ALL CAPS

Contractions.  Contractions for days.  Most constitute a mild cramp – just painful enough to be irritating and keep me from sleeping well (e.g. it is 4am right now) – but some are catch-your-breath painful.  AND YET.  I AM NOT IN LABOR.  These are just “practice” – because I need more practice after going through this twice in my life already.  UTERUS – BY THE THIRD KID YOU SHOULD HAVE THIS DOWN.

Screw this process.  Screw it all to hell.  ARGH I HATE EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD.  Especially people who ask me about my pregnancy when I’m out and about.  Which is everyone.  I just made a grocery list and am dreading going to Publix, because of the inevitable (friendly, well-meaning, but soooooo irritating) comments.   USING THE CAPS LOCK KEY IS SURPRISINGLY SATISFYING, I WISH I HAD ONE FOR MY VOICE.  YES!!!  I AM AMAZINGLY LARGE RIGHT NOW!!  NO IT’S MY THIRD!  YES, ALL THREE ARE BOYS!  WE ARE EXCITED!!  HAHA, PROMISE I WON’T HAVE THIS BABY ON THE FLOOR RIGHT HERE IN FRONT OF THE PRODUCE AISLE – BUT TELL ME MORE JOKES ABOUT LABOR!

Hide me.  Hide me from everyone, until he comes out.  Including my darling children.  The Professor can stick around – he’s useful.  But those kids and their pokey elbows and their constant interrogation and their needs have got to GO.  And they’d better take the dog, who lately has taken to watching me intently from across the room and barking softly.  That is, when he’s not all up in my business underfoot, taking one last stab at sending the enormous lumbering pregnant lady toppling over on her face because she can’t see past her belly to the corgi at her feet.  (We’ve had a number of near misses, including on the stairs.)

In less negative news – I had a baby shower yesterday – a surprise  by the ladies at work.  How lovely of them!  They had mentioned doing one for me a couple of months ago at my co-worker’s baby shower, and I told them there was no need, this being our third boy.  I thought that was the end of it – I figured they’d take a collection and pull together a BRU gift card or something after the birth, which is what we do for the dudes whose wives have babies.  Instead, they cobbled together a little celebration under my very nose, and lured me to it under false pretenses.

My friend/fellow lawyer who is taking over a lot of my cases arranged a meeting in the conference room for us to discuss the transition.  We pulled piles of binders and folders and some legal pads and pens into our arms, headed down to the conference room, and then she threw open the door and VOILA!  I see all of the women of the office seated around the big conference table, a stack of baby gifts by the window, and a little table of party food.  I am not ashamed to say I wept – I had been feeling slightly bad that this little guy had no scraps of wrapping paper, no little baby shower cards to go into his baby book.  Both of his brothers – Jack especially but Liam, too – had a stack of things like that, little bits of proof that they were anticipated, wanted, embraced by a community who looked forward to meeting them.  This third boy does have approximately fifty times the ultrasound shots of his brothers, since I had so many more of those this time around.  But other than that I had nothing to put in his book.  Classic third kid issue, I know, and of course he does have a community of people who can’t wait to meet him, regardless of whether there exist any baby shower cards or bits of wrapping paper.   Nevertheless, I wanted some hard proof, and I was actually pondering doing a facebook status update asking anyone with a spare two minutes and 42 cents to drop us a note in the mail welcoming this baby – no gifts, just a note or a card – so his little book wouldn’t be totally empty.  But now I’ve got plenty, and it makes me smile.  For gifts we got mostly diapers and wipes and baby shampoo – yup, I’ll take ’em – but there were a few little loveys and outfits.  Sweet boy gets a thing or two that hasn’t been soiled by his older brothers, bless his wee little heart.

I brought it all home and stacked it on the kitchen table for sorting and putting away, and Liam squealed with delight, then promptly dived in, throwing tissue paper left and right and ultimately claiming a particularly cute set of rubber duckies (that glow!) for himself.  Jack had a heart attack, saying “Liam, this is all organized, and you’re messing it up,” and boy the apple didn’t fall far from the maternal tree with that one.  I conscripted Jack into lugging each pack of diapers up the stairs to the baby’s room, one at a time, and he did it, hollering at Liam all the way up and all the way down.  Meanwhile once Liam located the rubber duckies, he absconded with them, and left me alone to organize my piles in peace.  Both boys did stand there for a while and exclaim over the cuteness of the little clothes and baby blankets, which made me chuckle.  It wasn’t so long ago, little boys, that you were tiny babies . . . yet here you are, oohing and aahing over the little monkey feet on this onesie, as if you were somehow, like, all grown up or something.

Anyway.  If you are so inclined, send positive thoughts that my torture will end soon.  I know it’s only a matter of days – a month at most (it won’t be a month).  We’ll get there, him and me.  Meanwhile, I’ll continue to ALL CAPS my irritable way through the month of January, til I land on the day that will forever be my little baby’s birthday.  Which, you know, the eleventh would be pretty rad!  One One One!  Let’s do this, little boy!