Searching for the funny side

My body has become a punchline to a bawdy joke, but only one misguided male has thought fit to make it. I let it slide because he has power over me. Everyone else gives me the respectful glances worthy of my hallowed pre-natal state until they hear me swear.

I still do it often. Realising I’m late for an appointment, I hotfooted it on my bike, teaching my unborn child about adrenaline and expletives, the baby’s head pressing down on my cervix. I realise it will be the last time I’m on two wheels for a while. I arrive dripping sweat and sniffling tears. We talk about my hormones and how they are not fit for purpose, and temporarily I feel justified in my body’s lack of control.

HR won’t see it like that though. Nevermind I problem solve day in day out just to get to work. Doing just my job is not enough it seems. I have to do two other people’s to prove I’m working hard enough for flexi time. My refusal to commit to someone else’s workload will be taken badly by the childless senior woman calling from the other side of the world to tell me how my reaction isn’t appropriate for someone on the next pay grade, but the inconvenient tears that slid down my face at least make my frustration at my current physical limitations apparent. My promotion may have to wait until I have more control over my emotions (which are clearly beyond my control) but perhaps that’s no bad thing. I’m overstretched already and not just my ligaments.

At the postgraduate coffee, where I’d gone to orient myself for next week’s enrolment, eager, unlined faces buzzed with fresh social opportunities. I felt frumpy, unable to control my temperature in a maternity frock that sports damp patches under arms that soon will wear hormonal ones.

To the unencumbered, juggling yet another commitment alongside the ones I’m struggling with may seem foolish, but I’m discarding with others daily, before new ones accumulate. Both kids now make their way to and from school. I now have nowhere to be at 3 for the first time in a decade, so I may as well make the most of it before every hour becomes a feed, change or nap- yet for all this taste of freedom, I must waddle where I should skip.

I don’t feel too bad though- my current balance of oestrogen and progesterone is seeing to that- the doctor told me women with a history of depression or even psychiatric illness can feel well in their pregnancies, only for their moods to crash months later when their periods re-establish- and that has been my experience each time.

I can’t wait- and in the interim, the labour, post-partum pain and breast feeding trauma give me much to look forward to. I already worry I’m stressing the baby out by having so much I want to do before it’s born, so I can add a thick layer of guilt to all the latent physicality of the final two months I still have before I give birth.

I should enjoy it while it lasts, comedy gold though I may be. Dressed, I may look like a potato but naked I look like a goddess, round and taut and blooming. The aftermath, I fear won’t be quite so pretty, though I’ll get back in my jeans soon enough if my post-baby compression tops have anything to do with it

Six weeks later, I’ll get hormones inserted into my uterus so pregnancy won’t happen again but which may make me puffy, nauseous and spotty; and patches to keep my spirits up and hair off my chin and on my head. Like the other graduates on my course, my biggest concern will be getting enough sleep, but I’ll be going to bed at 9, rushing back from lectures to feed, rather than log back into work. I will manage, but I don’t pretend it will be easy. Making a joke of it makes it easier for the unencumbered to bear. But in the interim, I may struggle to see the funny side of milk-stained tops, thick pads that stem the bleeding, blistered nipples and a stubborn 2-year muffin top.

It will be worth it, won’t it? Yes of course it will, but ultimately all parents figure out sooner or later that the joke of having children in today’s punishing world is on them alone.