Ex-Tabula Rasa

First prenatal class

There’s that moment when everyone is introducing themselves and one guy is like “I work for a candy company” and the teacher is like “cool” and he’s like “yeah, we make gum, Jolly Ranchers, Lifesavers” and the teacher goes “oh…uhm…hmm…right” and carries on the introductions.

Then later in the class the slideshow uses Lifesaver candies as a comparison for the undilated cervix with photos of each and then Candy Guy looks like he’s about to cry or be sick or both.

Pregnancy Books

Why do all pregnancy/newparenting books have a chapter that begins along the lines of, “Despite what other books may tell you, the first six weeks are no walk in the park”?

They all say it! They all insinuate that there are other publications out there going “yeah, bring the sprog home, put it in a crib, get some sleep, wake up rejuvenated, feed the sprog, repeat for several years. Laugh at the sunshine, send it to school, clap your hands together in a satisfied manner at your parenting skills. And rumours of terrible hemmoroids are greatly exagerrated. PARENTING!”

Do these publications actually exist? Because every single thing I have read about the first few weeks of parenting pretty much gives the impression that it’s a constant stream of misery and shit, like the Bog of Eternal Stench from the film Labyrinth decided to stay with you and has bet itself a dollar it can make you stay awake for 45 uninterrupted days.

One book I got from the library had a chapter entitled “The First Six Weeks of Your Baby’s Life” and it consisted of nothing but ominous laughter. For twenty-two pages.

I feel kind of guilty for the expectant parents who get these other books that my books are referring to, the ones that say it’s all a walk in the park. I’m picturing this couple who have all these idealistic visions of Home Life With Baby that they got from their copy of ‘Overly Optimistic Parent Monthly’ and ‘What to Expect When You’re Expecting: Rose-Tinted Glasses Edition’. Then they get home and they’re like “HOLY FUCK, THIS THING SHITS? I HAVE TO DEAL WITH ITS SHIT? WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME THIS?”

Ominous laughter for twenty two pages.

Tip for pregnant ladies:

Do not buy cheap pregnancy jeans.

Tip for husbands of pregnant ladies:

Do not attempt to take photographs of your wife’s split pregnancy jeans to post on your blog.

The picture

When someone comes to my office cubicle for the first time in a while, they always look up at the grainy, poorly-scanned black and white picture above my desk.

“Oh!” They say, smiling, ”your wife is expecting?”

My natural sarcastic response tendency bubbles under the surface for a split second:

“No, this is a sonar capture from the time I hunted the fabled White Whale…”

“What, this? Oh, it’s not an ultrasound, it’s a brass rubbing of a doll…”

“Actually, this is my hand-drawn tribute to the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey…”

But instead of reverting to sarcasm, I make a Goofy-esque “hyuk” laugh and go “yeeeeah” somehow both bashfully and proudly. And then after they ask if we’re finding out the sex they tell me it looks like a boy.

I love it when my wife posts something on Facebook about really wanting a Mai tai and people leave comments saying “you could mix prune juice and coke and grenadine and it tastes just the same” and I just have to stop myself from saying “yeah I agree apart from the fact that it’s NOT FUCKING ALCOHOLIC YOU UTTER CRETIN”

TT

I’m turning into something new. Something strange to me. I’m becoming something that I never gave much thought to because it just never came up. I can feel it happening, and I notice the changes in my behaviour, and I don’t know if I can do anything to stop it.

I’m turning into the dreaded Overprotective Husband of a Pregnant Woman.

It manifests itself several ways that I can tell. Maybe there are more that I haven’t noticed. Maybe more will come. I don’t know.

The first stage involved a blind panic whenever noises came from the room where my wife was. For example: in the past, if Mrs Fuiru was cooking and didn’t need my help, I’d hear the inevitable bangs and crashes in the kitchen and take them for what they were: the drawer under the stove being opened for a saucepan, or the dishes in the drying rack being shifted so a bowl can be retrieved from the bottom of the pile. Unless I heard a pained shriek from the room, I assumed everything was all right.

