Tales from La La Land

Yesterday was one of the more exciting doctor visits – we got to do an ultrasound! It’s always fun when you get to see the little peep moving around and hanging out. However, it is officially official that Laef and I should not be allowed to attend doctor appointments together.

Especially when it comes to ultrasounds. Last time it was all “labia labia labia”. This time it was us waiting in the room for the doctor and Laef letting me know that he was holding in his farts. Of course he didn’t have to fart the whole way over, but once we were crammed in a tiny room, he had “lots of farts”. The doctor was taking forever to come in and eventually Laef just decided that he could blame me, because, well I’m pregnant. And no one would even assume it was the dude farting at this point.

So we’re giggling about farting and Laef is cringing at my belly button and how thick my linea nigra is and wondering why my feet are wet with sweat. He’s basically making me feel like a beautiful princess when in walks the doctor.

And, he’s cute. And young. And FUNNY.

I say this only because you never know what you’re going to get. Most of the appointments are boring. You weigh yourself (GAG), pee in a cup (I’m sort of a pro at how to do it without getting any on my hands), goo up your tummy, and ask dumb questions like, “Will I die if I sleep on my back?”

You then receive what is almost a side-eye because, as doctors, these people have probably dealt with a lot of crazy. Usually they reign in the side-eye and humor you with a really sweet response like, “Um, no, you dumb bitch.”

So, ANYWAY, I’ve seen a couple of different doctors in my journey. My regular doctor, the labia ultrasound tech, a different male doctor when my regular doctor was out of town, and lastly, McCutie yesterday. And, I’ve been waiting for one of them to look like they came off the set of Grey’s Anatomy.

McCutie walks in and Laef and I are both texting on our phones and giggling about lame shit and I see him double take. He must be thinking: “Laugh and text now you crazy kids. Because you won’t be laughing OR texting for at least two more years! BWHAHAHAHAHA.”

He introduces himself and then looks at Laef: “So you’re responsible for this???”

Love this guy already.

We get right to the ultrasound to make sure that my cervix and placenta are far enough apart from each other. At my last ultrasound they were too close together. This would mean C-section.

So he’s looking for both, but the baby’s head is blocking his view. We do get to see her face and her little mouth is opening and closing and McCutie says: “Aw. She’s drinking. Probably her own pee. Yummmm.”

Then he measures her head and says it’s registering on the small size. He quickly says “in the normal range, just in the lower percentile. She’s fine!”

Me: “Great. So our baby is a pee-drinking, tiny-brained runt. I hope you realize that I will obsess about this for two days.”

McCutie: …

He quickly changes the subject and says those two dreaded words: “Transvaginal ultrasound“. He wants to be extra sure that the placenta and cervix are not hanging out together.

All I’m thinking about is the scene in Knocked Up where the doctor says, “You’re Next” to Seth Rogen while holding a giant rod. And then he says some other thing while looking at her vagina about her looking just like her sister.

I know. I need to act like a grown up. But two seconds ago Laef was farting and now this doctor expects the two of us to get through what will happen next.

I get naked from the waste down. Laef is becoming fidgety. I mean, when is the last time it was me, Laef, some other dude and my gyne all hanging out? The doctor comes back in, and I swear it was worse than it is in movies.

He pulls out a giant rod-like thing, puts a condom on it and covers it in lube. I can not even look at Laef. I am trying not to pee on the table.

Thankfully, we see what we need to see in a matter of seconds. It’s over. McCutie walks out and I look at Laef, and we bust up laughing. Like, what in the fuck is going on around here?

We are going to have to pull it together because one little trans-v ultrsound is NOTHING compared to what is about to go down. It’s actually not that big of a deal, but the truth is that anytime there are stirrups involved it’s just not a great time. And never did I imagine Laef would be next to me while I’m in said stirrups. No wonder hot passionate sex goes out the window after marriage. I mean, how am I supposed to maintain my hotness after my husband has seen me in stirrups?

The baby is still in utero, and therefore we are allowed to continue to be the most delusional people in Los Angeles.

