It was a relief every time I saw someone else who was pregnant. Thank god it wasn’t me. A woman would have that round belly, and though she might be a complete stranger, I am incredibly self-centered, so I’d project my own feelings onto her. And those feelings were bright red letters etched into my brain, flashing MISTAKE! MISTAKE! MISTAKE!

I’m not saying it was logical. I’m just saying that having a baby for the majority of my life would have been a pretty bad idea, or at least, a major inconvenience. I wouldn’t have known what to do with a baby in the same way I wouldn’t know how to defuse a bomb. I would have been an awesome mom.

So now I’m actually pregnant. I’m the one with the belly. And since this is the first time, and I’ve only really guessed up to now, I can say with some measure of authority that being pregnant really is as trashy as I thought it would be.

For instance, I no longer “walk” around. I waddle. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it’s hard to feel dignified while waddling. Not that I’ve ever been particularly graceful, at least while non-pregnant I felt in control of my faculties. Now, not so much. I waddle around with my fat belly and my fat butt. The shower seems narrower. It’s harder to get in and out of the car. My feet sometimes look like stuffed sausages. I’m sort of clumsy. I imagine this is why people say you look radiant when you are pregnant. Because while honest, saying you look like an overfed water fowl might cause lawsuits.

Every goddamned shirt I own now has a stain on it somewhere. Every goddamned one of them. Some shirts are practically brand new maternity shirts, but they already have a constellation of grease spatters across the boobs, or a big smear of something across the belly. It’s fucking classy.

For some reason, my vision has gotten remarkably worse just in the past few weeks. I use glasses for distance, but they were always sort of optional. Now I can’t see street signs unless I’m on top of them, or I can’t read the numbers on the marquee at Timbers games. More disturbingly, I think my hearing is going too. I can get better glasses for my vision, but for crapping out loud, I don’t want to lose my hearing. I don’t want to be squinting and saying huh? Huh? HUH? for the rest of my life.

Maybe most alarmingly, I’ve gotten wicked dumb in the past few months. Like, scatterbrained, forgetful, ditzy dumb. I hate it. I don’t mind being a goofball on purpose, like for the sake of entertainment or amusement. But I HATE being dumb and not realizing it. I have been late for an appointment, and searched the whole house for my keys. And it was a text from Dave that helped me find them: They are in your purse. And separately, I had a spare set of keys that I lost completely and I am still sort of looking for them, though I think they are at my mechanic, and my mechanic said they don’t have them, but I think they do, but maybe it’s just my pregnant brain and I need to look harder, which I haven’t done yet.

I can’t do simple math like adding the tip on a restaurant check. Or we had the leftovers boxed up to take home, and I forgot them at the restaurant. Or we went way out of our way to go to a store that we hate because I have a gift certificate. And I just wanted to run in really quick to see if we could use it for something. And I got there and we shopped around for fifteen minutes, and I decided on something, and realized I left the goddamned gift certificate at home.

Or I just do regular stupid, dumb things and sometimes not even realize it except that I see Dave smirking at me a little because he thinks it’s cute. I can only be thankful that my husband thinks his ditzy wife is cute. But I really, really, really hate being dumb. I feel like a waddling, shirt stained, trashy, dumb belly on legs, cutting a path of destruction where ever I go. I should call demolition companies in town and see if they need short term help leveling buildings.

Hell, I hope this is short term. I don’t know what I’ll do if I stay this trashy forever. Blame it on my kids, I suppose. I’m going to be an awesome mom.

Cutest thing ever, right? Holy crap, this kid is cute. In this photo, she’s about to get a bath.

I took the trip because obviously, I needed to go eat the cute little baby, but also because I don’t know when I’ll be able to travel again. I’m getting uncomfortable, but I can still move around. I’m still portable. Soon enough, I’m going to burst, then have my own little frog babies that are going to make me immobile for the next 18 years.

The airline I flew on doesn’t allow you to select your own seats unless you pay extra for a seat with more room. So I got a seat assignment at the gate. It was in the farthest back row. The very back row. And it was in the middle, which is always the suckiest seat when traveling alone. The flight was only two hours, but I did forget my book. So I settled in to think my own thoughts and stew in my own juices.

I saw a young teenage girl take the window seat in the row in front of me. She was at that leggy, skinny awkward age, with glasses and mousy brown hair. A woman coming down the aisle behind her squealed with delight. “Ooh! You get to sit next to me???” she said. The woman had a floppy cap, bangle bracelets, and two-tone hair. She had a big shiny purse and shiny nails. She was sort of tan.

