Swelling Insanity

Something happens when a woman becomes pregnant.  Duh, right?  At first, the excitement over the miracle of new life can be beautifully overwhelming – the thought of feeling those little kicks inside your belly, the cutest little teeny-tiny booties you’ve ever seen, the anticipation of holding your newborn for the first time.  Oh my goodness…it’s euphoric.

But eventually reality kicks in.  Morning sickness.  All-day sickness.  Bizarre cravings.  Bizarre cravings that must be satisfied now.  Swollen ankles.  Swollen fingers.  Swollen…everything.  If it has a name, and is attached to a pregnant woman’s body, it can (and will) swell.

Maybe that swelling has something to do with the significant amount of crazy that accompanies pregnancy.  Maybe the little part of the brain where crazy is normally kept, heavily guarded and only released very occasionally for good behavior, swells, too.  I don’t know what, or how, or why it happens, but during those nine months, the crazy is unleashed.  Suddenly, what began as a euphoric journey into the magical kingdom of Giddy-Happy-I’m-Building-a-Freaking-Person-Here takes a sharp, un-signalled left turn into the third-world dystopian territory of How-Could-He-Eat-Cereal-In-Front-of-Me-When-He-Knows-I-Can’t-Stand-the-Smell-of-It-He-Must-Hate-Me-and-Our-Baby.

Some days are better than others.  Some days I’m able to keep the crazy contained, and do damage control for previous unsavory actions.  This usually involves apologizing for things that I know I’ve done in a hormonal stupor, but sound utterly foreign to my ears:  “I’m sorry I insisted I sleep with both your pillow and mine.  And that I wouldn’t let you have any blankets.  And that I made you stare at me, unblinking, until I finally fell asleep.  And that when you tried to gently pull your pillow out of my hands when you thought I was asleep that I clawed you with my fingernails.  And that now we’re in the ER waiting for you to get stitches.”

I’m a normally happy, sweet girl.  But the deeper I get into each pregnancy, the crazier I get.  And since we’re working on offspring number four, the crazy has spawned it’s own sort of crazy.

Examples:

*While at Barnes and Noble this weekend, I spotted a book about cupcakes.  A normal person would look at a book of cupcakes and think, “Huh.  Look.  A book about cupcakes.”  My thought was, “Huh.  Look.  A book about cupcakes.  I want a cupcake.”  I glanced over my shoulder at the good folks around me.  I swear on the slice of pepperoni pizza I’m eating right now that every single person in the store was holding a half-eaten cupcake, with frosting smeared on their upper lip, moaning in gastronomical pleasure over how good the cupcakes were.

“Why does everybody have a cupcake but me?” I asked Thomas, glaring at him, because obviously my cupcake-less status was all his fault.

“What are you talking about?” he asked, taking a huge bite out of a chocolate cupcake with white frosting.  My absolute favorite.

“Can I have a bite of that?” I asked.

“A bite of what?” he asked, licking frosting off his fingers with great relish.  Bastardo.

“Your cupcake!” I said impatiently, reaching for his cupcake and snatching it out of his hands.  He stared at me in shock, mouth gaping open as I crammed the rest of his half-eaten cupcake into my pie-hole.

“Ugh!” I grunted, spitting it out.  It was disgusting.  Terrible.  Tasted like paper.

I looked at the half-masticated mess in my hands.  It wasn’t a cupcake at all.  It was a Nook brochure.  Confused, I looked around.  Nobody was eating cupcakes.  They were looking at books, talking quietly with each other, some sipping on coffee.  But no cupcakes.

Not.  A single.  One.

I still want my freaking cupcake.

*While I was making a salad last night, the hubster sat at the kitchen table to keep me company.  He cracked open a beer and continued chatting with me.  Now, a normal person would think, “That’s nice.  He’s having a beer.  Maybe I should offer to fetch him a coozie.”  My thought was, “I can’t believe he just opened a beer in front of me!!  Doesn’t he know that if I even smell alcohol, our child will be born with severe birth defects?”  I stabbed the head of lettuce with my knife, called him a jerk, burst into tears, and fled to the bathroom where I sequestered myself for 45 minutes.  Thirty of those minutes were spent sobbing over the fact that I’m the only one who cares about the health of our unborn child, five of those minutes were spent missing the cold, refreshing taste of beer, another ten were spent vengefully cleaning the toilet with the hubster’s toothbrush, and the last five were spent unconscious in an impromptu power nap.  Once I regained consciousness, I stumbled back into the hall, no memory of the incident at all, wondering why my husband and three children were staring at me like I was wearing a vest made of C4.

And guess what.  I still want my freaking cupcake.

Someday soon, our little bundle of joy will enter the world.  The crazy sector in my brain will shrink back to it’s normal size, and life will continue on.  And I (hopefully the hubster, too) can look back on that time fondly, knowing it was all in an effort to add a little more innocence, a little more sweetness, a little more hope to the world.  Because kids are, and always will be, one of the biggest reasons to have hope for the future.  They are absolutely one of the most beautiful blessings we can receive in this life.  The forays into Crazy-Town will have all been worth it for the sake of a new little life.

But if somebody doesn’t get me a cupcake, pronto, there will be blood.

 

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