Breaking up is hard to do

Alright, screw it: I am hereby shifting from blogging about television/movies/media exclusively to blogging about...other stuff. Consider this a time of transition: I will decide on a new focus as one arises, but the past emphasis is just too limiting and so, on to new and, hopefully, better subjects.

Like pregnancy: As most of my (tiny but loyal) reading audience knows by now, I am/we are pregnant (more on the politics of prenancy pronouns later). As all of that audience also knows, I am not the most, umm, shall we say, touchy/feely or even conventional analyst of my situations, so don't expect rainbows and kitties and pink fluffy clouds in my depictions of "the blessed event," at least not at this point. (Which doesn't make it any less blessed, of course. That goes--almost--without saying.) Salient true points at this date include....

1. It's not going very smoothly. Thus far I have seen or will see, repeatedly, OB/GYN, cardiologist, gastrointerologist, ENT dude (I can't spell that speciality), neurologist, maternal fetal medicine specialist, and acupuncturist. The only one of these who seems to have done any good at all is the last (hurrah for "alternative" or "complementary" therapy that actually works better than the "standard" therapies).

2. I am not glowing. Indeed, I am referring to this time in my mythical memoirs as "the wan period." Just this week my pale, sickly pallor has been amplified by a liberal dusting of tiny but very visible red freckle-like spots on my cheeks, perhaps the so-called "mask of pregnancy," though this usually manifests as a butterfly-shaped brown shadow around the eyes, or perhaps many small broken blood vessels caused by intense vomiting. Like I said, any glow anyone might happen to see is nothing more than a sheen of sweat.

3. Though I will most likely be an unworried mother, if my past interactions with children/siblings/my own mother are any indication, I am at the moment an extremely worried pregnant person. See point 1.

4. As you may have guessed from the first points, basically everything anyone has ever said about the joys of pregnancy was, at best, delusional, at worst, intensely and perversely deceptive. Myth-conceptions indeed.

5. The husband is a bit concerned about my choice of language at the moment, but I really feel it's important to be straight-forward and unsentimental at this stage. Plenty of time for sentiment to come. For now, I really do feel like I am growing an inconvenient extra appendage, like a parasite is sucking the life out of me, and like my body has divorced itself from my mind's control. Why mince words at this point? I don't feel any less maternal for being honest. See point 3.

And yet, there are days when I feel totally and utterly normal and almost hopeful. Those are good days. I just wish there were more of them. Or at least that there are soon going to be many more of them and that they will last all the way until January!