Blessed Be The Fruit Salad
My baby is the size of a banana? How? How does a banana-sized baby look?
You're pregnant! Congratulations! (Or condolences! But hopefully congratulations!)
The next nine months will be a journey through the ways in which your body is a terrible wonder. You will discover that you are a magical machine that medical science still doesn't totally understand to a degree that seems concerning.
Why is all this happening to you in this order, over this span of time, in this exact way? Why is the placenta? Who in the name of fuck designed seat belts that way? Had pregnancy simply not occurred to them? Who knows!
Most pregnancy apps roadmapping what happens in pregnancy compare the size of a developing baby to the size of fruits and vegetables. I read somewhere that patient-facing medical literature does this in order to encourage pregnant women to eat more fruits and vegetables, because when we become pregnant our brains become very very tiny and we need to have basic shit explained to us in language often reserved for children. (Here's your pregnant reminder that one of the best ways to handle thirst is to drink water! Are you tired? Try sleeping! You're welcome!)
At the beginning, this was illustrative: my uterine lessee was the size of a poppy seed, or a blueberry. Most people who have shopped in a grocery store in the West have a pretty good idea what size those things are. But it wasn't long before the comparisons didn't make sense anymore, as fruits and vegetables vary wildly in size depending on where you shop and where you live. This week, for example, one unhelpful website said that my baby is allegedly the size of a "zucchini," but didn't specify if that meant an organic zucchini, a suspiciously large genetically modified Super Wal Mart zucchini, or the haunted pythonesque zucchinis that appear in piles outside of autumn school functions next to hastily-handwritten signs declaring that they are FREE TO WHOEVER WANT'S!.
One website says that a gestating baby is the size of "kale" at 26 weeks' gestation, while another claims that the baby will be comparable in size to a "kale leaf" around 32 weeks' gestation, while still another says that the baby won't be kale-sized until 36 weeks. By the end of pregnancy, the What to Expect app gives up and compare the size of the fetus exclusively to the size of various melons most people who aren't in the melon industry couldn't tell apart without help.
Pregnancy apps can tell a person a lot-- but not all of it is going to be applicable, or even comprehensible. I'm still confused by that time an app told me that my fetus was the size of a "scallion."
In that spirit, if you're looking for a break from the greens, here's information that would have been more helpful during the first two trimesters than what I found on websites and apps.
1-8 Weeks Pregnant:
Make sure to clear your calendar for a lot of sitting around and waiting.
First, you will wait to see the doctor. Well-- not right away. Many doctors won't see patients before they're 8 weeks along, which is about five weeks after it's possible for a pregnancy to register on a test, and I've never heard of a doctor seeing patients before 6 weeks. So you will wait. During this time, you may have a standing daily appointment with "anxiety" that can range from an hour long to back-to-back all-day Zoom meetings with your neuroses.
Once this round of waiting is over, you'll get to see the doctor, but that appointment will likely consist mostly of the doctor asking you questions about yourself rather than telling you anything about your pregnancy beyond (best case scenario) "Yep, pregnant. Yes, heartbeat. See you in a month." Then, resume waiting.
(The alternative-- that sometime between the positive pregnancy test and the doctor's exam table, something that is almost certainly outside of your control went wrong and the pregnancy ended spontaneously--is a possibility that is tough to ignore, especially for those who have dealt with loss before and know first-hand how common it is. Pregnancy can make a person feel like their body is governed by a dystheistic god. One-third of known pregnancies end in miscarriage; most of those happen early on in the first trimester. The randomness of it is ruthless and unfair.)
You may feel pain, you may feel totally out of it, and that could be normal or it could be bad. Your body is a prolific but ineffective communicator. You will try to use words to convey your body's condition to your doctor in a way that they interpret correctly. There will probably be a lot of things you're not sure about during this phase, even if you've done this before. You will look online for answers and the answers will tell you to "talk to your doctor," but you think your doctor might find it inappropriate to call them at 3 am to let them know that you have diarrhea. It is not humanly possible for a person to "talk to your doctor" as much as the internet suggests you do. The internet loves to simultaneously deliver a lecture and cover its ass.
Meanwhile, the embryo. Those chubby palm-sized pink plastic baby replicas anti-abortion protesters hand out are a lie. Your future baby and current embryo looks nothing like a little cherub. Your embryo is a translucent tadpole that is mostly brain and spinal cord, building what will become the original versions of its body's systems. It has a tail, and instead of eyes, it has two dark spots. It cannot think or breathe or eat, but what it is doing is so much more weird and powerful than that silly propaganda baby doll.