It stuck me that maybe the woman and the teenager didn’t know each other well. There was a man that came down the aisle behind her, he was tall and athletic looking, and also sort of tan. He actually sat in the middle, between them. I pegged them as Californians, going home after a trip to Oregon.

I realized very quickly that the woman was a nutjob. There was no subtlety or finesse about it. And I immediately understood why the guy sat in the middle, between the teenager and the crazy lady. The teenager looked out the window with headphones in her ears. And the woman began poking her. “Lauren! Lauren! Are you excited? Aren’t you excited? We’re on a plane! Have you ever flown before? When was the last time we flew? Isn’t this exciting?”

Lauren flinched and curled up more tightly in her seat. She shushed at her. The woman was giddy. And I realized, this woman was her mother. “I think you were five, the last time we flew. Isn’t this so exciting? Can I smoke in the plane?”

The dad, in the middle, shook his head. The woman took out a case with a pink electronic cigarette inside.

“Mom, no, you can’t smoke on the plane,” hissed the teenager.
“What, even an e-cigarette? Why not?”
“You just can’t. Not on a plane.”

The woman sat and jabbered for a bit, and I decided not to try to follow their conversation too much. From my vantage, sitting behind them, I could see the mom’s face, looking at her daughter, and the teenager’s face, looking back at her mother. It took mere seconds to understand years of history. I didn’t need to watch too closely.

Everyone was seated, the door of the plane closed and we began pushing back from the gate. The woman was playing on her cellphone and a flight attendant breezed by and asked her to shut it down.

“I can put it on airplane mode,” the woman said.
“No, you have to shut it off,” said the dad.
“What? No, I can put it in airplane mode, can’t I?”
“No, you have to shut it off completely.”
“I can’t believe this. Really? What is airplane mode for, then?”
“Mom, you have to shut it off, they say to shut it off completely.”

At this point, a stranger in another row said, “You have to shut off your phone.”

“What, really? Really? Angry much, everyone?” The woman’s voice was raised and carried over the back of the plane.
Lauren, her daughter, shushed at her mom.
“Don’t shush me!” The woman’s voice got higher. “Don’t ever shush me! Ever!”

And it was right around this time I figured this woman was somehow, someway, going to cause the plane to crash.

“I can’t believe this, I’m getting yelled at by strangers, and my asshole husband is yelling at me because you can’t use airplane mode on an airplane. Really?”
“Shhhhhhh!” The daughter hissed.

The woman conjured a face of disbelief, sarcasm and loathing, and pointed it at her daughter.
“Really. Really? Really,” she said, as if she could just not believe what grievous injury she was enduring.

The daughter put her headphones back in and gazed out of the window. The father sat stone silent between them.

We taxied to the runway and the plane suddenly throttled forward, pressing us all into our seats.

The woman poked at her daughter. “Lauren! Lauren! We’re taking off! Are you excited? Are you scared? Nervous? Look at that! Look out the window!”
“Mom, stop it!” Lauren was looking out the window. And perhaps she was nervous. Her mother needled her mercilessly.
“Wow, look at that! Lauren! Lauren!” She poked at her daughter.
“Mom, leave me alone!” She swatted her mom’s hand away.
The woman relaxed back in her chair. She again glared at her daughter incredulously.
“Wow. Just, wow. You know, I’m just excited. I’m excited that my daughter hasn’t flown since she was five. Really? Just, wow.” She continued to stare at her daughter.
Lauren gazed out the window.
The father sat in the middle silently.

This was going to be the longest two hour flight ever.

It’s remarkable how well you can get to know someone in a blazingly short amount of time. Not even because you are making assumptions or filling in details in your own mind. But because they absolutely demand your attention. They want you to be focused on them. And to be in their presence, is to witness a spectacle.

Though, of course, I did begin to draw my own conclusions, not limited to guessing that this woman was drunk. She may have even been an alcoholic. But I figured she had to be under the influence of something. Sure enough, as drink orders were being taken, she asked for a Bloody Mary. It was 7:30 in the morning. When she was done with the first one, she got another.

I pulled away from watching them, though I really had nothing better to do. I couldn’t hear everything they said to each other, but I could see their faces, which told more of a story than hearing their words. The daughter with the headphones, staring out the window. The mother antagonizing, instigating, and badgering her daughter.

