They say 2010 is the Year of the Tiger. For me, it was the Year of the Kid. Due within hours as I write this, I have been pregnant every last day of this seemingly longer than usual year.
As a writer, the first of my friends to endeavor on making a kid, and a girl with little to no memory, the most natural thing in the world was to chronicle the long and strange journey in words. Because, from early on, I knew that even the most celebrated pregnancy books keep secrets from you. So, I wrote it all down. For YOU. Something I call ‘The Greatest Over-share In History.’
Stuff like that one day, draped over the toilet wide-eyed and panting, I decided I was going to be a martyr for this kid. You can call it something nicer: an Earth Mother or Holistically Honest, but c’mon. For a girl who previously popped painkillers dry, two at a time, at the mere twinge of a headache, and maybe sometimes ate cheese melted on rice for dinner, this new me, abstaining from all chemical warfare and greasy carbs, was a big deal.
The worst part of being kinder and gentler to myself was the earliest stages of the pregnancy, when my stomach and head would swirl in opposite directions, resulting in headaches and nausea that left me grey-faced and exhausted. One particularly bad day, where I was sure my head was going to roll clean off my body in a burst of sparks, I asked my husband for help, in the form of an errand.
The small list was pressed into his hand with a firm but trembling request, “Help Me. Saje. Peppermint Halo. Heartburn and Nausea Remedy,” followed by an overly dramatic flop back onto the bed. Having used Peppermint Halo back when I was a teenager, I craved the comforting and sharply sweet smell of it, a promise: I will kiss your temples, my child, and vanquish this dastardly head pain. And after having depleted half the worlds supply of ginger products to conquer the nausea, if there was another solution, in a bottle, where most magic comes from, I was more than game. As he tells it, after a mild swarming of overly helpful European saleswomen, he escaped intact, only mildly flustered, with my treasures in hand. Bonus Husband Points for sure.
Honestly, after the first trimester, it got so much easier. Other than a fun 36-hour bout with hives where I had to choose between taking Benadryl or itching all my skin clean off, it was a very healthy, average, clean pregnancy. And now, looking back at the discomforts of the early months, they seem quaint, mere papercuts in comparison to what fresh agony I will soon be going through. But I will endure, as millions before me have, and the reward is so great at the end, that the flash-bang annihilating pain that comes along with it will surely fade away once I hold that little tiger to my chest, skin to skin, heart to heart.
