#thirdtrimester

Week 35

| Jade SV

To move about the world this way; as if I am an egg. On Monday evening walking down Second Avenue the bustle which is usually a comfort was too loud, too close, too hectic. And when the F train pulled in packed, a nervous tremor of how to get myself onto it and home.

Combinations of feeling invisible and hyper-visible.

On that same F train, heads buried in kindles and phones, one man staring blankly, no one offering me a seat. But there are other ways of not being seen too; in casual encounters, in the give and take of a day, those who see the belly and back away–frightened almost, confused. Some pretend it doesn’t exist. Some ask me about it and then have no other sentences to offer. God forbid a pregnant lady might chit chat. It reminds of my wedding; how everyone stood a few feet back just staring at me and grinning and not talking. That day one friend said to me, and it was magnificent honesty, “I don’t know how to talk to brides.”

My sense of my body in public spaces is forever changed. At least, I hope it’s forever changed. I see now how the world doesn’t have time for us; those of us who need help, who move slow, who are delicate, in pain sometimes, uncomfortable. The world, or this city at least, doesn’t want to be bothered, often doesn’t know how to look us in the eye. I hope I remember when I am no longer this egg being. And I hope I never, ever sound like the woman in the gym locker room who said to me in the voice with which one talks to a puppy, “It’s sooo great that you’re getting yourself here.”

Honestly, fuck you lady.

Not Americans are far better at it. At Punjabi’s the other week, the man behind the register, grinning, and at ease, and so kind.

How many months? Is it your first? I have two daughters. Are you eating healthy? Lots of water and vegetables. 

I want to go back and visit just to have the pleasure of being spoken to like a normal human being by a stranger.

***

My godmother says that when it’s time the best advice she can give me is to pass right through the center of that ring of fire; don’t try to skirt it. Last night on the couch, my hand on my belly, and the kick delivered a little foot into my hand. This person is fully formed and simply gaining weight now. In a sense, we’ve already accomplished it, this babe and I. We began this project in August and here we are; waiting. Everyone says it’s soon when I tell them it could be five weeks, could be seven. But if I was going away for five to seven weeks, if I was flying to Peru and not returning until early May, that would be a long time, wouldn’t it?

Last night B. was wondering about hair and eye and skin color. I’m doing that less these days. I feel less intertwined with the babe and more like we are two beings sharing one space. It’s funny, right now the babe imbues my body with something special–sets me apart; highlights me and gives me shine.  When the babe exists outside of me, it will take that dazzle with it. The babe will draw the admiration and I will be (only) the mother caring for it. The celebrated body will become the emptied body.

I think it will be more of a blow to my ego than I like to admit.

My consolation though, is that I am very much ready to not be this vulnerable.  I’m not fantasizing about alcohol and sushi–although, I am kind of dreaming of a tuna sandwich. Instead I’m craving extreme sports. (Well, kind of extreme. Extreme for me.) I want to surf (I really want to surf); I want to ski; sled; roll down a hill; ride a skateboard; jump off a bridge into water; go on a rope swing; walk on a tightrope; go to trapeze school.

Also, it will be really nice to walk fast.

Week 34

| Jade SV

I’ve been meaning to tell this anecdote since about 30 weeks. I was at a bar doing a reading, and beaten down by months of snow boots, I brought pink high heels to change into and I was wearing those. I’m sure it was the heels that began it. Amazing what an arched foot and a flash of color will bring on.

Walking back from the bathroom, I passed two men. One turned to the other and spoke in that voice that’s presented as a private voice, but is designed to be heard by the woman being talked about.

He says, “She’s sexy.”

His friend, “She’s pregnant.”

Then they both paused to appraise. I hadn’t felt that glance for months. I forgot how visceral it is; how I can literally feel their eyes measure me from head to toe.

And then the first man goes, the words deliberate as his gaze, “Happy Mother’s Day.”

Happy Mother’s Day! That was his line. I couldn’t believe it. When I got a few cat calls earlier on, my second trimester hidden in my winter coat, it gave me secret satisfaction, If only they knew. Thinking they’d be embarrassed. Thinking I was tricking them.