I heard the words “Really? Really. Really? Wow.” Over and over again. Like she just couldn’t believe her daughter. The mom would get bored, and remember she hadn’t said it in at least five minutes. And she would start up again, looking at her daughter. “Really. Really. Wow.” She would squint her eyes at shake head her in mock disbelief.

The daughter, for her part, pressed as tightly as she could to the side of the plane, trying to fold herself into the smallest possible space. The dad silently sat in the middle.

The woman tired of this game and fiddled with the TV in front of her. She squealed when an interview of George Clooney came on. A dozen heads turned in the back of the plane. “I love George Clooney!” Later, another huge shriek from her. “I love The Price is Right!” It’s my favorite show!” She bounced in her seat. She yelled and cheered when contestants on the show won. Other people on the plane exchanged glances.

Her daughter would shush her, “Mom! Shhhhh! You’re making a scene!”
“Don’t shush me. Don’t ever shush me. Ever.” And then she’d play the “Really? Wow.” game at her daughter for a while.

Etc.

The flight attendants were remarkably absent through a lot of this. I don’t know if they have a policy not to engage crazy people, or if they are trained to be polite until a passenger becomes a safety risk. The woman got up once to use the restroom with her e-cigarette. Then she wandered drunkly up the aisle, unable to find her seat.

By the end of the flight, the mother and daughter nearly came to blows. The daughter was looking out the window as the plane began to descend. The woman shrieked, poked her daughter and bounced in her seat. She leaned over her husband to peer out the window and poked, poked, poked her daughter. “Lauren! Look! It’s Los Angeles! Look at the palm trees! Look at the swimming pools! Look! It’s right there! Are you excited?”

The daughter swatted her away and tried to fend her off. The mother assumed her incredulous look. Then she sneered, “Are you nervous about landing? You haven’t flown since you were five. Aren’t you scared? Aren’t you nervous? Look how close we are! Looks like we could crash!”

The father said some sharp words to the woman. She turned her venom on him.

“Really? You’ve been sitting here this whole time and you can’t even be here with us? I just want to share this moment as a family, our daughter hasn’t flown since she was five. I’m just excited and you have to be an fucking asshole.”
“Mom, shhhhhh!”
“Don’t you shush me. Don’t you ever shush me.”

The plane landed and we taxied to the gate. We came to a stop and the passengers busted out of their seats in a cacophony of clicking seat belts.

The woman jumped up.
“I need to get off the plane.”
“We have to wait. We are in the back of the plane.”
“No, I need to get off the plane right now!”

The man sitting in front of her turned to look at her.
“Lady, you need to calm down.”
“What, me?” she said. “I don’t think you know what’s going on here.”
“Lady, you need to calm down.”
“I can’t believe this. I can’t believe strangers on the plane are yelling at me. You don’t know the backstory. You don’t know anything. I need to get off this plane!”
The husband said, “It’s going to be a while, there nothing we can do.”

The woman turned away for a moment. Then she exclaimed, “I’m having a panic attack! I need to get off the plane! Strangers are yelling at me, and my husband is a fucking asshole and I’m having a panic attack right now!”

It happened that this airport deplanes from both the front and the back exits. So just as the woman was freaking out, the back door opened. She shoved her way out.

The father and daughter calmly collected their bags. The father said to the man in front of them, “This is what two Zanax and two bourbons will do.”
“And two vodkas. You forgot the vodkas,” chimed in the daughter.

The father and daughter walked in front of me as we trudged down the gate. The mother was nowhere to be seen. But they didn’t seem concerned.

I wanted to pull the daughter away and give her some sort of advice. The kind of advice strangers give, that magically transforms a person, and sets them on a lifetime path of success and emotional good health. I wanted to tell her to hang on. To be her own person. To keep perspective. To not give in. I wanted to tell her to just hang on long enough that she could escape, so that her mother’s craziness wouldn’t infect her forever. I wanted to be the wise, magic apparition that told her everything was going to be okay.

But I didn’t say anything. It’s none of my business. Everything is going to be okay. I don’t need to be the one to say it.

But if I did have a moment to speak with her, I maybe would have given her one piece of advice. Just four words.

Write it all down.

Write.

It.

All.

Down.

Sweetheart, write it down.

Also, everything will be okay.

I will do everything in my power not to scoop her up and stuff her into my mouth.

But, COME ON. Could you really expect me not to?

These photos were either by her mommy or daddy, I don’t know who.

