The passage of time

I'm closing in on 30 weeks and reaching that big, awkward, mouth breathing, 'huff and puff if I move too quickly to the freezer for some ice cream' stage.

This pregnancy is so weird in the way time passes. First of all, I've lost the ability to do math. I've been counting by the week because it started out as a coping technique for my early-ish nausea (twelve weeks, if I can only get to twelve weeks, I'll stop puking constantly and be ok. All right, 24 weeks, if I can only get to 24 weeks I'll stop puking constantly and everything will be ok. And so on....) And then the week thing stuck. But real people don't care about weeks, they ask how many months. I find myself just spitting out ridiculous numbers because I absolutely cannot do the weeks to months conversion without a pen, paper, and a nap. How far along are you? Umm, six months. No, eight months. Five. Months. Weeks, Minutes. Shut up!

This came to a head recently at Whole Foods when a chatty checkout girl asked me how much longer. Six weeks, I blurted out. Oh, so when are you due? she asks innocently. Mm, November 30th, I say. And I see her expression change as she does the math in her own minimum wage head and gives me the 'I'm about to totally screw up your change and you won't even know it' look. Just give me my vegan chocolate chip cookie and stop asking me questions, Miss Nosy Pants!

The other way this pregnancy is passing differently from my pregnancy with Tallulah is my celebration of milestones. With Tallulah, I was working in Labor and Delivery as a nurse and I had all of these odd nurse-y celebrations. Like 20 weeks is when pregnant women are allowed to go up to the labor and delivery unit if they have to go to the hospital. So at 20 weeks I was like, woo hoo! If I have to go to the ER, my baby will be monitored!

Then at 24 weeks, woo hoo! Viable! If I deliver my baby after 24 weeks, I'll have a choice to try to keep the plucked chicken baby alive!

28 weeks, viability with lowered risk of neurological damage!

32 weeks, possibility of no long term neurological and sensory damage!

34 weeks, possibility of short term stay in the NICU!

36 weeks, possibility of completely perfect baby!

37 weeks, full term!

With this pregnancy, I'm far enough out of the hospital mindset that I can randomly think about her development without immediately worrying about what ifs. Which is lovely and makes me feel much more sane and calm and zen momma-like. But it reminds me of this story:

I loved my charge nurse at the hospital and had invited her to my baby shower even though I had been on midwife recommended work-leave for a couple months. The day of the shower came and went without my charge nurse showing up, however, and I wasn't surprised by the message I received on my answering machine explaining why she hadn't been able to attend. ON MY ANSWERING MACHINE (keep in mind, I am 33 or 34 weeks pregnant at this point) she explains that she hadn't been able to make it because there had been a maternal mortality that night and she was stuck at the hospital with all the paperwork and red tape.

Maternal mortality, you ask. Why that sounds like somebody....
Yep. That's right. Dead momma. She dead-momma'd a pregnant woman's answering machine to excuse herself from a baby shower. And the thing is, I know she was just upset and not thinking clearly. Dead mommas are a VERY RARE occurrance in labor and delivery. But still.