When my mother was at eight months she rode a Greyhound down to Tennessee, to maker her way to the commune where she was going to deliver. The commune couldn’t pick her up that night, and they sent her to a church mission in Nashville where she’d be able to spend the night. As she was walking–and she would have been statuesque; sweating, tall and blonde in the June heat–a car slowed beside her. The driver rolled down his window and leaned across the empty passenger heat. She watched, curious, until he smiled and beckoned to her, his fingers cupping and calling. Shocked, all she could do was point to her globe of a belly, and shake her head no.

It’s not that we’re not sexy. Because we are. The embodiment of sex in fact; a walking, rounded, display of what fertility is. But for me, I am sexy for one person only. I have never felt so strongly to be B.’s, and for once in my life it doesn’t chafe. There is a biology at work…we are oriented towards each other. Especially since the third trimester began, I don’t like being far away from him for too many consecutive hours. And he knows my body more than he ever has…I can’t hide from him the small embarrassments. The week that was seven days of constipation, I finally said to him, “I’m never going to talk to you about this when I’m not pregnant, but pretty much my reality right now is that I’m constipated.” He presses on my lower back with his knuckles; he smooths the kinks out of my legs; he watches me wince when I walk; he presses on the babe’s back through the wall of my skin and muscle.We’re both attuned to this body right now; it is one of the mediums through we’re communicating.

But wait, one thing is not fully true. I am not only sexy for him. It is for me too. Few days go by without orgasms. I am all the way my body; my skin; my aching back; my limping walk; my cheeks flushing; my belly stretching and moving; the babe stretching and shifting; every moment is a sensation.

I’ve gotten caught up in this way of thinking; that to preserve my sexiness with B. I would need to hide certain parts of my physical self. Keep me mysterious and unknown, hard to get. But that doesn’t seem to be the arc of it…These days my body is a thing in which we are both intimately involved. Turns out that’s super sexy.

Week 33

| Jade SV

So what’s it like to have a baby? To birth it, I mean. What will that be?

My mother is worried. This has caught me by surprise. The story of my birth, the story of my conception even, has been told me my whole life, and in the telling, it was mythic and powerful. Surges, Ina May’s rushes, while she stood by a window staring at the Tennessee trees. In the trees, she saw a red, white and black woodpecker–huge, two feet tall, more; a rare bird; no one else but she saw it. In her telling, it was power and force and not pain exactly but something else–sensations of great intensity. I was a summer baby born near Summer town, Tennessee. I was two weeks late. I was huge. Almost ten pounds. Though I did not know that was huge. Like most things in my life, I thought my way was the norm and everything else not. Thus, I thought all women were short compared to my mother’s five feet ten inches. I also assumed I would be five feet and ten inches tall too. And I thought my breasts would be the same size as hers. I remember distinctly the day that I realized they were not growing anymore. I was sixteen. I looked down at my little boobs, and went, Huh. I guess this is all I get. Until that moment I’d just been biding my time; sure there was more to come.

Six weeks ago my mother said, “I’m mad at your baby.”

“Why?” I asked, instantly at the babe’s defense.

“Because it’s going to hurt when you give birth.”

I laughed. “But I thought labor was surges of power.”

“Well…it might hurt a little.”

And then we both laughed.

“That’s the first time you’ve ever admitted it.”

Her laugh is more commanding, but when we get going together, we do take over a restaurant.

My mother and I were a team for most hours of most days of most years of my childhood. Before I could even imagine falling all the way in for B., before I had the capacity to contemplate what sharing a life could be; as in way back when I was a teenager, I only ever imagined myself as a single mother. My mother and I used to ride the train twice a year to Illinois to visit family. She always gave me the window seat. At night, they dimmed the lights in the car, and even if they were awake (and we were all awake) everyone got hushed. This was my absolutely favorite time. I’d put my forehead against the cold glass, watching the blurring, on lucky nights there’d be a moon, and I’d watch for the one orange light, the one window lit in the one house in the clump of trees gathered from the wide and flat spaces of the farms.  I’d tuck my feet into and under her hips while she shifted and tried to sleep. Sometimes we leaned into each other back to back, the counter pressure keeping us propped and curled, coming as close we could to actual rest. In the mornings, we went to the Women’s Lounge to “freshen up”. My mother stretched and groaned and her silver bangles clinked. Once properly ready, we headed to the dining car for breakfast. While we waited for food, she sipped coffee and I ate strawberry jam out of the packets with the tip of my butter knife. Everything outside would still be flat, but sunny now, sharp and shining, the houses white.