It seems that everytime we do something I will say, “It’s going to be so fun when she’s here and we can bring her here too!”

On Friday night we went out to dinner with one of Laef’s coworkers and there was a couple with a baby that was sound asleep in a stroller next to their table. “See!!! We will totally be able to bring her to Cheesecake Factory on a Friday night and enjoy a wonderful evening. Yay!”

The flip side to that was the 5-ish year old girl at the table next to us who was presented with a plate of grilled chicken, rice and broccoli.

“These are not chicken strips!” She proclaimed.

Me: “Our kids are totally eating like that.”

Laef: SIDE EYE.

Me: “Look, she is eating it now. She probably doesn’t even know they have Cheesecake on the menu.”

On Saturday we went to the Dodger game. Babies everywhere. I ordered what might have been the world’s largest cotton candy. I am not kidding it was like 5 levels high. I then ate 4 of those levels before feeling like I was going to die of swollen feet and cocaine overdose. But then I got excited to bring our kids to baseball games and treat them to ballpark food. Of course, treating your kids to cotton candy presents a whole plethora of problems, which I am currently choosing to ignore so that I can continue to live in parenting utopia.

Then on Sunday we went to the pool. It was the family pool at UCLA so there were lots of kids and babies. I noticed one young couple with a tiny baby (I’m not good with baby ages, but I’m guessing the baby was about 3 months or so) and I was watching them go through their whole routine. At one point the mom looked over at me and smiled. So I said, “I’m watching you guys to learn how it’s done.”

She gave me the stink eye and said, “We have no idea how it’s done.”

And we all laughed. Because, seriously, the first time around, who does?

Later, when Laef and I were swimming in the pool, I was talking about how I can’t wait to bring the baby into the water and play with her. Which I quickly followed up with, “Damn. I hope she likes the water.”

I then realize that both Laef and I have hideous tattoos (this was confirmed by the fact that we saw a basketball player and some water polo girls at the pool, all of whom know Laef. After we left the pool we went to the UCLA vs. Oregon track meet and ran into another basketball player. He told Laef, “I heard about your shark tattoo.” So, yes, it is that unsightly that there were text messages exchanged across campus to discuss the status of Laef’s tattoo. Full disclosure: my tattoo is also the kind of horrific thing you do at 18 that you would never, ever do at 30. It’s just that mine is smaller so I can hide it).

Anyway, I am already wondering how we will convince our kids that tattoos are terrible, and under no circumstances should they get a tattoo before the age of 30 when they really know if they want it.

But how do you convince a child not to get a tattoo (or eat an 1,800 calorie piece of Cheesecake) when you did it?

This type of thing goes on all the time these days. We ate crepes Sunday morning and I was envisioning a family tradition of crepes once a month. I ate a Drumstick dipped ice cream cone Sunday night and looked at Laef: “You know what would be so fun? We can buy all the stuff to make ice cream cones and Sundaes. The kids will love it so much.”

…

Then I mused: “You know. All this shit I think will be so fun and cool for them is all predicated on them being well-behaved, good kids. If we have a shit-for-brains, bratty 5-year old we won’t get to do ice cream cone night. I really hope our kids like swimming, napping in strollers, going on walks, camping and eating broccoli.”

Laef seems to think they won’t know any different. If we bring them to the pool at a young age they’ll just be used to it.

If we make them eat broccoli from a young age, they’ll just be used to it.

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Please feel free to laugh at our expense. I can’t wait write about how it goes the first time I try and make the baby go for a run in the stroller and have to stop 6 times to: change her diaper, feed her, console her, put her pacifier back in her mouth, go back 50 yards to pick up her teddy bear, put her paci back in her mouth, and feed her again.

However, right now, in my mind it goes like this: I blissfully run for 5 miles while she gazes at the sky happy as can be to be chillin’ with mommy on a Sunday run.

I seem to remember posting a while back that I was going to hang up my running shoes and start swimming. Well, one of those things happened back then: I hung up the running shoes. I started walking, but for some reason I was having problems making myself go swimming.