And more photos over here by the magical Ion Hartunian. If you are in the Los Angeles area and need wedding, maternity, or newborn photos, he is the man. It helps that my sister and her husband are gorgeous human beings. I’m already feeling bad that I’m going to eat their daughter. Sorry, guys.

I’ve had a few people who haven’t seen me in a while and they are surprised I’m not showing more. Like, “You’re not massive! I thought you’d be grotesquely huge by now!” I feel pretty okay about that. I’m sort of tall, at 5’8,” and we know one of the guys is way down there. I can’t be sure what exactly “way down there” means. But all the ultrasound technicians have remarked that Baby A is about as low as he can go.

I know there have been times when I can push on the top of my belly, on what I assume is a foot, and feel it down in my butt. I wouldn’t even say “crotchal region,” I’d say butt. So this kid better make for the correct exit when the time comes.

Okay, so, kicking. These kids better be world class soccer players. If they inherit any traits from their father, they would be lucky to get his soccer legs. Holy crap, they are kicking the shit out of me. Nothing painful, but sometimes like popcorn popping all up and down my right side. I had coffee and a cinnamon roll the other day, and I thought the two of them found a dead squirrel and were kicking it around in my belly.

And also, nothing amuses me more than seeing the kicks through my shirt. I am at the stage where I can rest a book or cup of coffee on my belly, between my boobs. I wouldn’t dare balance a beverage there, because the boys will kick it. I can see the kicks. A book will jump in my hands. I know that Baby A is more on my right, with his head down in my butt, and his feet up by my ribs. Baby B is more on the left, but also with his feet pointing to my right. So it’s hard to know who might be kicking. They still have enough room to move around, but eventually, they are going to get big enough that they will be cramped, and they will “declare a position” for the remainder of the pregnancy.

I’m still moving around okay, but everything is getting more uncomfortable. Bending over, tying shoes, eating my toe nails, etc. I realize there will be a point I will not be able to do these things myself anymore. Getting up from the bed now involves doing a side pushup with my arms, because the extra weight in my belly renders my stomach muscles ineffective. I probably have another 10 to 20 pounds to gain before this is over.

There are two sleep positions that are comfortable. My right side, and my left side. Turning over is like a nine point turn in traffic. I can’t just roll over. I sort of have to squirm each body part over in succession, like a calibrated horizontal ballet, or a not-quite-dead beached whale.

This is on my mind, as I get more pregnant: My body becomes less my own, and becomes more of a gestational vehicle for new humans. It doesn’t feel natural. I know there are women who like being pregnant. And we, the big, societal ”WE,” glorify pregnancy and motherhood. Indeed, with contemporary politics and media, pregnant women are more like public property (A WHOLE OTHER DISCUSSION).

It should feel like the most natural thing in the world, right? Here I am, making babies. My body has taken over, and knows exactly what it has to do. Even though I’ve never done this before. My boobs will cease to be ornamental and recreational, and actually fulfill their original purpose, which is to squirt milk and feed offspring. It’s fucked up.

I mean, I know. I know, I know, I know, this is what is supposed to happen, it’s not some goddamned novelty and I’m the first to experience it. I do believe however, I’m probably the first woman to blog about it.

But it doesn’t feel natural to me. None of it does. I haven’t been dreaming about having a baby all my life. Dave and I were enjoying our baby-free existence, but being in our late 30s, we looked at each other and figured we’d better get this show on the road. And that was the extent of our dreaming. We were as ignorant about childbirth or parenthood as two teenagers rolling around in the back of a pickup truck.

We are learning quickly. But what I am learning is not dispelling this feeling of all this shit being totally unnatural. Like for instance (this is gruesome, block your eyes): Vagina stitches. Stitches in the fucking vagina. Are you kidding me? Hearing about this made me cross my fingers for a C-section, but then…a line of stitches across my belly? Is that better? It’s all fricken horrific. All of it.

And really, I can’t even complain about childbirth. Yes, I am freaked out. Really. I am. I really, really, really am. Because I’m an anxious person, and I’ve lived a sheltered life, and I have never had any injuries or emergencies that required me to go to the hospital. Imagine having thirty eight years to build up any major medical procedure or any visit to the hospital as a XXX horror slasher flick. I AM FREAKED OUT.

But I can’t complain because billions of women have given birth before me. They do it all the time. All those billions of women, past and present, through the annals of history…they are stealing my thunder.

Those bitches.