“Do you want to play cards after breakfast?”

“Uh huh.”

Everyone keeps saying, “Your mother must be so excited.” And I’m sure she is, and I’m sure she will be, and i know she’s going to be an epic grandmother, but she’s not a grandmother yet. For now, she’s only a mother and I’m her only daughter.

Week 30

| Jade SV

I’ve become enchanted by the pelvic tunnel. After the cervix fully dilates–and wait, let me tell you that before the birthing videos and the dated computerized animation, I had this image of dilation as if the cervix was opening while the baby was suspended above waiting patiently, as if for a portal in a future space ship hallway that will open with a mechanical exhale. But no, this is not it at all. The cervix is opening around the head of the baby as it pushes down down, the force of the baby stretching, the uterus pulsing, the uterus pushing. So yes, this portal does not gradually ease open of its own accord, the babe waiting patiently; no, it is opening because the babe is there pushing on that exit. After this stage the babe rotates in order to squeeze first through the bones of the pelvic inlet and then leaves through the outlet and this part of the process is somehow my favorite because (I think) I never thought nor even heard of, certainly did not focus on, this stage–the babe passing through a tunnel of bone and cartilage. It seems almost graceful. Swimmerly. After that (I’m pretty sure I’m getting my stages right) comes the active pushing and that is something else but right now I like the tunnel best…as if the babe is diving out of a cave with an underwater entrance. Or perhaps this; did you ever swim beneath a floating dock to pop up in a new area of the lake? Hah, like a beaver’s den.

I don’t know how to write myself fully. I’ve been writing a memoir, and have been shaping and changing it for years, and it is almost right, but always I come up against this wall–and it feels like a literal wall. I can tell that on the other side is a more authentic voice, a voice I can access when writing other parts of myself, but which I lose when I try to write the stories of my father, of Mexico, of my skin. I still, after years of thinking and talking and reading, can’t tell this all the way. I stopped speaking those parts of myself when I was fourteen and it has been so much harder to begin to tell it again than I imagined it would be. I thought the deciding to tell it would be the hard part. But no, I’ve decided, and I still often feel like I’m tunneling through a wall of rock. Or bone.

I am afraid and as much as I don’t want to be I still am. I want to be free in my body, in my skin, in my voice. To be free in my body will be the same as being free in the telling of my body.

Across the street is a school. At night various windows light up as, I think, janitors move through the rooms cleaning. My school is not cleaned by janitors at night. The students clean at the end of every day, and we help, and on the weekends two people come in and do the deeper scrubbing. My school is not orderly. Sometimes when adults visit they are turned off by the almost-chaotic jumble of it. It can be hard to see what it is happening beneath the precarious stack of books in the library; the glitter coating the art room table. But it is a space for kids, and not an adult’s vision of what those kids want from a space. This is my third year there and the lesson that has taken me some time to learn is that to truly hold a young person’s view at the center of their education is a much more radical re-thinking than I’d previously imagined. The simple act of accepting that I do not see a room in the same as a ten year old does, and that the ten year old’s vision has it’s own worth…Many of us prefer the vision of school in which rooms are cleaned at night when children are gone, rooms organized and maintained by adults. I wonder what the kids think of that? To leave a space and return to it magically swept bare of the detritus of the day before as if it never existed.

When I get into trouble is when I get feeling that there is no me, just versions of me, and that the gaze of others, what they perceive is what determines who I am. That feeling of being constantly changeable. Wait, that is not what I’m afraid of. I feel that way, yes, changeable, but what I’m startled by, uneasy with, is that…and here is the wall once again. I think I’m afraid of the chaotic room.