9-14 Weeks Pregnant:
You might be tired, and you might not be tired. Your boobs might hurt a lot, or they might not. If these symptoms disappear, it could mean nothing. Or it could be a bad sign.
Anxiety may or may not continue to pop in at regular intervals. Every symptom you have could be a sign that something is or is not going wrong. You may experience nausea. Having nausea is a good sign, unless you have too much nausea, in which case it is a bad sign. Not having nausea isn't necessarily a bad sign, but it's not a good sign. Some days you may have more nausea than others, which means that on the days that you feel less like shit, you may worry about the fact that you feel less like shit. For some women, not having nausea means you're lucky. For others, it means you're unlucky. You just have to wait to find out which it is. Hope this helps!
If you think something is wrong, you can call your doctor, and they will either tell you they'll try to fit you in for an appointment, and so you will spend the rest of your day doing that, or they will tell you to chill out and wait to see what happens, and you can use the time you freed up by not having to go to the doctor to google the thing you're worried about and discovering the terrifying internet horror show that is pregnancy forums. Perfectly rational people have been driven insane by these. They're worse than wedding planning forums. Venture in only if you dare, oh brave and paranoid one.
Your doctor has taken vials and vials of blood, just vials upon vials. But don't worry, you'll grow all the blood back, and also a bunch of extra blood that you didn't have before. Your blood volume will increase by up to 50%. The pregnancy "glow"? That's blood, baby!
I was 37 when I got pregnant, which means, according to all of the pregnancy literature I read, that I'm technically a "geriatric pregnancy," a woman of "Advanced Maternal Age," or an "old bitch." When I relayed concerns about my age to a provider at my OB-GYN's office on the east side of Los Angeles, she laughed jovially and said that nothing about my age made me an outlier for her practice. She told me, to paraphrase: "That automatic high-risk AMA over 35 stuff is outdated and sexist. You're fine."
Your baby is the size of question mark in a bunch of different fonts.
14-18 Weeks Pregnant:
Congratulations! You are in the second trimester! The apps promised a "surge" of energy and horniness and fabulous hair during this time, which seems like a dangerous thing to promise to a large and diverse group of people who are leading vastly different lives even though they are undergoing a similar biological process. You may become horny at this time. You may become unhorny. Your hair may fail to sprout into the mane of a beautiful show pony. This is not for a pregnancy app to determine.
Around this time is when I started to feel depressed, which no app warned me about. I have never been formally diagnosed with any mental health problems before I was pregnant, although years ago a doctor wrote me a Xanax prescription for "anxiety" when it turns out the cure for my "anxiety" was simply to break up with my piece of shit boyfriend. But I digress.
Generally, pregnancy apps are so positive about how much fun this part of pregnancy is, you'd think they were selling time shares in the second trimester. You might have a great time. You might be like me and cry a lot and sometimes feel physically unable to leave the house, like I did. It's a hormone lottery. Anything goes!
Your baby is around the size of a Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robot, give or take.
19-23 Weeks Pregnant:
During this time, you probably have started to feel your baby move around. Some babies are more active than others. Mine is a fucking maniac.
This, to me, has been the coolest thing about pregnancy so far. It's very horror/sci-fi. Having a tiny developing humanoid thrashing around my pelvic cavity makes me feel a little like Krang's humanoid robot.
Me, 20 weeks pregnant. Also pictured: my fetus and Master Shredder.
During this time, a neonatal specialist I'd never seen before performed my 20-week anatomy scan, which turned out to be the gruffest ultrasound I'd ever received. I asked him what I thought were innocent questions as I watched him highlight and click things on the monitor (real hardball questions like: "How big is the heart at this phase of development?" or "Can you give me the Cliff's notes explanation of what you're doing?"), because I'm a curious person and he was photographing my baby's organ systems with sound waves, which I thought was a topic that merited discussion. He told me he was "in the zone" and to hold questions until the end. Far be it from me to disrupt the process of the self-proclaimed Tiger Woods of neonatology by being a pesky biological incubator with questions. No bedside manner necessary when your primary patient is a fetus.