But seriously: Baby shit. I hadn’t thought about it all that much. I know about diapers. I know there are such things as disposable diapers, and there is such a thing as cloth diapers. I knew those things existed, and that was the sum of my expertise. When we decided to start a family, I figured I would someday get better acquainted with baby crap, and the whole matter dropped from my mind.

Now with the twins less than three months away, I am coming to understand that dealing with baby shit is going to be a whole big thing. I’m going to have to get off my ass and really think about this stuff. We’re going to have to develop strategies, philosophies, coping mechanisms, disposal protocols, evacuation schematics, aroma containment, and indeed, after all is said and done, we may need to deal with olfactory PTSD and submit ourselves to aroma therapy. I never quizzed Dave about his thoughts on potpourri, but I now realize we should have thought about all this months ago.

So with twins, I was just thinking we would probably do disposables, though it made my inner greeny hippy environmentalist self die a little. I just couldn’t imagine doing cloth diapers for two. TWO. Two little poopy butts.

Let’s do some math. I’ve never had a baby, so I have to believe experts and others when they tell me we will be changing each kid 10 to 12 times a day. Let’s make it 10 times a day, for the sake of being conservative, and because it’s easier to do math with 10. So, 10 diapers for each kid = 20 diapers a day. That’s 140 diapers a week. This to me, almost doesn’t sound like it’s enough.

Okay. So we moved into a duplex in Portland, and for us, our garbage service is every other week. So by the time the garbage is picked up, it would be 280 dirty diapers, in addition to whatever other household trash we create (which is not much). But still. 280 diapers is a LOT OF BABY SHIT. And pee. Those garbage bins are going to be heavy and stinky.

I don’t feel good about 280 dirty disposable diapers every two weeks. So maybe, let’s think about cloth diapers for a second.

I know nothing about cloth diapers. I guess you wrap the kid in a cloth diaper, then there are diaper covers, and you change them frequently, and you cross your fingers and pray to the unicorns that you don’t create a national emergency or superfund site in your house. Sometimes there are disposable liners, so that when the kids crap themselves, you can just zip off the disposable liners and flush it down the toilet. Okay. Not too bad. I guess. I mean, it sounds fucking awful, but these are the decisions we made, and so we have to live with scraping poo. Let’s just get through this.

So then, you wash the dirty diapers, right? They are going to be soaked with pee, and probably have some poo nuggets in there too. From the little I’ve read, you pre rinse the diapers in the washing machine first. Then you wash them. Then you do another rinse, which I assume is the same as the regular washing cycle. But maybe not. This is poo we are dealing with here, so I don’t know if there are special magical poo rinses we have to do.

Some folks say that your laundry room may eventually smell like pee and ammonia. If that’s the case, you need to do more rinsing. Because basically, you are baking the pee smell into the diapers in the dryer. Awesome.

Again, we are living in a duplex, and we are paying for our own water. City water in Portland is expensive. It seems like it should be free, practically, but there are big pipe projects going on in Portland and the rate payers are financing them. So our water bills are more expensive in Portland than they are in Los Angeles or Las Vegas.

So if we are washing our own diapers, and really putting them through two or three cycles, our water bill may end up being as expensive as a new car.

Okay? If I could, I would go back to being blissfully unaware of all this baby crap. But no, we had to go and procreate, and now we have to be responsible adults and deal with our spawns’ functions. I’m still just a bit skeeved by the idea of poo in the washing machine. It’s poo. In the washing machine. Is it just me, or is that fucking disgusting?

Dave brought up the idea of a diaper service. This is something else I know nothing about. Someone delivers cloth diapers, your family soils the hell out of them, you throw them in a bin, and the service comes and takes them away and gives you fresh ones. This doesn’t sound all that bad. We might do this. It feels more responsible environmentally. We may do disposables overnight. We may do this. But, oh, the research, and the reading, and the internet forums, and the raging parents, and the passionate advice from every possible perspective. I hear babies are more prone to rashes when you use cloth diapers, which sounds awesome.

No one just tells you how to do this. You have to figure it all out. You have to figure out what works for you. Isn’t that the most wishy washy, non-committal, namby pamby bullshit advice you’ve ever heard? It’s complete, utter bullshit.

We can send people to the moon, but we haven’t figured out baby crap.

It was not a quiet place. It was really a place for kids to run around with wild abandon, and for the speedier parents to chase them. Roxy is just such a toddler. She is just at that age where there is nothing, NOTHING, more fun than running away from her mom. I wrote about this stage once. There is no such thing as sitting and relaxing when you are the parent of such a toddler. Although, as we sat there, there were plenty of kids who seemed to run around unsupervised.