Eventually I bought a bathing suit big enough to house the girls, and hid it away in a drawer. I just wasn’t ready to be the pregnant girl in a bikini, I guess.

Recently, walking also became uncomfortable so I finally decided to say fuck it and get my ass in the bathing suit and into the pool. I don’t know why I was having so much anxiety, but I spent the whole day talking myself into it. Laef even got me a UCLA water polo swim cap (which I still haven’t brought myself to wear), and encouraged me to just do it.

And now my only regret is that I didn’t start sooner. Being in the pool – COMPLETELY WEIGHTLESS – has been my saving grace. I am addicted to it. Not to mention the weather in LA has been phenomenal for the last week so being out in the sun and swimming around in the pool has rejuvenated me so much.

Laef came with me yesterday, and I don’t know what it is about swimming pools that make you feel 12 years old again, but we spent about 45 minutes in the pool saying things like, “RACE YOU!” and “See how long you can hold your breath” and “WATCH THIS: Handstand!” and “I bet you can’t egg beater as long as I can” (yes, Laef doing the egg beater in a pool IS as funny as you might think) and “Race me again!”.

I was only minimally horrified when Laef pointed out a group of water polo girls at the pool (nothing will make you feel 20 times more pregnant that a 6-foot tall athlete with perfectly tan skin), but eventually I didn’t really care. It felt so good to be in the water getting exercise and moving around without pain.

Aside from swimming all weekend, we went to the Cardinals vs. Dodgers game on Saturday night and didn’t get beat up. Cardinals won, Laef got drunk and I managed not to get us lost on the 110 freeway, so it was a perfect night.

Perhaps it’s just me noticing babies more, but we saw lots of babies at the pool and lots of babies at the baseball game. I know that we are about to spend many a days completely sleep-deprived and cranky, but I am really getting excited to bring the baby to the pool or to baseball games or any place else we go. I just can’t wait to show her the world.

Everytime I go on Facebook it seems one of two things are happening: Someone is running a half marathon or having a baby.

Two things I would like to be doing today.

Thankfully, my time is coming.

NINE weeks to go. That means 30 weeks behind me, and only nine iddy-biddy weeks to go.

With time dwindling away, we have stepped up our preparations for Baby Mo.

Item number 1 was to paint the nursery. It should be noted that a few months back I was deciding on a color theme for her room. I asked Laef several times what he thought about different options, and everytime he would say the same thing: “Honestly, I don’t care. It’s more important to you. I give full decision to you.”

So, I picked the colors and came up with an idea of how I wanted to paint. It took two full days to paint the room, and it was exhausting. I don’t know why I wanted two different colors, but that definitely made things 1,909,436 times harder.

Painting the pink part: No problem. Painting the brown part: Problematic. It meant sitting very awkwardly for a long time. Making the line where the two colors met absolutely perfect: I wouldn’t know. I ditched out of there when Laef showed up with a TOOTHPICK and expected me to fill in the sketch parts with a toothpick. I claimed that I was too pregnant to focus on something so horrible. He claimed that I never finish projects pregnant or not.

When he was all done making it perfect, he came out to the living room and said: “It looks like neapolitan ice cream in there, FYI. I think the tan part should have been darker.”

First of all: What the fuck? Where was this feedback two months ago when I asked about color schemes?  Second of all: Who doesn’t love ice cream?

It should look less ice-creamy after we put all the furniture in there.

Anyway, the second item of business was trying to figure out how to use all the baby stuff. I looked at the breast pump for two seconds and immediately put it away. We then took out the Baby Bjorn and tried to figure out how to put it on correctly. Laef decided to try it out for himself because we saw a couple walking the other day and the dad was carrying the baby in a bjorn and the mom was like 27 steps behind texting on her phone. Laef realized his immediate future in that moment.

We were nervous that that bjorn was so little.

Laef: “Is she going to fall out?”

Me: “There’s only one way to find out.”

Needless to say, we’ve got some kinks to work on, but we’re getting closer.