As a Pregnant, there are also many things you are no longer "allowed" to eat or drink or take or enjoy. Here's a partial list of things I read that I "couldn't" have or do:
lunch meat/deli meat
sushi
roller coasters
alcohol
contact sports
raw oysters
medium rare steaks
hot tubs
lying down on my back
soft cheeses
marijuana in any form
a surprising number of over-the-counter medicines
tuna or other high-mercury fish
anything containing raw or runny eggs, including caesar dressing and hollandaise sauce
candy/ junk food
Some of that list-- like avoiding taking drugs, riding roller coasters, or playing full-contact sports-- make sense to avoid, given what we know. Some of them were things in which I already did not partake. Some of the list seems more rooted in a "better safe than sorry" mentality that somehow always errs on the side of deprivation or discomfort for the pregnant woman.
I'm not going to tell anybody how to live. It is not my job nor my area of expertise. But I am glad that I my doctor didn't insist I follow the most strident version of advice floating around out there to the letter. The evidence backing some conventional pregnancy wisdom is so thin that it reads like superstition. Yes, I too read Emily Oster's book.
Sometimes, people do everything "right" in their pregnancy and something goes wrong, anyway; sometimes, people do a bunch of things "wrong" and give birth to healthy children, anyway. This isn't to say that pregnant women should party like they're in college or ignore their doctors and midwives, just that you shouldn't let people who aren't directly responsible for your medical care give you shit because you had a fucking Diet Coke and a salmon maki roll.
Your baby is the size of a giant margarita.
24- 28 Weeks Pregnant:
Now that you're almost to your third trimester, your baby is almost the size of Felicity doll your parents told you they wouldn't buy for you and then your aunt bought it for you for Christmas anyway, and you didn't understand at the time why they were so annoyed with her but now that you're about to be a parent you get it.
This is the end of the second trimester, the time to move from the part of Yay! part of pregnancy to the Oh, Fuck, This Is Happening Isn't It? part of pregnancy.
By pure coincidence, one of my longtime friends and I are due five days apart. She lives halfway across the country, but we keep in touch over text and Instgram message-- a real modern no-talking 20-year friendship that has only grown closer over the months we've known about each other's recent health developments. On the day that I hit 24.5 weeks, she sent me a text message wishing me a "Happy viability day!" Some might call that morbid, I call that true friendship. She gets me.
There is still a ton of important stuff that Josh and I haven't done. We have a crib sitting in a box that needs to be put together, and a dresser partly filled with things that people have already gifted us and stuff that came for free in registry welcome bags (real tip, though: sign up for a bunch of baby registries and you'll get an assortment of free bottles, pacifiers, and diapers). I have more Aquaphor samples than I ever imagined a human would need. We have a stroller and car seat "travel system" in a box in our garage, a doula who came over to our house with a diagram of cervical dilation and several handouts about labor. My friend Alyssa sent me a "nap dress" that I know I'll be able to use somewhere in the process.
We have a long list of to-dos. Do I need "storage bins"? Do I need to baby proof already when I know that during the newborn phase, infants are about as mobile as giant eclairs that can scream? Should we even put the crib together right now? Making the list felt productive, even though most of the stuff on it is still not complete.
The apps will warn you that at this point you will be experiencing "pregnancy brain," which is a cute way to describe the mental hormone fog some people find themselves enveloped in and but also feels a bit like another way to remind pregnant women that they're stupid. Some people say they really do experience a feeling of mental disarray.
For me, any pregnancy fogginess has been offset by the mental sharpness I've gained by no longer drinking or using indica-forward edibles as a sleep aid. There have been a couple of moments where I forgot what point I was trying to make in the middle of a story I was telling, but that easily could have been because the story I was telling was boring and I lost interest. Maybe pregnancy brain will hit you, maybe it won't.
Meanwhile, my torso is running out of room and my Krang fetus has become nocturnal. This baby never stops kicking and twirling; this baby kicked the dog in the face when the dog was simply resting his head on my lap. The baby has started to perform this move that feels like it's scurrying backward up my body like a crab, or like Toni Collette during that scene from Hereditary when she's possessed and on the ceiling. Feels appropriate that this one is due on Halloween.
Doctor appointments have gotten so blessedly boring that I've told my husband that he doesn't need to come with me anymore until we hit 36 weeks. All the doctor does now is take my vitals, measure my abdomen, listen to the heartbeat, and ask if I have any questions. I have memorized the IUD display in the room where I usually get examined.
If you're not here yet, I hope your pregnancy is just as boring as mine, and, if it's not, I hope it becomes boring as soon as possible.
Now, off to get a snack. For some reason, I'm craving fruit.
Image via Shutterstock