06/29/07

Week 8: Board Games

Pregnant women naturally gravitate toward others who are going through the same thing. Most have friends who fit the bill, but Sarah is a few years ahead of her friends, so she turned to the Internet. She joined an "Expectant Moms" group that had lively message boards frequented by women all over America. She signed up using my e-mail address for some reason, which meant that when I opened my email yesterday and I found myself knee-deep in e-mail roundups about uteri and ultrasounds.

Other than the fact that she is pregnant, Sarah has nothing in common with these message board women. Most appear to live in carpeted suburban houses and already have children with names like Cody and Caitlin. They use lots of :)s and !!s in their messages. Many, in an apparent widespread medical...

Posted at 10:41 AM in Push | Permalink | Comments (6)

06/26/07

Week 7: Brain Freeze

By now the embryo is about a quarter of an inch long, and my wife, when she isn't throwing up, is talking about something goofy called the crown/rump length. That's the distance from top of the embryo's skull to the midpoint between the tops of its buttocks. Why this is important, I'm not sure.

But from what I've read, Babu's larynx is beginning to form; so are the liver, pancreas, lungs, and stomach. He/She/It currently has a heart but no brain. Sarah still has both, each in working condition, but her bladder is not. Every sneeze and cough is potential disaster. She's started packing an extra pair of underwear. And now Sarah's brain has stopped working, too.

Most studies show that a woman's brain really does shrink by up to five percent during pregnancy. I don't know...

Posted at 10:37 AM in Push | Permalink | Comments (2)

06/22/07

Week 7: Babies are the New Black

With this . . . thing . . . growing in Sarah, keeping the Big Secret means nonstop paranoia. We feel like sophomores who have been smoking pot all afternoon, certain that everyone can tell we’re baked, and that everyone is whispering behind our backs. They’re not, not yet. But it does feel like everyone is talking about babies, which of course isn’t true. It’s just that, for the first time, I’m paying attention.

We had a big deck party and it was babies this and babies that all afternoon. Sarah and I tried hard not to make eye contact in fear that we would be found out. One guy, a creative director at DDB or something, told me he was looking to patent a strap-on vest for fathers filled with milk so they could “breastfeed” their babies when Mom wasn’t around. He called it . . . wait for it . . . “The Milkman.” I thought it was brilliant, until Sarah asked me if I would ever consider wearing one. (Editor’s note: not long after, the writers of Meet the Fockers had the same idea and put Robert DeNiro in one. Coincidence? Editor’s note #2: Boy, DeNiro’s career has really blossomed.) ...

Posted at 10:13 AM in Push | Permalink | Comments (3)

06/19/07

Week 6: Shelter from the Storm

One night on our camping trip, after Sarah fell into an unpleasant-sounding sleep, I continued to read by the light of the flickering campfire. Random information jumped off the page—seven servings a day of fruits and vegetables . . . eight glasses of water . . . lots of milk and dairy products—until it all started to give me a headache. Then I came across an alarming passage. Turns out that a number of men suffer from the nagging fear that their wife’s baby is not theirs. Whether or not they trust their wife’s faithfulness is beside the point. The doubt is a common psychological response for men when they’re first hit with a mind-blowing notion: I am powerful enough to create a life.

Is the baby mine? Jeez, I haven’t given it a thought...

Posted at 11:24 AM in Push | Permalink | Comments (4)

06/15/07

Week 6: Toxoplasma Gondii and Other Delights

Our secret is no longer ours. Sarah told Tricia, and Tricia immediately told her fiancé, Jason. Fortunately, Jason is far more interested in his fantasy baseball team than babies, so the information should die with him.

Sarah's justification for blabbing was sound, I suppose. The four of us (plus T & J's dog, Lou) are getting ready to go camping in Michigan. We are going to be in the same car all the way to the Upper Peninsula, and it would've been tough to explain why we're pulling over every 60 miles so Sarah can throw up out the window. Fine.

But now I'm sure that Sarah will call the whole thing off (the camping, not the pregnancy), and part of me hopes she will. My caveman instinct, to lock her in the house for nine months so nothing can harm the pregnancy,...

Posted at 10:32 AM in Push | Permalink | Comments (4)

06/12/07

Week 5: Secret Cervix

When I got to work on the day I found out Sarah was pregnant, I had to resist the urge to stand up at the editorial meeting and make an announcement. Instead, I went online and googled "pregnancy." I basically learned four things:

1. Folic acid, which is found in vitamin B, is crucial for pregnant women because it prevents birth defects.
2. My wife is about to get irritable, tired, and nauseous. The mood swings and food cravings/aversions that seemed so over-the-top on sitcoms are real.
3. People are obsessed with comparing the growing fetus to vegetables. (e.g., "At 11 weeks, your fetus is roughly the size of a summer squash.")
4. I am, biologically speaking, unnecessary from this point forward.

I was contemplating all this when the phone rang. It...

Posted at 10:16 AM in Push | Permalink | Comments (4)

06/08/07

Week 5: Riding the Blue Line

"Jeff, wake up."

I rolled over and pulled the pillow over my head. "It's so early."

"There's something here I think you should see."

She grabbed the pillow, and when I opened my eyes the scene came into focus. Sarah was sitting on the edge of the bed with a weird smile, which was alarming, because she never sits on the edge of the bed with a weird smile unless she's about to ask me to carry in a bunch of stuff from the car.

"What time is it?"

"Six. Look. I took this test."

A test? At six in the morning?

"Take a look."

On top of the rumpled sheet were two long white things, which I mistook for thermometers. She had been sick lately, and I figured she had been taking her temperature. Twice, for some reason. When I...

Posted at 02:04 PM in Push | Permalink | Comments (3)