As if I could control how I am perceived in the world. As if anyone can.

I have not accepted the skin I live in. What an odd statement.

Some stories done’t have resolution.

But I am going to give birth. In one form or another. I’ll moan and move and make low humming noises to open the sphincter of my throat so that the sphincter that is my cervix will open wider and probably in all that opening and moaning I’m going to poop and it will be in front of other people, in front of B., who I don’t even like to fart in front of if I can help it. And everything will be opening and I’ll be moaning and making noises and movements and I will be in a land beyond care or concern or even thought of what others or the world think of me; I will be deep down in my body, letting my body lead me, and how could there be a thing as poisonous as pretense in the midst of all that?

Week 29

| Jade SV

B. and I escaped out of the city this weekend. We borrowed back the car we gave to his brother (after his dad gave it to us) and drove to a tiny cabin tucked among mountain foothills with the world’s best diner 4 minutes away and a little mini kitchen to cook in and somehow all of this within budget. It snowed, and was bone chilling freezing, but I made a beef stew and we tucked into that little cabin and napped when we were tired and had sex when we wanted each other and ate food when we were hungry. After two and half days of this I woke up on Monday with sun hitting pine trees and snow, a layer of ice on the window, and flames heating the space of the bed from behind the gas stove’s glass door, and I felt a bone deep contentment that made me understand what it truly means to be rested.

And then, on the way home, we got in a fight. It began when we were approaching the GW after taking a wrong turn that cost us 20 minutes in both directions. The fight began with talk to paint the kitchen, and by the time we were in Bed Stuy we were talking about where we wanted to live in two years and discovering it was not the same place.

Immediately after that discovery, we had to pick up his brother’s newly ex-girlfriend, drive her back to our neighborhood, leave her with the car, and then B. had to hurry to an appointment in the city, and we had to put the whole fight on hold.

Which was definitely a good thing.

I’m wondering what it’s going to be like to fight in front of this babe; our future child who will indeed be able to both hear and see. How does one do that in a healthy way? In my world, there were not two parents, there was just my mother and me and I did not have to witness her negotiate the business of parenting with anyone else. It was her way and her word that led us. My grandmother was the other adult in my life; not there daily, but for many years I slept at her house a few times a week, and every single vacation was spent with her. But their arguments, infrequent, were different. My grandmother did not question any of my mother’s parenting decisions, rather when they moved into tense tones it was about the past, and that didn’t happen often because my grandmother carefully avoided the past’s tender spots. On those occasions when my mother insisted they get into it, I submerged myself into a book so completely that no sounds reached me. Truly. My uncle was once visiting and spoke to me directly, calling my name three or four times without me hearing until he gave up and left alone on our planned venture to the pool. I can still make this escape as an adult, though it’s harder. Back then, I often read books that were too old for me, and now, when I want to slip away, I read books that are too young. (Always the teaching excuse–I have to be up on what my students are reading.) But they’re familiar to me, soothing, a corner to tuck into when the outside world presses in too fiercely.

And so, will our child have to do this? Find escapes?

I can be cruel in arguments because I love the feeling of righteous anger; barbed words rolling from my tongue like jacks. Sometimes I’m calm until the apology comes and only then does the anger flicker on and it’s not easy for me to willingly walk away from that heat because the heat feels too good. Leaves me feeling too powerful.

(Oy, this winter–the skin on my cheek bones suddenly rough from, I guess, the wind and sun and cold of our mountain walks, and the skin on my butt cheeks rough from, I guess, the general business of living. I would like to be coated with shea butter and sat down in a sauna until softened.)

B. and I reunited later in the evening. And we talked it out over food at the diner (not as perfect as our mountain diner, but still good) because our kitchen is a disaster. And then we kept talking it out on the way home; our frustrations sparking then dimming. And then to the couch. Finally I cried in that good way that comes with telling the truth. It put out the self-righteous embers. He did that thing where he smiles. We apologized. At one point, he looked up, startled, that the babe had been hearing all of it (because it can now; can hear our voices and other sounds), had heard us being angry and sarcastic and frustrated. And what could I say other than that it was hearing us then too, being sweet and kind and forgiving.

