At this very moment five years ago, I was limp, and possibly hollower - physically, that is - than I had ever been before. I had just been delivered of one pissed-off little baby boy, whose ferocious cries ricocheted off the walls as they wheeled us from Labor and Delivery to Maternity. My stomach was just so many flaps of empty meat - I could have smuggled Volkswagens, I was huge - and I had this...this pistol latched on to my titty, going colostrum hell-for-leather. That was the day I met Spiderman. For the first time.
I should tell you that I was not a happy pregnant woman. Actually, let me rephrase that. I was a walking bag of psychically poisonous hormones, a super-size extra-value-meal of fecund and homicidally insane redneck-cracker femininity. I have never been so miserable as I was during that particular forty weeks of my life. I felt like Sigourney Weaver, in one of those movies, waiting for an alien to come popping out of my chest. I dragged around, hangdog, trailing books on Motherhood with a capital M, and knowing I would never make the cut.
Spidey was a Pill baby, coming from a momma who knew sure and certain that she took one every single day for many, many years before Spidey came along. We'd been married for only eight months - still in total honeymoon mode, not thinking of the future at all. I mean, Pete and I hadn't even seriously discussed when we were going to have children yet, because we were so behindhand. We didn't own a home yet. Pete already had two children, from a previous marriage, to support. We took precautions. I thought my contraception was rock-solid - it hadn't ever failed me before. But, Spidey came anyway. He wasn't an oops, because there was no slipup; he was a BLAMMO!, hand-of-God kind of baby. I was, not to put to fine a point on it, totally and completely unprepared.
Fundamentally, intellectually, I was terrified to be pregnant. Yes, I was married, and yes, I was thirty years old, but I'd never even considered myself as potential "mother material". Like I said, Pete and I hadn't been married long when we encountered the Pee Stick of Doom - my term for a positive pregnancy test - and I just hadn't done any mental groundwork in the maternal direction. I'd never even imagined myself with kids, even as a small lass. I wasn't a "doll" girl. I was a "hey! Let's play Amazons; we can use Daddy's lighter to melt one boob off each Barbie, go acquire some firepower, and then, like, totally pillage the Dream House!" kind of girl.
Additionally, the society I belonged to my whole entire life provided certain inevitable inculcations of its own; since menarche I'd believed that it would be a far, far better thing to show up on my Daddy's doorstep in a pine box than pregnant. Don't get me wrong, my Sainted Parents are wonderful, giving, and loving people, but I was taught strict abstinence. Where I grew up, if you wanted to do anything with your life, you shouldn't get pregnant. If you don't want your family to die of shame, you shouldn't get pregnant. If you don't want to end up giving away your youth, you shouldn't get pregnant. If you don't want to live in a shack and work in a salt mine for forty cents a day and look like the people in "Snuffy Smith", you shouldn't get pregnant. You just really, really didn't want to get pregnant.
So, I didn't. Until I got married, just like the good little girl I've always been. Somehow, though, I never quite shed that OHMIGOD MY LIFE IS OVER viewpoint on getting pregnant, even though I grew up, and was now living in the situation in which, according to my background, it was appropriate to bear a child. I had some serious internal work to do before that kid downloaded, and I knew it. So I bought the all the parenting books, and assumed that I had to do everything just the exact right way or the kid would perish and I would be hauled off to DFACS jail. I went into memorization mode. I exam-crammed my pregnancy.
During my first trimester, I threw up so much that I actually lost weight, instead of gaining it. I threw up so often that I kept an extra-large Varsity/Atlanta Braves Commemorative cup in the car with me at all times, so that I could vomit and still negotiate traffic on 2-85. I vomited through Jury Duty, as foreman. I vomited through meetings, classes I was teaching, and client consultations. Oh, and peed. And cried. Let's not forget the waterworks.
During my second trimester, I blew up like a water-balloon hooked to a fire hydrant. I ate strange stuff, like raw wasabe and vanilla mints and dozens of roast-beef sandwiches from Arby's. I became susceptible to murderous rages; I actually tried to kill a man with my car for exhibiting rudeness on our neighborhood streets. I peed. And peed, and peed, and peed. And slept. A lot. Pete hid the ammo and began to pray.
My third trimester, I was a whale. Massive. People used to ask me all the time if I was having twins; by then I was such an unhinged bitch that my normal reply was something along the lines of, "No, uh, I just got FAT, you ASSHOLE!" I was actually a little more resigned in my third trimester, and a little less prone to crying jags. After all, the end was in sight. I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, and actually envision myself sleeping on my stomach, and seeing my feet once again.
My labor was hard. I was in regular labor for thirty-eight hours bearing Spiderman, just a hair's breadth from a Cesarean. Strangely, I was positively giddy during the long delivery; the blood and sweat and pain were like a pin-prick compared to forty weeks of pregnancy. I was thrilled to have it over. The amazing thing, though, the true "miracle of birth"? When I saw my son emerge from my body, and every fear, every doubt, every moment of despair all were allayed, instantly, by just a glimpse of his face. I got over all my bullshit in a trice, because it just wasn't all about me anymore. That's the real miracle. It's just wasn't my movie any longer.
My son. My boy. Watched him come out. Holy crap. "This is so cool! Look what we made, Pete!"
It was all worth it. Spiderman was worth it. The vomit, the piss, the tears, the potential attempted-manslaughter charges...all of it. I'd do it all again - hell, I'd do it ten times over - if I knew I had to, to have the little dude. I thank God that I had that kid, even through the aftershock of nasty, small things like stretch marks, broken blood-vessels, and gray hairs. It's no biggie, after all. It's not all about me anymore, remember?
Spiderman was five today. I am still just as thrilled with him as I was the day he was born - he's a fine boy, a fine son, and I feel unbelievably lucky to have him. I try in every way I know how, every single day, to let him know that I love him, that I'm proud of him. And, really, I've never gotten over the birth - I've never lost that giddiness, that pleasant shock of thinking, "holy crap! I'm somebody's mom!" Like I'm a grownup or something! Wow!
Happy birthday, boy. Mommy loves you.
Posted by kelley at May 24, 2005 10:19 PM | TrackBack