Enter Pecans McWalnutson

when i have time to breathe, i like to try to remember what 2010 was like. i spent 41 1/2 of 52 weeks of 2010 growing and incubating another human being inside my uterus. (but only 1 of 52 weeks getting that process started ;) it is hard to believe that six months and eighteen days ago, i was forty pounds up and P was happily whirling around in the dark, without any idea of the carrots and chocolate icing that awaited him today. for those of you who missed out on the day-to-day joy ... here is a small sampling of my very own fact or fiction:

#1 you can buy the unscented kind. false. everything has a smell of some sort and that smell is vomit-inducing. is it okay to avoid washing your hair for the entire first trimester? to pass down an edict on your assistant that there is to be NO ripe cantaloupe in the office? to ask strangers to pump your gasoline? people will make a lot of exceptions for pregnant ladies, but you have to draw the line somewhere. plus, no one has yet attempted, at least not to my knowledge, unscented mexican food.

#2 pregnancy is the most beautiful and glorious time of your life. false and false. interesting, yes. miraculous, yes. glorious . . .uh, no. remember the extra 40 pounds? add a few uncontrollable and unexplainable emotional breakdowns, a big dark manly stray hair in a very visible and completely unacceptable location, and a constant pressure on your bladder and see how glorious you feel.

there is an additional layer of falsity in that the nine-month pregnancy is a big myth. i was pregnant approximately 287 days, give or take 24 to 48 hours. (yes, that is how accurate the measurements get). with 30.41666666666 days per month in a non-leap year, i was actually pregnant 9.52 months. to add insult to injury, most people assume that after 4 weeks, one month has passed. according to this (faulty but widely-used and easily-applied) method, i was pregnant for 10.25 months.

#3 it will get better once xy and z happens. false. sure, eventually your sense of smell tones down and you can begin to moisturize again -- thankfully just in time for the real expanding to begin -- but also just in time for you to develop a debilitating reaction to dairy products (which incidentally prior to pregnancy constituted 3/4 of your diet). okay so maybe you reach the point where people can tell you have a little pregnant baby belly and don't just think you've had too many late night french fries anymore -- definitely a plus in terms of door-holding, grocery-carrying, restaurant-choosing, etc. -- but right about that time you realize that your plan to just be a cute pregnant person in loose airy sundresses all summer is out the window because you could be mistaken for dumbo from the knees down. you eventually regain the ability to eat again, but you don't want to risk the unbelievable heartburn. oh and "once you have the baby, you'll go right back to normal." sure. see #4 for more exciting details.

#4 after you squeeze the baby out of your hoo-ha, you're going to bleed like a stuck pig. true, unfortunately. specifically, my mom alerted me to blood clots the size of a dinner plate. first, that is REALLY big. P wasn't even the size of a dinner plate. second, this is a weird comparison that made me second-guess the whole miracle of life video we watched in mrs. j's 10th grade biology class and consider that maybe the new baby is just deposited out of your hoo-ha by a saucer-shaped UFO with friendly three-eyed green dudes waving you off into your new life. at any rate, thank you to those who gave me the friendly warning.

also, unthank you to those of you who forgot to mention the giant disposable mesh granny panties. although admittedly, this is the only reasonable solution to problem #1, so perhaps this was an open and obvious condition of which there was no duty to warn or protect.

#5 it will never be the same. true. this is especially apparent to me as i break into a full-body version of silly kindergarden/camp songs a la do your ears hang low? do they wobble to and fro? and bananas unite! bananas split! or most recently, when i tell P a bedtime story i made up as i go along, about a squirrel named pecans mcwalnutson who wants a shiny new green bicycle sooo badly. naturally, he gets on the internet and applies for a credit card so he could get what he wants right now. i then spent the next 2 nights attempting to correct my poor choice on night 1 by explaining all the industrious things pecans did with his bicycle to earn money to pay off his credit card before incurring too much interest and fees. i guess pecans and i both will be learning it as we go . . .