Today, on Hayden’s 37th birthday, I am 37 weeks
and 5 days pregnant. We’ll call that 9 and a half months.
The last couple of weeks have been consumed by a sprint to
complete a series of tasks:·
·
Baby Basics course for Hayden and Jessica, check
·
Breastfeeding basics for Jessica, check!
·
Pediatrician selected, check!
·
Pediatrician protocol understood by Hayden and
Jessica, check!
·
Another daycare visited and waitlist added, check!
·
Car seat installed by police, check!
·
All brand new baby clothes washed, check!
·
Newborn diapers, check!
·
Got my TDAP shot, check!
·
Asked the grandparents to get their TDAP shots, check!
·
Bassinet borrowed, check!
·
Baby CPR class for Hayden and Jessica, check!
·
All essential items on the baby registry
procured, check!
·
Everyone thanked for essential items, check!
·
Weekly doctor’s appointments, check!
So, we’re ready. Except for that whole, we have no idea what
will happen when baby arrives thing.
I’m still going to work.
Having grown up in NJ, I have adopted Italian and Jewish
cultures as my own. This is to the point where I didn’t even realize that, for
example, “Kapeesh” was Italian. I just thought it was the slang word someone
says when they’re demanding comprehension from someone.
So the word of the moment for me is schlep. The last couple
of weeks have been the schlep of my life. The schlep back and forth to work has
been particularly brutal. Because it’s been so cold (and icy and sometimes
snowy), I’ve been taking the X8 to Union Station to the Redline Metro and transferring
to the Blue/Orange to ride it two stops to my building. That’s a bus and two
trains in each direction. I’ve conceded that I can no longer walk up every
single escalator or sprint from bus to train or from train to train like I used
to. Rushing has been relinquished to trudging. I trudge through mass transit.
In the mornings I don’t always have someone yield a seat to me, which is no
longer a novelty but a necessity. On those days, I place the hardest stone-cold but expressionless New Yorker face I have on and dare someone to look me in the eye.
But for a few snowy days, I am still walking the dog. He
doesn’t understand the word schlep. I schlep up the stairs to go to bed. I
schlep to and from the couch. I schlep around the grocery store…
I still maintain that the hardest moments of this pregnancy were
in the beginning. But this last stage is no easy schlep. Kapeesh?!
