LIFE WITH THE GUMMY BEAR

I'm finding that, as a guy, the first few months of pregnancy are much a mystery. My lovely wife hasn't been barfing her brains out and she hasn't yet had some bizarre emotional outburst. She's been taking it like a champ, but except for a monthly checkup with the doctor (yes, our Obigen is named "Miles Davis"--not black and doesn't play trumpet), there's very little to remind you for the first couple of months. In fact, at times, I found myself dwelling on whether or not something was wrong. My lovely wife was actually losing weight. Not sure that "pregnancy" is listed as an effective weight-loss program.

First time I heard the heartbeat, though. I was floored. It was the heart rate of a sprinting jackrabbit. Like 155 or something. Incredible. Knowing that it wasn't my lovely wife's heart rate, I knew something was in there. Some alien was living in my lovely wife's belly. I started calling her the mothership. No, ladies, she said she didn't mind. I just like the Parliament/Funkadelic overtones of it.

It really becomes real, though, for guys like me when you can see something so if it's not my lovely wife growing like a blimp, then it would be our first sonogram. That's what would make it real.

I sat there quietly (as I've learned that's my role--be quiet) and in heightened anticipation of what the little rolling instrument would reveal was dwelling within my lovely wife. Heartbeat, check. Still around 155. She continued to search. I was squinting to see.

"There it is," said the nurse.

I squint.

"There's the heart."

Besides being the size of a thimble. It appeared to be nothing of a human, but rather a little gummy bear. It's a bittersweet moment. At least you see something now and it becomes much more real. The first time I heard a heartbeat it was like the baby's morse code. It was how it was communicating with us from deep down in my lovely wife. But then you get a glimpse and it looks like something more from a textbook than a baby. It's a freaking sea monkey.

I need more patience. People that say the pregnancy flies must've never celebrated Christmas morning. This is torturous. Guess that's what we'll celebrate though, for the time being. Our little Gummy Bear. Works for me. Miles Davis said it looks healthy and that's good enough for me.

HAD A DREAM TODAY, OH GIRL.

Just crawled out of bed a day after what was perhaps the most climactic day in GenderWatch 2010 so far (no longer calling it SexWatch 2010 at my lovely wife’s request). Did a poll of my Facebook “friends” to see what they thought we were having. After some 22 responses to mine and eight to my lovely wife’s poll (30 responses in all), only 15 of them were valid votes. 8-7, girl.


Not a runaway poll, for sure. In fact, my poll alone showed that it was a straight-up tie. 5-5. My lovely wife’s poll broke the tie.


So that’s what the ever reliable Facebook says. And, seriously folks, you ask one simple question and people just can’t help but not answer the question. I had people answering “half and half,” “both,” “twins,” and “check the Chinese Birth Calendar.” Ya’ll are just a bunch of hanging chad suckas.


Well, in my own quest to determine the gender when, in the beginning I was hell-bent on waiting the duration before finding out, I’ve tried to see if there’s anything that the good Lord is trying to tell me. I’m starting to pee sitting down a lot more often. Does that mean I’m sympathizing? Or I’m just lazy and wanna take a load off? The other day, I spent an entire afternoon with the female background singers from “Suspicious Minds” playing in the back of my head. Like I couldn’t even hear Elvis in there. It was just the female voices in the back. Does that mean anything?


Among some of the more bizarre dreams that I’ve ever had which include one where a old woman that looks like the creepy man-boy from Children of the Corn is our new nanny (“Aw, hell naw!”) and another when my lovely wife brings home some creature from a picnic that’s half opossum and half dog and I proceed to attempt to kill it out in the backyard in the middle of the night, last night I had one of “those” dreams. It was one of those dreams that might suggest something of the gender of this little Gummy Bear. 


** By the way, I didn’t kill the opossumdog in the dream. It snapped the hoe that I was swinging at it in half. Mason suggested that “Opossumdog” would make an ill metal band name. I agree. If anyone uses it, I want credit. And cash. My creative work doesn’t come free.


Anyhow, my dream last night went like this:


I come home from work. Exhausted. Maybe I was out a bar afterwards because it was dark and I wasn’t in good favor with my lovely wife. She’s in crazy labor. Screaming. Punching through walls (does that happen?). Everyone’s running around. It’s not my house. It’s like an apartment. I’m watching television in the other room while my lovely wife sounds like she’s passing a baby elephant. And then I drift off into a deep sleep. Sleep within a dream is always the weirdest thing. I come to after a brief dreamscape and my lovely wife is sitting next to me on the bed grinning from ear to ear. She sometimes does this. Like a little kid on Christmas morning. She’s not saying anything, but just sitting there blinking her big eyes at me. I roll over and duck my head into a pillow. “I must’ve fallen asleep. I’m sorry, baby. I tried to stay awake.”


Here’s the funniest part.


“So, what did we have?”


I asked it like, “Who ended up winning the game?” after falling asleep in the 8th inning. She runs out of the room and comes back holding a baby that looks to be about a year old and sets the baby on my belly.


“It’s a girl, baby,” my lovely wife says to me.


Then, I woke up.


Not saying it means anything. I might have a dream tonight where my son kills a bear-shark with nothing more than a wooden spoon on a camping trip. Not only would that be cool as hell, but it would negate last night’s dream.


May 11th is the date.