Scene 1: “Good morning, Rockstar,” the hottie smiled. I grunt from behind my shades: I don’t do mornings. Two beers later though, I’m singing Whitney Houston with a ukulele accompaniment on a boat dressed in a tight V-neck and navy side-tie bikini bottoms. The sun is high, the waves are calm, my tummy is flat and my butt is firm. Life is glorious.
Scene 2: A friend embraces my shoulders. He’s half-laughing, half-consoling. “You’re a woman, and you were kinda created for this. You’ll be fine.” I scowl. Because my tummy is unsettled, my head is spinning, I’m overwhelmed, self-conscious, and terrified, and for once it’s not because I’m hungover.
Once the physical duress eased long enough to let me catch my breath, I had to smile. The party girl was pregnant. Who’d have thought it? What a miracle. With a flourish, the cigarettes — my 19-year-old vice and comfort — landed in the trash with enough style to make LeBron proud.
Let’s Get Physical
“I wasn’t sure if you were pregnant or just fat!” I am talented at choosing tactless friends. They backpedal: “Your boobs got bigger, though.” I wince. I’d known about the effect pregnancy would have on breasts since Sex Ed at 12, but nobody warned me that the “girls” would (a) not fit into ANYTHING except that natty sports bra I nearly burned after failing at Bikram, and (b) remind me they were around by hurting nonstop. God, I was sore. When you start growing a human in your belly, your breasts like reminding you that they are, first and foremost, mammary glands. I am a cow and I’m fat enough for it.
Rewind time back a year: I’m working up a sweat jiggling my body to samba. I’m lost in the music, breathless, feeling sexy and free. Nothing can hold me back. “Dance samba professionally,” I am entreated; I laugh, flattered. Fast forward to last week, when a song came out on the radio and I felt the old stirrings in my hips. I started gyrating and swaying — then I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window. I resembled a goldfish in a petri dish. Yup, that fat round thing flopping about is me. To think I used to be graceful, mesmerizing and svelte. Seems like a different person now.
The gentleman was chivalrous enough not to call me fat, and the attention was welcome. He was handsome and dapper, with impeccable manners and self-deprecating charm. He was like an egg-mayo-sandwich-with-shrimp-pickles-and-mustard for the eyes. (That’s a compliment, promise.) He made some witticism and I turned to glance at him from the corner of my satiated eyes. Then I smelled it. “What is that!” I exclaimed, sniffing the air like a bloodhound. I finally located his jawline, where the ambrosia originated, and spent two minutes inhaling his neck. Damn that olfactory sensitivity. Good thing he’s a good sport who knows I’m pregnant and slightly insane.
Aside from the exotic sandwiches, all I wanted to eat were anchovies and chocolate. My helper was horrified: “Your baby will be dark!” I raised an eyebrow, and popped the Ferrero Rocher in my mouth to marry the half-chovy I had sitting in there patiently. No, that’s not what caused the vomiting. Really, I swear.
My favorites abandoned me though: fried chicken with homemade raita, chicken-flavored instant noodles, chicken anything. Gnocchi with melted mozzarella. Cream sauces. Lemon water and salabat became my respite. I was banished from my sister’s birthday dinner — I sat alone in the al fresco section of the restaurant feeling sorry for myself — but at least I didn’t hurl at the smell of the carbonara simmering away in the open kitchen.
I leaned my forehead against the cool glass of the elevator and waited for it to stop so the nausea would, too. This was harder than I’d been led to expect. Sex Ed barely covered the essentials. Growing a human inside you is no walk in the park.
It’s emotion that’s taken me over
The frigid apparatus skated over my swollen belly and the doctor announced calmly, “There you go. Your baby is sucking its thumb.” All I could see were 50 shades of grey — but just there, in a whiter shade of pale, was a squiggly ambiguity with a small appendage stuck in the space under a tiny nose-like angle. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life.
It was inside me, growing insistently and with determination. It was mine.
It was my miracle.
To be honest, having kids is no joke. I’m not romantic about this at all; it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’m terrified, for by March my heart will crawl around outside my body, and a smile will drive a stake through my heart.
I can’t wait.