I miss being pregnant, please pass the birth control.

Way back, many years before I was married with a child, I dreamed of what my life would be like with a husband and a couple of kids running around, and the beautiful experience I would have being pregnant. I would glow, naturally, with the impending promise of a new life growing inside me. I'd wear only the most fashionable and flattering maternity clothes and my hair would always be expertly coiffed as the perfect accessory to my maternally swelling body. My husband would lovingly adore me from his comfortable armchair as our pedigree cocker spaniel lounged at his feet, and I, happily flitted about my immaculate kitchen baking cookies and succulent standing rib roasts. I would blush, ever so coyly as people lined up to adoringly touch my growing belly and ask when the blessed event was due.


Then one day I realized I wasn't Donna Reed.

I think it was somewhere along the day I found out I was pregnant. Or maybe it was a week later when I looked in the mirror and saw that the "glow" of pregnancy was actually sweat because being pregnant made me feel like my baby was staying warm by building bonfires in my uterus. My son was born in November, so the bulk of my pregnancy stretched throughout the summer months - in South Carolina. Translation: IT WAS HOT!! Satan would probably summer in Maine if South Carolina were Hell - it's that hot. One day in August I looked over at my husband to find him wrapped in a down comforter, shivering. His lips were blue, and I couldn't be sure, but I thought I saw the slightest hint of frost clinging to his five o'clock shadow. I, on the other hand, was sitting in the recliner with feet the size of picnic baskets on either side of a fan running on full blast, contemplating the validity of spontaneous combustion. I just knew if people really did spontaneously combust, then they were most assuredly pregnant when they did. "OH MY GOD, IT'S HOT!!" I cried. "Are yyyouuu kkkkiddingg mmme," my husband managed through chattering teeth, "YYYYooouuu cccccoulddd hang mmmeat in hhhere."
"Mmmm, meat." I thought, and waddled up to get a sandwich.


I was much luckier than most women because I didn't have a whole lot of morning sickness. There were a few times I felt queasy, but it soon subsided and I went on about my favorite pregnancy ritual...eating. I didn't crave anything, I craved EVERYthing. Especially hamburgers with extra ketchup and onions. I craved hamburgers so much that when I would pass by herds of cattle they would become restless, as if they could sense the ominous danger of my presence, much like the monkeys in that scene from The Omen. Somewhere around my eighth month I even caused a herd to stampede. Yes, they were afraid. They were very, very afraid. As were the employees at a fast food establishment (that shall remain nameless...you know who you are) that went into full panic mode each time I waddled through their doors. "Do you have anything bigger than a large?" I would frequently ask. It was at this point I determined hamburgers should come in sizes: small, medium, large and pregnant. It was also around this time my husband considered buying a ranch, thinking it would be cheaper than my lunch allowance. I got an almost sexual thrill going grocery shopping, and was asked on more than one occasion to leave the Food Lion. I had to send the manager a birth announcement before I was allowed to return.

Because of my obsession with food, finding maternity clothes was next to impossible. Fashionable maternity clothes, laughable. I did manage to get by with a few items for work, which were purchased from a company that also manufactured tarps for yachts. I tried not to think about that too much. One dress, in particular was a hot sexy purple number that made me look like I was auditioning for the part of the grapes in the Fruit of the Loom commercial. I also couldn't find shoes because my feet were swollen to three times their normal size 10. For a short time, I thought Howard Hughes was on to something with the empty tissue box idea, but my husband was of course the voice of reason and made me change. Instead, I usually wore bedroom shoes, which is the only real choice when one is wearing a tarp.

Even though I looked like a gigantic purple iceberg, I still found people magnetically drawn to me in my delicate condition. There is nothing people like more than the sight of a pregnant woman. Maybe it's the impending promise of life, or the reverence and hope that humans have for the institute of motherhood, but mostly I'm convinced it's because it proved I put out. I didn't so much feel adored when people rubbed my stomach as I did violated. The first few times complete strangers approached me and touched my belly (without asking may I add), it was ok. By the eighth month it was annoying. There is nothing worse than standing in line at KMart with a hamburger in one hand, juggling antacids and hemorrhoid ointment in the other, all the while concentrating on not farting, burping or both and having someone's grandmother feel you up. Maybe I was just cranky, but a lot of times when people would ask when I was due, I would just snap that I was just fat. The looks I got were the most fun I had the entire nine months.

Pregnancy sends a woman's hormones into overload, and I was no exception. The day my husband and I discovered we were having a son we planned his entire life on the drive home. For some odd reason my husband suggested Sam was going away to college. This was more than I could take and I began crying hysterically. Being the loving attentive Papa Bear he was he asked "What the hell?"
"Sam's going to leave," I bawled.
"He's not even born yet."
"He will one day!"
My husband was completely beaten by my well thought out and rapier logic.
"Baby, I promise by the time he is ready to go to college, we will be ready for him to go."
"WHY ARE YOU SENDING OUR BABY AWAY???"
And with that, my husband learned the hardest lesson of impending fatherhood: just shut up and hug the hysterical pregnant woman, otherwise people will think you are a letch and wait to see you on the Maury Povich show.

There was, of course, the other side of the surging hormones - sex drive. Pregnant women usually get on one or the other extremes of the sex drive issue and stay there. They will either not be interested at all, or want it all the time. I was the latter. It was the only thing that kept my husband sane, that is until the very end. I'm sure he thought he hit the pregnancy hormone jackpot when I made sexual demands on him almost daily, but eventually he rethought his position. Just days before my due date, I sauntered as sexily as a land whale could into our bedroom only to find my husband huddled in a corner clutching his knees to his chest and rocking back and forth. I was unmoved by his fear. "Be careful what you wish for," I growled, "You've got 15 minutes before I have to pee again, suck it up and let's go!" Ah yes, the art of seduction at it's finest.

Now that our son is a little man of nearly 3, I have begun missing that magical time and the idea of having a baby becomes more and more attractive to me. Mother Nature has designed us women to selectively forget some aspects of the entire procreation process. Unfortunately, father's aren't so lucky. They remember everything. I've suggested another child to my husband a number of times, but he never responds. He only crouches in the corner of our bedroom clutching his knees to his chest. Sooner or later...I'll get him.