I still can’t shake it though; how weird it will be to have another human being witnessing me being ridiculous, having a temper, making mistakes. It took me years to be willing to let B. know all these things about me, and he chose me. This babe is going to be assigned me.

Over the weekend B. was pulling into the snowy parking lot when he turned to me, and said, “Wanna get married and start a family?” And I thought, Start a family? Yes, but whoa. And then I laughed.

“What?” he asked.

And I told him. For that moment, I had totally forgotten that I was pregnant.

Week 27

| Jade SV

Time to rant.

The ice is a pain in the ass, and yet somehow the concern is getting to me too. To be careful, to be careful, and B. is so lovely with his elbow on my arm and yet it is the weirdest fucking thing in the world to be helped across a patch of ice the way I used to help my grandmother. I understand now that waving off of help; that, leave me be, I can do it.

And people who don’t handle their patch of sidewalk suck, as do the people who should be helping said people if they can’t do it themselves.

And also world, please stop telling me “I am carrying well.” I’ve touched on this before, but it is just code for I haven’t gained “too much” weight and at some point my brain can’t keep up my feminist levee against the rising tide of body obsession and just the other day, a leak sprung, the thought, “My thighs are getting big.”

Have you heard this one? Girls steal your beauty. Apparently mine hasn’t been stolen. Yet. Also my belly is “pointy”. Sure signs. It’s a boy.

Ah, but a rant intermission here to say that I really love these women, the aunties and grandmothers, who rub my belly in the ladies room without asking and tell me not to eat salt.

I love them much more than the woman today who suggested I help her stock apples during my co-op shift and there were lots of other people around and I looked at that low shelf and the big box, and had to say, “I just can’t bend like that these days.” And do you know what she said? “Some days I don’t want to bend either.”

And while I’m on the subject of the co-op: I’m just home from the last half hour of the shift spent loading fruit onto those low shelves and there I am standing there and honestly, just send me home. I am not even remotely ambiguously pregnant these days; just send me home. There was a Latin man working with me, and he kept waving me away, “Go sit. Go rest. There’s nothing you have to do here.” Reminded me how a friend traveled to Columbia at five months pregnant and said that every woman should have the experience of going to a Latin country pregnant. My mother said the same thing of being a new mother in Mexico. That she felt like a queen. I always planned/hoped to make it to Puerto Rico once I got pregnant, and today has been a day in which I might murder for the feeling of sun and sand on this belly of mine. Today also a day when I understand why I don’t have a proper credit. B. tells me all the time that I’m actually super financially responsible, and I think I am, but I don’t trust myself with credit because of the fact that I can always find a reason to buy a plane ticket. (Just as I always used to find a reason to go out to dinner; drink the best drink.) Then again, if I did let myself have one, I’m 99.9% sure I’d be flying to San Juan this very Friday.

Ice storm coming tonight.

Okay, now I’m having trouble holding back the visions of heat and water and swimming and fruit and Spanish and sun and diving into the ocean in a tiny bikini and oh man, now I’m imagining skinny dipping in a calm ocean, and how good it would feel to just feel my skin. Only my skin in the air and the water and none of this armor of long underwear and wool and scarves.

Two nights now of better rest because I followed a pillow diagram and am sleeping with six pillows. I’m not kidding. Six. My head hovers a full foot or so above B.. When he kisses me before sleeping he has to fully lift himself up to reach me because once I’ve achieved the position of maximum comfort I’m too nervous to move for fear of jinxing it.

And the reward for all this is a baby. I watched babies today. None of them seemed cute, and most of them annoying.

It’s just that there’s not enough time left. This baby is going to be here too soon and then I’m going to have a baby and then I’m going to be a mother and I have plans for many of the weekends coming and they’re hurrying me towards my due date, rushing me along, and it’s too fast right now. I’m not ready and it doesn’t matter because the babe will come anyway.

But.

I love the bumps and wiggles and shimmies. I really do. Me and it in this private dance.

I’m having an experience without reference point or comparison.

It’s just hard some days, the not knowing my way.