picture this by jonny
	Sometimes I catch a snapshot of myself in a mirror or a passing store window and I am always very surprised by what I see. In these moments I gasp as if I am a younger version of myself seeing into the future and being shocked at the sight of this waddling round beach ball of a girl. There is no doubt in my mind that I am indeed pregnant, but I believe I may be a little confused about how I actually look. I’ve always been a keeper of photo albums, and I have several for every single year starting back in high school. You can imagine how this adds up when you’re almost 35. So as I come to the end of this 40 weeks of pregnancy I like to imagine a series of photographs telling my story. In the beginning there would be photograph after photograph of me looking a little startled, a little unsure of what I’ve gotten myself into. I’m holding up the pregnancy test stick, I’m awkwardly touching my flat belly, I’m looking around our small one bedroom apartment wondering how we’re all going to fit. At some point it becomes more real to me and my face looks a bit more relaxed. I start showing off my belly as it begins to grow little by little. I look kind of proud of myself. Then there would be lots of pictures of me adjusting to my new body and comparing it to my old one. For instance, I can’t see a non-pregnant woman without looking at her flat stomach and sort of sighing nostalgically. I see all these people walking so fast on the streets while I drag along slowly behind them, often getting in their way, and I think to myself, “I used to walk fast like that. Oh, could I ever walk fast!” I remember a time when I could fall asleep around midnight and wake up at 10:30 in the morning having slept all through the night. I could change positions in my sleep. Oh, what a magical person I was. I have two close friends who were pregnant with their babies at this exact same time last year. One of them said to me that toward the end of her pregnancy it finally hit her that she would never be the same again. She would forever be pregnant. She was sure that it was a well kept secret that once you got pregnant you would spend the rest of your life that way. She was unable to picture herself not carrying around this extra load, not wearing oversized clothes, not having heartburn with every bite of food. She resigned herself to this life and felt a little bitterness about it, to be honest. But of course she was wrong. Her baby boy came a few days late and now she can’t remember what it was like to be pregnant. I think she may have memory problems. I don’t have the feeling that I will always be this way, but I admit I’m having trouble remembering how to do basic things like flopping onto the bed and landing on my stomach. Sometimes I just want to bend over and put on my shoes without grunting and taking ten minutes. I would like to be able to feel my fingers again. A vodka tonic sounds great. Maybe in a few months I, too, will have trouble remembering what all of this felt like. But I doubt it. There would be pages of me lounging around eating a whole lot of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream and gulping down tall glasses of Troy’s fruit smoothies every single morning. There would be some shots of me doing private fashion shows in my new maternity wear. There I am doing nothing to help move into our new apartment while Troy does all the work. There’s me trying to explain to Max what is going on while he looks into my eyes as if he’s going to cry. I could fill several photo albums with snapshots of me praying that the baby is okay, only to be reassured almost instantly by a foot or a hand sticking out of my body. Next would be a section of pictures devoted to me worrying about this tiny man I’m growing and what kind of parent I’m going to be. I imagine this little hiccupping, kicking creature out in the world, through no choice of his own, having to make a life for himself. Little does he know everything he’s going to have to put up with once his world turns upside down and he leaves the safety of my womb. Right now he just swims around and gets all this good ice cream and smoothie stuff, but soon he will be a man who has to get a job and pay bills. Someday I may have to live with him and his family and then he will have to feed me ice cream and smoothies. Of course there are a few years between now and then. There are a few thousand things he has to learn first, and somehow he’s been assigned Troy and me to be his main teachers. I have no doubt that we are qualified to teach him things like, “This is Max, your neurotic dog who secretly hates you,” but what about things like walking and saying words? While we know how to walk and talk, I am not sure this qualifies us to teach a wide eyed baby such things. I have pictures in my mind of him sort of looking off to the side at the camera with a facial expression that says, “Are you kidding me?” while Troy and I flounder around trying to explain the way the world works. Another friend is expecting baby number four – baby number four! -- a few days after me and recently shared a terrible story about her baby number two who is a nine year old now. She was in a gymnastics class and had an accident that broke her wrist in a very frightening way. My friend said, “Parenthood is scary.” This is the same child that as a baby constantly passed out from crying too much and broke nearly every limb on her body at one point or another. Her parents are these wonderful people who had to be investigated by Child Protection Services because it looked like they were slowly trying to kill their toddler. This kid has made me consider sending our child off to be raised by somebody else. Someone who knows CPR and has a medical degree and is also a college professor at a world renowned university. There might be three pictures of people giving me seats on the subway. There would be no pictures of strangers giving me flowers. There would be piles of photos of me making polite facial expressions while lots