Homo Balenas: Her Pains and Joys
Links to Part 1 and Part 2
When she’s in the latter half of the third trimester - eight and a half months into her pregnancy in lay terms - you will hardly be able tell that this is the same woman who’d peed on that stick so many weeks ago…..she will be well past those sort of acrobatics by then. Homo nuevamammas will have metamorphosed into Homo balenas.
In fact, you will be able spot her from a mile off in a crowd, and that’s not just because she'll be big, but because her sexy, sprightly step will have given way to an ungainly waddle. She will not remember exactly when she’d started to walk like a beached whale with a bit of a hernia, or when her retreating ass first started reminding people of an overweight hippo, but she'll really be past the point of caring much by now. Gracefulness is likely to be the least of her concerns at this point: her back will be aching all over. The doctor will have shrugged it off lightly with an 'it’s the extra weight of the baby, and besides your bones are widening and adjusting'. 'Ah yes,' she'll have said, 'that’s really taken the pain away. Thank you doc!'.
The man in her life will now be re-evaluating his notions of the female of the species. He will find he’d been so wrong about so many things. He will have always believed, for example, that the female body was incapable of real burps - and now this once-so-dainty woman in front of him would be capable of putting a drunken sailor to shame. He will, by now, have grown used to the constant headache of her peeing: wherever she goes she'll need to know it's pee-friendly before venturing. That may not have initially sounded so big a deal...... until her urgently whispered "I can't hold!", at her cousin's hour-and-a-half long wedding ceremony will have punctuated the bride's and groom's "I do"s loudly enough for the sexton to come over and offer the use of the toilet this minutest of chapels had got for just such occasions. And that's not all: she'll now be getting up to pee ten times a night, and because these days getting out of bed for her will be, well, nothing short of getting a beached whale to stand, her man will be awoken just as many times a night by the dangerous tremors of the bed. Only in the morning will she'd be getting to sleep in - because she'd have started her maternity leave - and he'd be having to get up and go to work.
And she'll get heartburn to boot. Her doctor will have said she should avoid spices - she'd have tried that - then he'll have said that she should avoid red sauces - and she'll undoubtedly have tried that too. Then one day it will out - flat out - that whether she had a glass of milk or Pork Vindaloo she still got heartburn... especially at night. But of course, being a doctor, Doctor will have had an answer up his sleeve already - she should not be eating anything three hours before going to bed! Now that’s a scientific impossibility as by then she will never really be spending three hours at a stretch out of bed in the first place - her feet would swell too badly if she did!
Ah yes, her feet - by now she will barely remember what her feet looked like before her ordeal began all those months ago. First of all they’ll have swollen beyond recognition by the end of her pregnancy. "Just normal water retention", will have been her doc's condescending remark, and "Yes", she'll want to scream, "but my shoes don’t fit anymore". Not that, by now, she'll really be able to deal with most of her shoes anyway - the high heels will be a killer, the flat ones will hurt her back and the ones they’d have told her to buy because they would be easy on her back won’t fit any more, thanks to that "just normal water retention".
The other reason Homo balenas will barely remember her feet is that she won't have seen them up close in a few weeks - and these days she would actually have to peek over the bump to wave hello to them. It will have been weeks since she'd last given herself a good pedicure as her upper body will be unable to easily travel that far down, you see. She'll probably realise that this means that her toes are in a sad state and that the cuticle situation will have become worrisome, so she'll likely schedule an appointment with her beauty therapist because when the baby arrives she'll want to look perfect from head to toe.
Some nights during the long last weeks before baby is born, when it will be just impossible to find a comfortable position in bed, when her body will ache in too many places to mention and when no amount of milk or Gaviscon will control the heartburn, she'll just lie awake, barely daring to move because the ensuing earthquake would wake up her man, and she'll daydream. She'll plan her first meeting with the baby. She’ll see herself in her new, pale pink nightie with the white trimmings, her face glowing, wearing rosy pink lipstick, her hair pulled back in a cute little pony tail, her man by her side, smiling, with his arms around her. Then she'll see a smiling midwife placing the cutest, gurgling baby in her eager arms. Every night she'll be perfecting the beautiful speech prepared for this moment: how she'll tell her baby about her love for him, how she'll tell him all she knows about life and maybe even a word or two about the stork that brought him to her. She'll see her man stand up, in the middle of the speech, to take a picture: and there she'll be... looking perfect and radiant with Baby smiling up at her…...
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Fast forward to a couple of weeks later.........
Her hair’s now a damp mess sticking to her neck and face , her mouth reeks and she’s sweaty all over. She lies back in bed, cold and exhausted. Someone places a little, soft bundle in her arms… She holds it feebly and stroke its head. It's all she's got strength for now. Her carefully planned speech escapes her, and all she can come up with is, "Hawn... qalbi, kemm domt biex gejt?", to which Baby peers up with a look she will never forget.
"Jiena l-Mamà!"
Yes, that moment will remain with her forever - even though her man forgets to take a photo!
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