At eighteen months, Roxy is about as wiggly as you can get. And she was very social and interactive with other kids. She is not yet at that stage where she believes a toy in her possession belongs to her. She doesn’t yet have the “mine” mentality. There were older kids and younger kids at various stages of socialization, and she observed how other kids played.

However, she was intensely curious about much younger kids. A mom brought a baby boy in a car seat and set him on the floor. Roxy zipped over to get a look at him. And she fished around in his car seat and happily procured his toys and ran off with them. The baby didn’t care. But the baby had an older sister, probably three or four years old. She saw the theft of her brother’s toys and wailed, “Mom! She’s stealing our toys!” The little girl was furious. She was outraged. The mom was nonchalant and probably tired.

Roxy came to show us her new toys and we advised her to give them back. Roxy went back to the car seat and the older sister snatched them away. She was still super pissed. Roxy just grinned and ran off to the next amusement. She saw an unmanned stroller and tried to take it for a spin. But a little boy came over and defended it with his body, pushing Roxy away. He was too young to speak, but it was clearly his stroller. At one point, Roxy lost a shoe, but found someone else’s shoe and put it on.

She was too young to know the difference. All toys were just toys. All shoes were just shoes. All books were just books. She didn’t fuss when an older boy took away a toy she was playing with. She just observed him silently. Roxy hasn’t yet developed a sense of possession or injustice.

I was keeping an eye on Roxy, and all the kids in my field of vision, because it was fascinating and a little terrifying. I saw how tired some parents looked. This was honestly, a loud, unpleasant place. But parents happily camped out, watching their scamps run around. This was a way for families to get out of the house. These parents were thrilled to be there. I sat and talked to my friend amidst the din. And I contemplated my life.

Since I was keeping an eye on Roxy, I watched as a much older girl waded into the toy corral. She was probably four or five. I don’t really know. I’m not a good judge of kids’ ages. She was much taller, and most of those toys were too young for her. Roxy was sitting in the pile of toys and the older girl approached her. She had a doll in her hands. She offered the doll to Roxy, and I thought, how nice. That’s a nice little girl.

Except when Roxy reached for it, the girl pulled it away. She did it again. She offered Roxy the doll, and when Roxy reached for it, the older girl pulled it away. She did it three times. And Roxy, as I said, has no sense of injustice, she regarded the girl calmly. She didn’t fuss. But she fell for it each time, she reached for the doll. But the older girl kept doing it. And I thought, what a little shit! What an evil little shit! 

This little girl was old enough to know exactly what she was doing. She had full comprehension of what’s fair, and what it meant to share a toy, or to take a toy away from someone else. But Roxy was younger. And this little girl was in her element, in the wilds of a childhood playland. Perhaps she was thinking she was not being observed. And so she was behaving in the way that was most natural to her. And she was simply taunting a younger child.

I guess I have to come to terms with my own naiveté, because I was stunned, watching this. I was horrified. And I was whipped into a froth from my own sense of injustice. It wasn’t simply not sharing a toy, because you’d expect that. No kid wants to share toys. Adults don’t want to share toys either. It’s a human condition that we control with the thinnest veneer of socially enforced civilization.

This was beyond not sharing. It was taunting. It was manipulative. It was picking on someone smaller than her. For what? For what purpose? Was it entertainment? Did she want to see if she could make Roxy cry? Was it grappling for hierarchy? Is this what we do to each other if we think no one is looking? Is this our nature?

My friend saw it too and jumped up. “You should give her the doll if you are offering to share,” she said to the little girl. The girl kept the doll. “Little girls are mean,” observed my friend. Indeed. I saw her teasing Roxy with the doll again later. I was just relived that Roxy was too young to understand what a mean little bitch that girl was.

Seriously, I’m going to need to go back to school and study goddamned child psychology. And hope that I don’t give birth to evil little shits.

So now we did all that stuff. We’re all settled in and feeling cozy. And I’m sleeping much better, thank you. And now that all those panicky things are out of the way, now we can think about how we have two babies on the way. In like, three months or so.

Holy shit.

What the hell do we do now? Babies need like, STUFF, right? I mean, there’s really no way around it. I mean, we could go super hippy dippy and let our kids sleep in dresser drawers and clothe them in burlap sacks. We just spent the past few years downsizing all our crap. Now we’re going to have little crap machines. And we need crap to contain all their crap.

