Catchin' Up

Well this would have made more sense had I started from day one of my pregnancy, but then there would have been just one big empty space where my pregnancy blogs should have gone. Suffice to say, despite all of my fears Carter was born a beautiful, healthy baby. I gained the requisite 50 pounds, stressed about every possible medical test, dabbled in pre-natal yoga, ate numerous bean burritos, and brought Carter into the world with, I am sheepish to admit, more than one obscenity.

The day my pregnancy was confirmed by my ob/gyn, I spent a solemn and studious 2 hours at Henry's Marketplace. I purchased organic produce, high-protein snacks and a coffee-replacement drink that cost a fortune but tasted like, well, shit.

A trip to Barnes and Noble actually resulted in a major find: Your Vegetarian Pregnancy: A Month by Month Guide for Health and Nutrition. I read the introduction, in which I was congratulated for "bringing a new life into this world without taking a life". I was disappointed. I suppose I was just hoping to find a better way to make tofu taste like rolled tacos filled with ground beef and rice.

The book found its way to a corner of my closet. It was joined by many other books that first trimester. I admit it. I didn't read one pregnancy book. I got tired of skipping all of the parts where horrible things happen. I preferred ignorance and when, in my 5th month of pregnancy, I learned that a friend was pregnant, I gladly shipped those horrible books off to her.

The only book I looked at and kept (oddly enough it's still out on Rob's workbench) was the baby name book. It contains something like 4,300,455 names, none of which you or your husband will ever agree on.