Castor Oil, Rub Ankles, Intercourse...REPEAT

The belly is dropped (kind of like a Kanye West album) and all of the things that should be dilated are including my eyes which are in a perpetual state of "oh my God." Our doula reccommended castor oil followed by me rubbing the nape of Meesh's ankles followed by sex. Castor oil, it seems, can only be found in a store in the 1950's so unless anyone has a time machine to lend us or a lovely Grandmother who has some hidden behind her ovaltine and Jackie Gleason DVDs, we're not castor oiling. Rubbing ankle napes, check. I got hands that can accupressure something right good. And as for the sex...umm...well lets just say we're having wonderful phone sex sans the phones. Meesh wants sex right now as much as you'd want to run a marathon with a migraine, swollen knees and a carry on suitcase attached to your front side.

But the baby is on its way. Bags are packed. Mixes are made: Broadway (for when Meesh feels inclined to get theatrical on our asses) Lilith Fair (for when Meesh feels inclined to be woman and roar) Beyonce et. al (for when Meesh feels inclined to get ghetto). I've got my flipcam (can't wait to see if I can record my baby entering the world and exiting the vag considering I faint watching people use needles on Intervention). And I've got my newfound education: infant CPR, spiritual mantras, breathing exercises...is this like the SATs? Study for months then get in the room and have no fucking clue which circle to use your Ticonderoga number 2 pencil on?

You Get What You Get (when you're with Jewish People)

I warned Meesh.  Don't complain about having "sausage toes" (in quotes because she said it, not me.  I think her toes are lovely, dancer-like even or as my mom likes to say "actorly") especially when we are in the company of people of the dreidl persuasion.  I told her.  "Meesh, you might want to NOT say how big you feel and how much you hope your belly goes down once the baby is born" at a table filled with Jews (for some reason, all I can hear in my head right now is the theme to the film JAWS because it just works when discussing the JEWS...not that they're SHARKS ala Bernard Madoff but that they kind of, how do you say it in America...attack!)  You see, you can not toss out bait with our people.  You think fish like worms on hooks?  Amy Winehouse likes needles with heroin?  Octumom likes attention?  Well guess what everyone, Jewish people like weakness.  Tell them you feel fat and here is what happens:

JEWISH DAD

"Listen, what can I tell ya?  You're pregnant.  For thousands of years....

JEWISH MOM

"Millions...listen to him, thousands....

JEWISH DAD

"Fine...millions.  (he whispers out of the crook of his mouth) "Isn't she annoying..."

JEWISH MOM

"Heard it..."

JEWISH DAD

"Wanted you to."  (he continues)  "Anyway, you're pregnant.  The baby will come when the baby will come.  You're body will be what you're body will be.  You'll go to the gym and you'll breast feed.  That baby sucking on those nipples will help you thin out..."

JEWISH MOM

"I wish you sucking on my nipples could help you thin out..."

Meesh knew I was right about this one.  She swore never to complain about feeling sausagey at a table filled with Matzah eaters again.  

**Note, the events of this story are oddly true.  I must keep the identities of the JEWISH MOM and JEWISH DAD a secret.  

**Double NOTE...I love being Jewish and laughed my ass off while the story you just read occurred.

Meesh and The Sliding Doors

This one is a quickie.  We were leaving the hospital for our bi-weekly baby check-up (all is well on the western front...blue skies, baby is head down and the belly button has popped something fierce I tell ya') and as we approached the sliding glass doors (see thru glass doors mind you) Meesh catches her reflection and says "Oh my God I'm huge!"  I try to stop her from saying anything else...I nudge her but as we walk through the sliding doors she continues "I am seriously enormous!"  Well, it was obvious to me then that Meesh did not see what I saw through said see-thru sliding doors.  A woman, bless her heart, easily 460 pounds on the hoof just minding her business on a bench right behind the SEE THRU doors we walked in.  How you couldn't see her, bless her heart, is beyond me.  Like standing in the Grand Canyon and not seeing the canyon itself.  

*footnote:  if you are white don't say you feel black when approaching Malcolm Jamal Warner and when you're pregnant don't say you're the size of a house when you're approaching someone who is, bless their heart, actually the size of a house.  But I guess if see-thru sliders are involved then have at it.

Baby Class Begins

We took our first birthing class last night at Golden Bridge Yoga Center in L.A.  If you walk into that place judging, expect to leave a mad kabbalistic-buddha-loving-barefoot-wheatgrass-gulping-delivering-your-baby-in-the-Dead-or-Red-Sea kind of guy.  I swear, after last night, I want to take Meesh and the belly she rode in on over to some nook or cranny in the ocean (preferably a shallow, shark free zone) and deliver our child whilst a band of berkenstock wearing viola players and floutists play Laura Nyro while our baby swims out a vagina, through salt water and up through a wave.  Did you know babies can stay under water for a long time when they are born?  longer than a mermaid or a dolphin.  Well, not that long...but they have this magical breathing stopper in them that knows how to survive under water for extended periods of time.  Oh, and they can fly and stuff.  God, babies are amazing.  And I'm having one.  WHAT?  I AM HAVING ONE.  And wicked soon, too.  Shit.