We aren’t opposed to buying things just to thumb our nose at convention or to adhere to some idealogical purity. Well, actually, I do enjoy thumbing my nose at convention. I like it a lot. I thumb my nose so hard at convention. “Hey convention! Here’s me THUMBING MY NOSE AT YOU, YOU BASTARD!” Etc.

But really, we’re going to have to buy cribs. And we’re going to have to buy car seats. And we’ll probably need some kind of stroller. I think I need some kind of breast pump. And we’ll need like, diapers, and stuff?

I wasn’t planning on doing a registry. I feel weird about asking people to buy us stuff. Here we are, after a few years of downsizing, being frugal, and paying off debt. We’ve gotten ourselves into a thrifty, but comfortable place in our lives. And now we are procreating, and I feel weird asking friends and family to spend their money on us. I know people love buying stuff for babies. And people want to participate. And it’s, you know, convention. But I have struggled with the idea of a registry, and it still feels super dirty to me.

I’ve had enough friends and family ask me to start a damned registry already so they know what to get us. And I realized that I don’t want people buying us stuff we won’t use, or buying us duplicates of stuff we don’t use. And we do need some stuff. But, I just…gah. Is there such a thing as doing a registry, but asking people not to buy us anything?

So amidst all this tortured mental gymnastics, I’m just beginning to gaze into the maw of the Baby Product Industrial Complex. I haven’t plunged in, I’m just sort of peering into it from the sidelines. This is totally uncharted territory for us. I’m in my late thirties, and I can’t say I’ve had a lot of babies in my life. It’s really just been the past year where I’ve become aware of babies, and the whole Baby Product Industrial Complex.

It’s a huge thing. It’s a big, huge, ridiculous thing. All the stuff. All the STUFF. Ultimately, babies need food, sleep, and for you, or some other person, to change them when they shit their pants. That’s all they really need.

But the STUFF. The cribs, and the changing tables, and the swings, and the rockers, and the bouncy things, and the pillows, and the pumps, and the bottles, and the car seats, and the strollers, and the slings, and the things to suck out snots, and the things to put in their bums to relieve gas, and the clothes, and the socks, and the mittens, and the bibs, and the hats, and the blankets, and the swaddle cloths, and the burp cloths, and the bathtubs, and the baby monitors, and the humidifiers, and the toys, and blinky things, and light up things, and colorful things, and the butt wipe warmers, and the butt paste, and the diapers, and the diaper pails, and the diaper pail liners…and what else? This isn’t nearly a definitive list.

Now. You look at all that stuff, and you think, “Babies really don’t need all that stuff.” And I agree! I so agree! But there is equal, if not stronger advice saying “YES. You NEED this stuff. You will regret not having this time saver, or that gizmo, or this baby toy, or that swing, or this bouncy thing….” There are baby product evangelicals out there. And they all overwhelmingly agree, you need stuff.

And the problem is, every goddamned baby is different. All of them. They need food, sleep, and clean diapers. Yet, all babies are different. And all parents are different. And they all have different advice. And they all loooove one thing, and they all dislike something else. And none of them agree.

Awesome.

And for us, we have two little screamers coming, and between the two of them, they might be totally different. AWESOME!

Now. I’m saying all this, and I haven’t yet stepped foot into a goddamned baby store. Not a single one. My mom lost her mind took me baby clothes shopping in California and that one day, in itself, was a huge, mind blowing culture shock. And I’m just going to say this…if you are not into sports, or into cars, baby clothes shopping is much harder for boys than it is for girls. I mean, they have whole clothing lines with dick trucks on them. Or sporty type stuff that says “Mommy’s Little Slugger.”  Ulg. Heavy, heavy sigh. Maybe I’ll just keep my fingers crossed and hope our boys turn out gay.

Right. Okay. So I know there is stuff we definitely need. We need cribs. Probably two of them. We need car seats. We need diapers. I already got boobs, so I’m super psyched I don’t have to buy those. Can I possibly get all the stuff without going into the stores? Can I just read the reviews and order online? Can I buy what we need without engaging in the consumergasm that is Shopping for Baby Stuff? I know some people say it’s fun. And maybe if I lived near my mom or sister, I might agree.

But really, it does not sound like fun to me. We’ve got another three months. I can procrastinate a little while longer, can’t I?

