Bumpy Road
Pregnancy changes everything.
by Rebecca Barry
March 1, 2007
One day you wake up stupid and sick. You can't remember what you were saying in your last sentence. You pour hot water through the tea strainer and down the drain without putting a cup underneath it. You want to throw up all day, but you also want to eat Campbell's chicken and dumpling soup. Vegetables make you sick. Milk makes you sick. Your husband sleeping too close to you makes you sick. "Congratulations," says your doctor. "You're six weeks pregnant." You have a thesis to finish and two classes to teach. You turn to your husband and say, "You've ruined my life."
You always thought you'd love being pregnant — that "You lose 40 IQ points when you get pregnant," says your friend.your body would take to it happily, the way it did to bourbon. But you only feel good when you are eating, which then makes you sick. "It will pass," says your mother, your doctor, your friends. "It probably won't," says your mother-in-law. "I had my head in the toilet the whole nine months when I was pregnant. Didn't I, Tony? I only gained nine pounds, and six of them were the baby." You have already gained ten pounds. You wonder if you should go on a diet. Instead, you eat an entire pizza.
You get stupider. You can't remember your students' names, and one day you can't think of the word "voyeuristic." You stand in front of 22 young writers trying to act it out. "The desire to look into other people's lives," you say. "You know, what we all like to do as writers. What's the word I'm looking for?"
"Sad?" says a student, who will later turn in a journal with an entry that starts, "Today was my first day of writing class. The professor's boots scared me." You consider giving that student an F.
"You lose 40 IQ points when you get pregnant," says your friend Sheila, who sometimes sees ghosts. She's been calling you weekly to ask how you are, even though she gave up a baby a year before she got married. She and the baby's father, who is now her husband, weren't ready. They didn't have the money. They weren't married. She took some abortion pills, and after they slid down her throat she cried for two hours. Now sometimes, when she passes a mirror, she sees a small shadow hovering near her head.
By your third month, according to the update from babycenter.com, which e-mails you every week, your baby's eyes are finally on the front of its face and its ears are in the right place. It still has gills and is smaller than an avocado. You, however, are huge. "You might be beginning to show," babycenter.com says. You've been showing for a month. You get mad at babycenter.com. Also Gwyneth Paltrow, who has the same due date as you and looks like a reed. You resent all the movie stars who are getting pregnant like they're buying a new pair of shoes. Now you can't even do this without the pressure to look like them. You are still nauseated and very pale. You tell your thesis adviser you're pregnant. "Hooray!" she says. "Have you thought of a name yet? Bucephalus is widely underused."
©2007 Rebecca Barry and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Rebecca Barry's nonfiction has appeared in The Washington Post, Glamour,
The New York Times, and Best American Travel Writing. Her fiction
has appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, and Best New American
Voices. Her first book, Later, at the Bar, was published in May. She lives in Trumansburg, NY. |
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