*First Written in 2004
As many of you may or may not know, pregnancy can have uncomfortable and mysterious effects on a woman’s brain. Take my brain, for example. It has undergone two pregnancies, the second from which it is still clearly recovering.* Having removed any responsibility of irrational behaviour from myself to this other ENTITY, called pregnancy, I now feel I can expose a particularly embarrassing consequence of my brain on pregnancy.
It was the 33rd week of my second pregnancy. Due to medical factors, my doctor ordered weekly ultrasounds and non-stress tests to take place at the hospital where I would also be having my second – hopefully healthy – baby. My doctor had also determined that I would be having another C-section, arranged to take place in my 36th week.
Only three more weeks to go: Three more appointments at the hospital, three more appointments at the doctor’s office, three more ventures into the abyss of hospital parking lots and ticket machines. No easy task for a woman carrying fifty some odd extra pounds on her back and legs. And lest we forget- a dramatically demented mind on pregnancy. On any given day my mind and mood could osculate from a state of gleeful and giddy delight to one of moppy, morbid sorrow and back to agitated and angry. The worst was I never knew when or why that mysterious pendulum would sway.
So I’m leaving the hospital after a rather long drawn non-stress test, which doubtlessly contributed to my increased stress level… must have been partly due to the nurse having “forgotten all about her 33rd weeker.” I just want to pick up my daughter, get some groceries, go home, put on Winnie the Pooh, and take a little “Mommy rest time,” a phrase my daughter was by then accustomed to hearing. I tune into a relaxing radio station, and try to follow suit.
As I drive at a moderate and pregnancy safe speed into the left hand turning lane of the upcoming lights, a sporty silver Volvo comes flying up beside me and cuts into the same turning lane right in front of me. Pendulum shifts! Now I’m mad! The nerve! What’s wrong with people today? Where’s their common courtesy? Would it have killed her to have turned on the advance green light from behind me, then make the pass safely using the two lanes? Well, as soon as we turn I think I’ll tell her! She’ll know she was in the wrong.
Here we go – lights changing. I know she’s in a hurry and will try to pass me. I turn into the left lane and sure enough she shifts into the right and speeds away. Darn it! Too fast to let her know exactly what I think of her driving. Why, she put a pregnant woman at risk! She could have killed me and my unborn baby. My born daughter would become half orphaned – without the benefit of a nurturing mother figure. Aha! There’s a red light ahead. What luck! Now I’ll tell her. My face is already frowning, my eyebrows furrowed, I slow down at a conservative pace – a model driver. I turn – expression effectively stern, disapproving…then shock, disbelief. I smile as quickly as I can. Too late! Oh no is that my finger held up. No not the finger you’re thinking of. The index finger one uses to scold a child- it’s still shaking- but now I’m laughing – nodding. It can’t be. She looks back- somewhat confused? Does she recognize me? Does my doctor, the doctor scheduled to cut me open in three short weeks – recognize me? I pray she does not.
Randi Solomon 