But it sort of shows what a difference five years have made in my life. And it shows exactly how anal I can be, if left to my own devices. I’m guessing you were eating your breakfast this morning, and thinking, “Huh. I wonder how anal a random stranger could get on the internet?” And lo! Your answer appears…as if by magic! You’re welcome!

You see, I am pregnant. I know. I can’t shut up about it. At the beginning of this pregnancy, I had a high-deductible individual health insurance policy. Now I have coverage through Dave’s new job. We’ve been to three different hospitals, spoken to a multitude of doctors, and have probably had dozens of different tests. We’ve gotten benefit statement letters from our insurance, and we’ve gotten a handful of bills.

We are a bit over halfway through the process of being pregnant, and I’ve seen, perhaps, about 10% of the bills we are likely to receive. For our first insurance, we will need to pay $2000 to fulfill my deductible. After that, insurance pays only 50%. After we pay the out-of-pocket maximum of $5000, insurance is supposed to pay 100%. Right? It’s a lot of money. But we knew what we were getting into. And we were prepared to pay that much.

In the meantime, as the bills were being sent, our insurance company insisted that some of the doctors were not within network, so they weren’t going to apply to our $5000 out-of-pocket maximum. Those charges were going to go to a $15,000 out-of-network out-of-pocket maximum. So it began to look like a $20,000 pregnancy, instead of a $5000 pregnancy, which we were NOT prepared for.

I battled with the insurance company over the out-of-network doctors. The doctor’s office insisted she was in network, though the insurance company said the opposite. It turned out the insurance company records were out of date, and it took two months of wrangling in order for them to correct the charges.

Right. Okay? I said this was going to be boring as shit. It keeps going.

I’ve gotten some insurance company benefit statements from some of the visits, labs, and ultrasounds. But for the most part, we have gotten very few bills from medical providers. I know we are visiting one office where we probably have thousands of dollars in charges sitting on our account. But we have gotten no bills. No bills.

This, as you might imagine, is freaking my shit out. I am collecting whatever letters we get, and I’m paying whatever bills come in. But I know there are a lot more to come.

And so. And so, I made a spreadsheet. And this is how I am a different person than I was even five years ago. Five years ago, I may have kept track of the charges, and I wouldn’t have thrown anything away. But I was not in control of my money back then, and if I didn’t have a bill in my hand, it meant I didn’t have to worry that I owed money. I would have buried the thought and maybe dealt with it with later. I would have made an effort to stay oblivious. It would keep me up at night, but really, five years ago, I would not have wanted to know how bad it was.

Now, I make spreadsheets. I track every letter, every charge, every bill. I have a list of all the charges before my deductible and after. I have lists of charges that were re-billed from out-of-network to in-network. Now that we have new insurance, I’m tracking the before and after deductible charges again.

I’m doing this, because, yes, you hope that insurance companies and doctors offices will bill correctly. And you hope that they have a record of what you’ve paid. And you hope that you’re getting all the charges they send you.

But come on.

I’m tracking every dime we pay. I’m tracking what the insurance companies pay. I’m making a list of every appointment we go to. I’m going to go to the doctors’ offices and ask them to please send us our bill. It’s all going in a spreadsheet.

I probably don’t need to do all this. But that is how I am different now than I was years ago. Now it puts my mind at ease to know what is going on with our money. Where before, I didn’t want to know.

Now, I think it’s sort of interesting. I like the idea that I’ll have a record of what a pregnancy costs. Maybe I should have been a project manager, instead of an accountant.

Now, I build spreadsheets for recreational purposes.

The internet is full of anal retentive weirdos.

But seriously, it melted my brain.

Elliana.

6lb, 12 oz, 19 1/2″ inches, born Friday April 27 at 11:54am.

My parents visited, of course, and they debated on picking up a gift they saw in the hospital gift shop. My dad couldn’t resist. He got a five foot, three inch bear for the 19 inch baby. He carried it down the hall at the hospital, and all the nurses gushed and goggled at the new grandpa.

Holy crap.

And that hair! That little kewpie doll hair! My sis says she has thick black hair, almost two inches long.

Gah. I knew I wouldn’t be able to be there, and I thought I was prepared. And now of course, I’m sick with the worst cold I’ve had in years, plus I haven’t been vaccinated for whooping cough, so it’s smart for me to stay away. But goddamn. It’s hard not to be there when your sister and brother in law have a fricken adorable baby.

It’s probably for the best. They’d constantly have to tell me to take the baby out of my mouth, and probably say things like, “Heather, please stop eating our baby.”