In May 2011, the biggest (local) news was that the referendum at the school corporation I worked for hadn't passed. The tension was so thick you could feel it coursing through the hallways at school - in staff meetings and after-school conversations, the worry was a tangible thing - we worried for our jobs, the school, our futures. Even the students noticed, and worried with us. Then just as we began to exhale, Ryan and I learned our news: Baby would be arriving early the next year. We kept our news to ourselves, quiet as mice, smiling quietly to each other across crowded rooms and going through lists of baby names at home.
When June came, school was out and we went on vacation - a cruise. I wasn't sure if it was motion sickness or morning sickness; all I knew was that the world felt like it was spinning and every time I walked through a dining room, my stomach turned. All I wanted to eat was saltine crackers, which are amazingly difficult to find on a cruise ship. So I drank a lot of Sprite and ate nearly every cracker on the ship, and when we arrived back on dry land, I found a CVS and bought three cans of Pringles and two packages of saltines. I ate most of them that night.
We arrived home a few days before our first ultrasound. Originally we had thought I was about 9 weeks, but it turned out I was only about 7 1/2 - but we saw our little bean for the first time and heard that sweet heartbeat. I hadn't gained much weight - in fact, I had lost a little - and it scared me. I started to drink Ensure milkshakes to try to pack on the pounds, but the only things that sounded good were carbs. I wanted crackers, peanut butter (which at least had a little protein), granola bars, and enough macaroni and cheese to feed a small country. By this time, our friends were starting to ask questions, but most had kindly reserved their inquiries for another day.
By the end of June, we were bursting at the seams with our good news, and finally told our families and close friends. It felt very real after that - it wasn't a secret anymore, and nobody wondered why I ran off to the bathroom with little or no warning. I was sick, but it was a good hurt - and I yearned to feel the baby move. I kept a onesie that said "worth the wait" with a little hatching chick on it hanging on the doorknob of our bathroom - so every time I got sick, I would see it and it would remind me that this was all for a really wonderful purpose.
At the end of summer, we were starting to plan for a nursery. School started back up, and the second trimester was a whirlwind - trying to keep up with school and plan for baby before things got too close for comfort.
By mid-September, we were counting the days until we found out whether we'd be decorating with pink or blue. We had a countdown on the glass wall in our shower, each morning drawing 9 days, 8 days, 7 days with soapy fingers. By now my stomach was a definite bump. People carried things for me in the grocery store; my students asked 100 questions a day about the baby - what would we name the baby (it's a secret), would we name it after him/her (no.), when would I be back to school.
When we found out that our little bean was a little girl, it became that much more real. We could say "she is kicking, she is moving, she is going to get straight A's" without worrying about the awkward pronoun "it," or the grammatically incorrect but more-human-sounding "they." And I started to wonder about our girl.
By the holidays, I was bursting. More often than not, there was a tiny knob (I'm nearly certain it was foot) sticking out of the right side of my abdomen. I would feel her wiggle mid-sentence while teaching, and lose my train of thought completely. I dropped things and was no longer allowed to carry the vacuum cleaner up and down the stairs (nor did I argue). One day I tried to make an egg, and I screwed it up three times, at which point Ryan finally stepped in. The Wednesday before Christmas, the day I had planned to wrap presents, I had a pain in my stomach so bad that I called the doctor. I was certain the baby was trying to get out through the top right side of "the bump." They told me to lay around all day and call if it got worse, so I watched some reality television and drank a lot of water, getting up only to go to the bathroom and get something to eat or drink. The presents did get wrapped eventually, and though the pain never went away completely (until she was born), it got a lot better.
New Years came and went uneventfully (though we happily announced it was "the year of the baby") and I went back to school for the last part of the semester. I instructed all of my classes what to do in case I went into labor (I contemplated writing on the board - Step 1: Stay in your seat. Step 2: Do not panic. I am the only one allowed to do this. Step 3: The person closest to the door should go get Mr. Keller, and the person closest to my desk should bring me my cell phone. But I never did. I did write the instructions DO NOT SPRAY PERFUME - the smell made me sick.). By this time we also knew that I would more than likely be having a c-section, since our little one wasn't flipping into head-down position.
The semester ended, and I started my maternity leave. In those last days before baby, the anticipation in our house was so present you could feel it. Every day I wondered if that day would be THE day.
But everything went as planned, and on January 27, our Nora was born. I kissed her; I nursed her; I held her and loved her and watched her as she slept. She made me a mama, and I watched with both admiration and anticipation as Ryan became a daddy, changing diapers, waking up to help me feed her, burping her, letting her sleep on his chest as he did so often in those first few months - and even still now when she just can't get settled herself.
Those Johnson and Johnson commercials (or is it Pampers?) always say "having a baby changes everything." It couldn't be more true. At Spring Break time, we will still dealing with colic and were up at least twice every night. The few invitations to dinner or evenings out were turned down. A year before, we had, with less than 24 hours notice, decided to drive to New Orleans to see our team play in the Elite Eight. We did Bourbon Street until 3am, got up around 9 and went straight through until 3am the next morning - trailing through the streets, eating Creole and beignets, drinking hurricanes at Pat O'Briens. It was less than 2 months after that when we learned that would be the last impromptu trip for a long while.
We were okay with it. We longed for evenings spent sitting at bar tops with friends, but when the night finally came and she fell to sleep in one of our arms, we knew that we were the lucky ones.
And now, a year after we made "our news" public, our girl is snuggled in her crib, having fallen asleep watching the fish swim across the screen of a Baby Einstein mobile. Every day, inbetween the stress of trying to get her to take a good nap, and balancing the home stuff and keeping up with my online course, I remember that I am a mama, and there is nothing quite as good as this.
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| June 2011 |
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| June 2012 |
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