You know, none of the preparing for pregnancy books ever properly prepare you for the true horrors of pregnancy.
Nope. If I were writing such a book, filled with purportedly "useful" hints and tips and reassurances, the first thing I'd say, in fact, I'd PLASTER IT ON THE COVER IN LARGE FRIENDLY LETTERS, would be:
ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO DEPEND ON YOUR INTELLIGENCE.
You see, I can handle the bloatiness, constipation, discomfort, crazy skin changes, even the hormonal upsurge. I'm living just fine with having spent the last three months getting "boy is she letting herself go" looks from strangers who are only "getting it" now. The need to sleep more than I used to is driving me nuts, but I'm learnig lessons from that too --
-- it's the waking up to find my one most important muscle of all time, sodden -- that is... is... where the learning curve lies.
All my life I have been defined by my brain. Brilliant, they said. Sharp. Incisive. Dangerous. Thrown into a universe entirely outside of my entire's life experience -- politics, I've thrived on the sheer strength of my ability to "grokk" a situation before those involved had even noticed it occurr.
And now?
Now I can't remember why I have my car keys in hand and am standing in the lobby scratching my head, despite having spoken mere moments 'aforehand to a loving husband who'd urged me home to dinner.
These days I start a sentence and the room hushes expectantly, awaiting the solution to fall from my lips, and instead I stare blankly as the words escape me, and fill the silence with an inane, blonde giggle.
Oh, I'm exaggerating by entire mountains, but...
Some days I'm just so frustrated that when I try to quickly calculate how many dozens there are in 147 (knowing full well, all my life, that a dozen dozens is 144), I get confused by the size of the number and my brain balks and refuses to calculate.
The "stupids" aren't constant, neither are they debilitating (nothing is when you're in full-on survival mode) but they are very disconcerting. I'm still the office thesaurus and Oxford dictionary (today's "hey monstre what does this mean" word was "protuberance") and I'm still kicking arse and taking entire rosters of names.
It's. Just. That - some days I slink home with my tail drooping, because I've learned what those looks on the faces of my calculus class peers felt like on the inside, and...
It's humbling.
I've always been my brain. I've always been the smart girl, the clever girl, I've always been the expert, knowitall, classroom encyclopedia. I've occasionally been pretty girl, occasionally played the 'slut' in years where my confidence was really slagging, but... I've never been much without the scathing blaze of my brain.
And now I'm learning. I'm learning to ask for help, learning to bring value with kindness or joyfullness, with something other than always having the right answer.
I'm learning that the brain is a muscle like my atrophied biceps which haven't rock-climbed in half a year.
I've learned that after my morning yoga routine, labour-prep squats and kegel-clenches, I need to practice my brain too now. I need to read more slashdot, need to play more numbers games, read more science magazines and continue to devour the underground rags that I've slowly been using to power up my lump of grey.
Oh, I'm being so overly dramatic, it's clear -- this entire writ has been in solid english, but I feel the slowing down, and learning that I'm something more than the person to copy homework from has been --
huge.
I already owe so much to this baby.