly I could taste the food.  Even thinking back now it makes my mouth water.

Weird Dream #3 (Last Pregnancy):
I went to lunch at my high school cafeteria where they are serving pizza, cheese sticks, and blueberry cheesecake, three of my all-time favorite school lunches.  I filled up my tray, sat down and ate.  It was delicious.

That’s all.  I ate it and it was delicious.  I have absolutely no doubt that dreaming about sex is directly related to being sexually repressed because when I was dreaming longingly of food I was foodly repressed.  (Edibly? It’s hard to say.)

There are a lot of sites (according to Google) which attempt to tell you what your maternity dreams mean (apparently this is a common symptom of pregnancy), but not many places that will list examples.  I do, because I care.

What’s Got Fatty So Worried?

Or, “Things That Make Me Paranoid About Pregnancy”
(Presented in no particular order.)

  1. Enis getting switched at birth with someone else’s baby or kicked out of the nest by a parasite baby like those one birds have. I’ve already begged Josh to keep a marker in his pocket so he can write something on Enis the second the doctor hands him over. Failing that, I’ve also made Josh promise that he’ll follow the staff everywhere if they have to take Enis out of my room for any reason. I’m not raising someone else’s baby.
  2. Not knowing when labor starts. I’ve heard this fear is fairly common, but I feel like it’s more likely to happen to me.
  3. Calling my doctor when labor starts. Because one, how can I call if I don’t know? Two, how can I call if I don’t have her number and it’s the middle of the night? Three, I don’t want to ask for her number.
  4. Forgetting to zip my fly when I don’t have to wear maternity pants anymore. For 9 months I’ve been pulling them down and pulling them up, mission accomplished. This is how habits are formed, people!

What Happened

Or, “Fatty Knows!”

On Tuesday Joshua and I went to another baby doctor appointment. I’d be lying if I said we were expecting anything other than the usual–a quick listen in on the baby’s heart rate, a few hard pushes on my stomach to see how the baby is positioned, and a measurement of my uterus with that little white tape measure. If all went according to plan, my baby doctor should ask me if I have any questions for her, then disappear until our next appointment.

But while she was measuring my uterus and while she should have been asking me, “How are your bowel movements?” in the soft Russian accent that always makes me feel like that’s a normal question between friends, Dr. S said something different. “The baby seems quite small for this stage. Of course, this is not a very accurate way to judge. I think we will do an ultrasound today to get more exact ideas.”

Which didn’t surprise me that much. I mean, for the first six and a half months of my pregnancy I couldn’t keep down anything but the occasional cheese sandwich and even now I can’t eat before three in the afternoon without throwing up. And let’s not forget those times I forgot to take my prenatal vitamins. But before either me or Joshua could wonder whether this meant Enis was a sickly little thing, we were swept into another room and my stomach was covered in warm green jelly for the ultrasound.

As she ultrasounded (or whatever), Dr. S explained the measurements she was taking, then showed us little computer charts with lines on them like those exponential growth charts you study in junior high math. (Turns out Enis is small, but not what’s considered too small by baby standards–about 4 lbs and growing right now.) Then she went back to the black and white screen that’s supposed to show you the baby, but that always looks like a film negative of smoke.

“There is the heart,” she pointed to a pulsing black spot, “and the ribs,” some gray-white lines, “and that is the thigh bone,” stopping for a quick measurement, “and the bladder,” just another oblong shape. “Oh. And there is, of course…” She hesitated. Not from trying to translate from Russian to English, but from trying to cope with suddenly having a giant wang on the screen and absolutely no recognition on my face that could save her from having to say it out loud.

Next to me, Joshua was grinning like a man who just saw the funniest thing in the world happen, but who was told beforehand that if he laughed, he got shot.

I didn’t see it. Dr. S struggled on.

“His…boy parts. Between his legs,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. Nodding. Trying to play it cool. Not under any circumstances looking at my husband who was on the verge of laughing at the most immature thing (some pun intended) ever.

“He’s certainly not shy,” she said.

I heard Joshua make a sound in his throat. I stared at the grainy package on the screen and dug my fingernails into my palms. Somehow I managed to ask a question about the baby’s size without choking. She answered it in a businesslike tone, printed us off a picture–just one this time–then helped me wipe off the ultrasound gel and sit up.

“I will see you again in two weeks,” she said, and disappeared like nothing hilarious had happened.

As soon as the door closed behind her, Joshua took the ultrasound photo and said, “That’s my boy.”

We couldn’t leave the room for another several minutes because we were giggling like freshman boys who just translated “boner” from English to Spanish.

Now, for those of you keeping score at home, it’s true, our plan wasn’t to find out what Enis was until the day he popped out. That was part of the questionnaire we filled out when we first started going to the baby doctor, but I guess Dr. S didn’t see any use in trying to pretend like it wasn’t incredibly obvious to anyone who knew what a penis looked like.

Why couldn’t I see it? Probably because I don’t have training in reading ultrasounds or spend as much time thinking about penises as boys do. If it makes you feel any better, I can see it now that it’s been pointed out to me and when I’m holding the ultrasound photo right side up.

So, we’re having a boy. My intuition was right all along. And we’re not upset that we found out (although now that I think about it, that’s probably the kind of thing douches sue their doctors over). We’re ecstatic. All because our baby thought it would be funny to flaunt his package like Babies Gone Wild on the only media outlet he knows so far.