and lots of mothers give me advice about my pregnancy and upcoming parenthood. It’s very important to remember that these women have only the best intentions for me. None of them mean to make me feel stupid and none of them mean to drive me crazy. Much of what I’ve learned has absolutely come from moms and dads who learned along the way and thankfully remembered to pass some of it down to people like me. If you are a mother and you are reading this, don’t worry. You are in the category of good and welcome advice givers. But there have been a few bits of unsolicited advice that had me looking into that camera and rolling my eyes. Someone at work told me very excitedly how pregnant I look “from the back.” Just in case you’re wondering, no one in the whole world, even someone expecting ten babies at once, wants to look pregnant from the back. That can never sound like a compliment no matter how much you smile. Another person told me that I better watch it with my dog because no matter how much I think I know him he is going to eat the baby. Someone chided me for being at the grocery store with Troy as it was snowing outside and requested that I please go home immediately and stop endangering my child’s life with this reckless behavior. I was also passionately warned to pack my suitcase for the hospital this very minute, but only after I typed up a list of emergency phone numbers and gave them to all of my relatives and friends just in case. These are the highlights. While giving this advice, each of these women gazed at me lovingly as if they were attracted to me, and this is because I am big and round and apparently glowing and I am reminding them of some of the happiest months of their lives as they carried around their beloved little babies. And probably that one lady had a dog who did eat her baby and she doesn’t want this to happen to anyone else. These are things I have to remind myself almost daily so as not to jump out of our ninth story window screaming frantically, “Quit telling me things!” Then there would be this really neat part of the photo album dedicated to things that I will miss. Right now, for instance, the baby is doing lots of tricks inside of me. It isn’t the most comfortable feeling I’ve ever had, but it is our little communication. Here’s how we talk to each other: I drink coffee in the morning (I swear it’s mostly decaf) and he dances around happily and I sort of rub my belly and make some contact with his naked slimy self. Then I drink my daily smoothie and he really flips out over this. He passes out of exhaustion from such a busy morning until I get to work and start eating more things. Sometime after lunch he does the hokey pokey and he turns himself around, and I sweetly rub his knees or elbows or whatever those freaky things are until he settles down again. In the evenings when I take my bubble bath he sticks out all kinds of body parts and makes me look exactly like one of those unfortunate characters on “The X-Files” who has alien life taking over her body. I think this mean he loves baths just like me. And then there are all these random moments through the day like now when he’s hiccupping and kicking here and there as if to say, “Hey! Hi, big person! How’s it going?” We’re pretty good friends already. There would be a few hundred pictures of me holding up cute baby outfits that people have given us, and I’m smiling really big and clutching my heart in an adorable way. There would be many, many snapshots of people hugging me and asking how I’m doing and giving me things. More smiling, more clutching of the heart. The photo album would of course end with the birth of the baby. I picture that scary moment when one of several rather unpleasant things starts happening to my innocent little body (okay, not so little) like water pouring out of it or a thing called a “mucous plug” making a cameo appearance or painful contractions tearing me apart. I further imagine Troy and I somehow managing to get me and my suitcase and all of our emergency phone numbers to the hospital ten blocks away without having heart attacks. I visualize us getting into the labor and delivery room and me being hooked up to all kinds of monitors and things, and possibly Troy too because you never know what kind of emergency or accident he will have gotten himself into, and the pain getting worse and worse and more unbearable by the hour. I can see us doing our breathing exercises and Troy holding up my focal point picture (don’t tell anyone, but I still haven’t chosen it) and trying desperately to remember everything we learned in our Lamaze class. That’s about as far as I go with this exercise. But here’s the thing: I don’t think this sound fun or interesting or anything to look forward to, but I’m not worried about myself. If you’ve ever had one conversation with me it probably came up that I did not ever want to give birth and didn’t understand why anyone would. I almost couldn’t bear to hear other people talk about their birth stories because the whole thing sounded so frightening. And yet here I am, about to do this and I’m not worried about myself. I have only one concern, and that is that the baby be okay. I have anxiety about him and the ridiculous adventure he will be forced to endure. I worry that he will make it out okay. I worry that things will go wrong. I worry that all those bright lights and loud sounds will be scary to him and that his first few days in the world have to be in a hospital. I’ve spent my entire life hating every thought of giving birth because of the pain and inconvenience it would cause me, and now I’m only concerned about the pain and inconvenience it will cause this innocent creature who’s been kicking me almost non-stop for months. And that must be what they mean when they say, “You can’t imagine the love you will feel.” I’m able to imagine it now, and that’s a good start for being a parent I think. All that’s left is that last photograph, and it’s the one I’m most excited to see. It won’t be of me. february 2005