So, we are in birthing class along with eight other couples.  Our teacher (yogi name is Amoona..real name is Lisa) asked all of the moms-to-be "what do you do when you are in pain?"  The first girl giggles and says "reach for a pill."  The class laughs and laughs.  The second girl wanted some of that laughter too so she responded "like her, a pill or PILLS...and I do breathing exercises."  Third girl responds "I take walks, listen to peaceful music...and take pills."  The class explodes in laughter.  I, on the other yogic hand, am judging and I certainly ain't laughing.  Come on pregnant ladies, the joke is up.  Pill.  Pill.  Pill.  Got it...we all like vicodin and valium but please, please no one else use that answer.  One more woman and then Meesh.  I am praying that neither of them answer PILL.  But I am praying harder that even if the woman before Meesh says PILL that my betrothed will not dare utter the word.  She can't right?  She knows what a comic snob I am.  Even in a temple of enlightenment I can't bare to hear lovely pregnant women giggling through the word Pill.  Well, woman before Meesh says Pill and the audience gets kind of crickety.  They too are tiring of that answer.  No more yuck yucks.  PLEASE MEESH...PLEASE DO NOT SAY PILL.  WE WILL BE THE LAUGHING STOCKS.  THE PEOPLE AFTER THE PEOPLE WHO FAILED WITH THE JOKE.  IF YOU SAY PILL THEY WILL THINK WE ARE THE MOST UN-FUNNY of all the UN-FUNNIES in all THE LAND.  Meesh says PILL.  I start sweating.  But she says it in such a way...such a learnED comedic way that she was both hoping for a laugh but commenting on the beat-a-dead-horse-ness of the word itself.  Whatever combo she used in her delivery, whatever that magical melody...they laughed...they were charmed...they thought "ooh, she's clever" and "i like the way she had an ironic twist on Pill."  

I stopped sweating.  And thank God...we can go back to class next week.  (no joke, I might have had to give us both detention had Meesh's Pill answer flopped.)

Conversations With Belly

I watched my nephew, Jonah, take a skiing lesson.  He is three years old.  He held my hand as we walked to the mini-mountain and his ski boots made him robot-like.  So I called him Robot Boy.  He loved it.  He started talking like Wall-E.

When we returned to the house later that day Meesh was sitting by the fireplace.  Jonah ran over to her belly and said "I put hand on belly" the way a robot would.  He touched the belly and said "hi mr. baby I am robot boy...want to go skiing?"

Then Benjamin, my five year old nephew ran over...pushed Jonah out of the way and screeched "i want to touch the belly."  A fight ensued.  Whether over legos or toy trucks, markers or the remote control or yes, a pregnant belly, you can trust brothers to argue.

Meesh And The Doctor

Watching Meesh at the baby doctor is pure comedy.  I assume she handles these visits the way she does her hair appointments or lunches with her girlfriends.  "It's my time and I ain't leaving until I've asked everything I want to ask."

It reminds me of our dogs when we take them for walks.  They pee and pee again and again and again.  By the sixth pee, there is quite literally nothing left.  They pee air.  Can't squeeze any more juice out of a lemon if there ain't no juice left.  But the dogs will be damned if they don't squat over and over.  It's their walk and they'll pee if they want to.  

Meesh asks all the right questions.  Questions that actually pertain to the baby and the birth.  And just when the doctor thinks she can leave to attend to her next patient, Meesh comes up with something.  "Soooo, I'm good on weight gain?"  Dr. says "Perfect."  "Soooo, do I need to keep taking the iron pills?"  Dr. says "Yes."  "Soooo, do you watch Lost?"  "No."  "Are you going to be in the room when I'm in labor?"  "I am your doctor, so Yes."  I could see Meesh asking the doctor on a friend date which would not shock me as my Mom has friend-dated everyone from the UPS man to the 17 year old cashier at J.Crew.

This Is Your Brain, This Is Your Brain On Preg

I worry Meesh might forget my name.  Why not?  She is forgetting everything else. Where her purse is (right next to her) Where her shoes are (on her feet) Where her sunglasses are (atop her head).  The baby in the belly is making the brain in the head a little remedial.  But she's beautiful and it's kind of fun to see her navigate the land of forget.  

Why just the other night after I almost killed my mother-n-law.  Not intentionally.  I swear.  In-laws were in town.  I was driving us to dinner.  Meesh in the front seat.  In-laws in the backseat.  I started to drive however mum-n-law was not in the car yet.  Well, not true.  One of her legs was in the car.  And an arm I believe.  Had I pulled out faster I may not be writing this very post.

All safe and sound, no blood on my hands...we drove to dinner.  A Greek restaraunt.  Father-n-law orders Musaka.  Meesh says "That's the Dad in The Lion King."  Nope, that would be Mufasa.

We are sitting outside.  We order an appetizer of Flaming Cheese (cheese they light on fire to make it, well, flame).  A moment later we can see, through the window, that a waiter is lighting up some cheese for a couple at a table.  Mom-n-law says "Oh, so that's the cheese that we ordered?"  Meesh says "Yes, but that's not our order."  Really Meesh?  What gave it away?  Perhaps the waiter serving the cheese to other customers inside at a table very far away from ours.  I said those exact things and Meesh laughed.  A hearty, full-bodied, pregnant laugh.  I love that laugh.  I totally want to marry that laugh.

This was our seventh meal with in-laws in three days.  Meesh must have asked "Did you guys see Frost/Nixon" 15 times.  She would then follow up with "I fell asleep but what I saw was great."  Sidenote, Meesh is falling asleep during most things and when she wakes up she does so kind of like my father...with an opinion.  Example:  She must have missed half of "Changling" but had a very strong point of view on it.  But you didn't see it, hon.  It's like eating a meal but skipping dessert and telling me the key lime pie was so-so.