Now, if my wife is cooking in the kitchen and I hear so much as a pan lid rattling, I assume that something terrible is happening and that I am needed. Some strange unconscious reaction takes hold and I am there, proudly standing in the kitchen doorway ready to assist with medical techniques that I’m not quite sure actually exist.

My wife is not a feeble person. Quite far from it; she could kick my ass and your ass too. Pregnancy hasn’t changed that; we spent Sunday afternoon putting together flat-pack furniture and whenever I blindly claimed that Ikea had made the hole too small for the screw she was there, cordless drill in hand, ready to prove me wrong. Yet she is no longer allowed to reach the Bill Bryson book from the top row of the Billy Bookcases in our living room because there’s a chance she could fall, or things may fall on her, or look, just let me do it, sit down, put your feet up, do you need anything, tea, coffee, bubblewrap?

It gets worse. Since watching the first season of Downton Abbey, I have removed all soap from our apartment in case she [SPOILER] slips on some. Not just the bars, either. Hand soap, dish detergent, shampoo, even the Lush massage bar. Anything possibly slippable has been thrown out. Now we do all our cleaning with gravel.

It’s funny, we’ve laughed about it together. Crazy old overprotective Fuiru! But what if it gets worse? There’s still five and a half months to go. At this rate by April I’ll have replaced all our knives and forks with plastic cutlery. I’ll be wife-proofing the cupboard where we keep the toilet-bowl cleaner in May. And before the end of June I’ll have hired Kevin Costner for 24-hour protection.

Fruit babies

One thing I’ve come to learn about pregnancy is that there is a tendency for information resources to express your unborn baby’s size in terms of comparable fruit. Six weeks ago our child was the size of a grape. Three weeks ago, a lime. Last week, a lemon. Right now apparently my wife is carrying an apple inside her. The only reprieve from all this fruit was when, between the sizes of a lime and a lemon, our baby was “about as big as a medium shrimp.”

Thankfully for the less culinary-minded among us, many of these sites link to pictures of the foodstuffs we are now trying to measure in our head. Just in case we are becoming overly obsessed with whether my wife’s womb is currently harboring a Cox’s Orange Pippin, a Washed Russet or - God forbid! - a Nonnetit Bastard, there it is, removing all doubt: A Honeycrisp. Goodness.

I never really thought about measurement in this way before. Normally, if something is below a certain size, it’s enough to express it in inches, centimetres, feet or metres. You don’t usually go for the comparable objects unless you’ve got something above a certain size. Being British, I’m used to being told that something is “about the size of three double-decker buses” or has the area of “twelve football pitches.” I’m sure other nations have their own standards of comparative measurement; Giant Buddha Statues in the Temple of Nara, for example, or Donnie Wahlburgs.

The problem I have now is that preparing meals is becoming rather a traumatic experience. It’s fine and dandy to tell me that my offspring is currently the size of a lime, but try taking that image out of my head when it comes time to garnish the Pad Thai for dinner. Standing over the cutting board, knife in hand, small green fruit in front of me, I look like Brad Pitt at the end of Se7en when Morgan Freeman’s trying to talk him out of shooting Kevin Spacey. Do I really enjoy citrus fruit enough to cut what is essentially my own child into segments?

God help me if I’m asked to help with a fruit salad any time soon. I’ll probably start rocking back and forth in the foetal position on the kitchen floor, gibbering to myself and sobbing.

In a way, though, I remain curious each week as to what size my baby will be. It’s less out of interest in the development of my child, and more about what food he/she will now resemble. Will they ever be the size of a pomelo? Durian? Would the makers of the sites ever suggest that my child resembles an Ugli fruit? Would they dare? And should there ever be another week with no fruit for suitable comparable size, will they go back to the crustacean route? Will my baby ever be a langoustine?