I have a friend who is expecting her first baby any day now. She just returned from Russia, where she was teaching English, and last week she called me from her home in Oakland and said she desperately needed someone with a truck to pick up her mother and a bunch of baby paraphernalia at San Francisco’s International Airport.
“I’m afraid you’re the only person I know with a pickup truck,” she explained, “and to tell you the truth, even if I had one, I don’t think I feel up to going all the way out to the airport.”
“Are you sick?”
“Of course not, silly. I’m nine months pregnant.”
After I had safely delivered one grandmother-to-be and enough baby paraphernalia to set up a daycare center to my friend’s apartment in Oakland, I found myself seated in the middle of a very uncomfortable couch with absolutely nothing to do.
“Don’t go, Daryl, until we’ve had a chance to properly thank you,” shouted my friend from the kitchen, where she and her mother were engaged in a very animated reunion conversation which I was pretty sure was going to last for another couple of hours. So, as I often do in situations where I am trapped for a while, I looked around and grabbed the nearest book, which in this case, was lying on the coffee table. When I discovered it was entitled, Your Pregnancy Companion, I immediately returned it to its resting place, even though it appeared to be the only book in the whole room. A half-hour or so later, though, tired of eavesdropping on a conversation which always seemed to return to the subject of stretch marks, I picked up the book and began to read.
It started off harmlessly enough, suggesting that pregnant women need to give up such things as weight-lifting, scuba diving, waterskiing, and of course, all racquet sports. But then, after thumbing through whole chapters on topics like swollen feet, frequent urination, lower back pain, and difficulty in breathing until the baby drops down (to where I have no idea), I stumbled across a section called “Your Body is Going to Change”, and things really began to go downhill from there.
I reluctantly learned that pregnant women need to be prepared for such things as breast tenderness, fatigue, lightheadedness, morning sickness, numb or tingling limbs, and my personal favorite, increased saliva flow. They should also expect to gain approximately 31 pounds, broken down as follows: baby, 8 pounds; maternal fat and protein stores, 8 pounds; blood volume increases, 5 pounds; amniotic fluid, 3 pounds; uterus weight gain, 2 pounds; placenta, 2 pounds; and last but not least, breast enlargement, 3 pounds.
It also talked about such things as stretch marks, outbreaks of pimples, spider veins, new mole growth, and the terrible itching of the stomach that drives some women crazy.
Then, just when I could force myself to read no further, there it was, the answer to the one question about pregnancy which had long perplexed me. And it actually had a name, the Linea Negra.
“Guess what I learned today?” I asked my wife with a smile when I finally returned home from Oakland later that night.
“God only knows,” she said, not really paying any attention to me.
“Well,” I said with scholarly pride, “you remember that dark, vertical, hairy little line you used to get every time you got pregnant, you know, the one that went right past your belly button and climbed all the way up to your stomach? Well, you’re not going to believe this, but that darn thing actually has a name.”
“Who cares!” she shouted, using the same exact words she had employed ten years earlier, right after the birth of our 4th child, when I happened to mention to her that I thought getting a vasectomy might be a little painful.