home.

i’m on “pelvic rest” ’til, um, September.  no lifting Oscar.  no carrying anything over ten pounds.  no sex.  no excitement.  no laundry, supposedly, or vacuuming.  no exercise.  horrors.

ice cream is allowed.  sitting is permitted unless i feel any twinging or cramping, in which case i should lie down.  my colleagues at work will likely find sudden bouts of horizontitude a little, erm, disconcerting, as i work in a cubicle in a shared office with a bunch of computer dudes, but…i’m moving to part-time, so i’ll see if i can just keep the lying down for home.   commence devolution into whiny, frabjous couch dictator with ass the size of Alaska.

but i wanted this, and still do, so much.  this is still all perk, for me, compared to the alternative.  i was taken aback by the fact that my cervix was so weak as to need the cerclage this early, but i am perversely glad to have it, glad to have made it to the point where a stitch is advisable, an option.  it is external validation, i suppose, of the reality of a pregnancy i find it otherwise hard to believe i haven’t conjured out of utter wishfulness.  so i am trying to respect its reality and limitations, the stitch, hard as it is to adjust in the moments when my child falls and cries and i leap to scoop him up and remember, too late, that i am not supposed to…that there is fishing twine embedded deep in my most intimate bits and it is there to do a Very Important Job and tearing it through my compromised flesh would be Unpleasant and Bad, both.

confronting the diaper pail upstairs and judging its weight and realizing i have to ask Dave to take it down kind of sucks too, surprisingly. mostly because i hate to ask for things, hate incurring any karmic debt involving household chores.  i harbour a secret fear that i will be paying for the next few months well into our retirement, envisioning conversations circa 2047 that involve ancient moi wheedling “honey, can you put my polyester slacks in the washer, mon chou, as i am indisposed shining my new dentures?” and hearing “dang, woman, i washed your pants with my bare knuckles uphill both ways all the time you were pregnant with Hughloise (insert helpful name suggestion here, please) and i gave Oscar all his baths for FOUR MONTHS and got zero lovin’ and clearly you are an ingrate now go pick up my socks and, uh, sugar? i like fabric softener in my dainties.”  or something like that.  except Dave being Dave, there would be no details; more like, “i did all your laundry for YEARS.”  lordly look.  end of conversation.  i cringe.  laundry, you may guess, is usually my domain…and i am accustomed to my high horse.

and yet those are the things i hope for, really.  i hope there is a happy ending, so that all this lumpishness and helplessness can someday be something Dave lobs back at me, mock-hard-done-by, this period a memory made worthwhile by the presence of another little face that shouts “mine!” and tears about the house making us frazzled and happy and grateful.  it may well not.  but it is worth every crappy moment of the shot.

(so long, of course, as he does not leave me beached on the couch, Oscar unbathed, socks piled up about the house like mouse droppings.  which is what i secretly fear, i think, in becoming less of what i am used to being, all of a sudden.)

becoming an effective invalid is damn hard on the self-esteem, and on the relationship one conducts in one’s head with one’s love and partner, even if one’s love and partner is willing and adaptable.