Fun While Pregnant?
I was standing in a long grocery check-out line. Snap! I felt the elastic on my silky red underpants break. I slapped my thighs together hoping to prevent a downfall. However, as customers advanced toward the counter, I had to move ahead. With each step, the panties slid lower, over the precipice of my bulging stomach with a straight descent to my knees. Another step forward and the offending garment plummeted around my ankles. I did not look to the right or left or behind me where other shoppers stood waiting. I attempted to look nonchalant as I stepped out of my panties and stuffed them into my huge purse.
About a week later, I visited my doctor. He asked me if I had some documents with me so his nurse could make copies. I rummaged around in my purse and pulled out a toy dinosaur that my other child had become tired of carrying. The doctor and I laughed together. I reached farther down in the bottom and felt a large piece of paper and yanked it out...along with my red undies. I turned about the same shade. This was my fifth child, so I suppose his comment was merited.
“This explains a lot.”
The cause of my elastic’s failure to maintain its decorum had to do with the size of my belly during all five pregnancies. From the back, I still had a waist, but in front, I really needed a wheelbarrow to transport my stomach. People asked me if I was having twins and during the latter months tried to help me across the street. Here’s the strange thing, I birthed small babies in the six-pound range. The rest was just a bunch of water. I should have sloshed as I waddled. I pictured the babies inside splashing around in the Wonder Womb Water Park. During one labor, I heard two nurses talking outside my hospital room after my water had broken.
“This one’s a real gusher,” she said.
We relocated during August, while I was pregnant with my second child. We were settling into an apartment in a new city. Turning on the stereo while I was putting things away, a bouncy song came on. I began to dance with abandon, kicking my legs up as far as my burgeoning tummy would allow. Suddenly, I had the vague feeling someone was watching me. A man dressed in a suit stood at our open front door looking in.
“That’s going to be a one happy baby,” he said. “I’m Dan, the minister from your new congregation.”
You’d think my underpants and pregnant Rockette story would be my most embarrassing pre-birth moments, but no. The day before one of my children was born; I was seized with pre-birth cleaning mania. We lived in a split-level house with acres of carpet and three bathrooms. I started the minute the kids had all left for school. My three-year-old had gone with her dad that morning. I vacuumed, mopped, waxed, scrubbed, and did loads of laundry in between. I looked at the clock mid-afternoon and saw that I had about forty-five minutes before the school bus would disgorge the first of my brood.
Normally, I take showers. “Ah, a relaxing bath,” I thought. I poured in bubble bath and laid back. After about twenty minutes of soaking, my body was turning into a prune. Well, everything but my stomach. The stretched skin over it was as tight as Spandex. My belly button had popped out like the end of a balloon. Anyway, the water was getting cold. I tried to get up. I couldn’t. I grasped the sides of the tub and tried to pull myself to a sitting position, nothing. In desperation, I clutched at the shower curtain. The curtain and the bar holding it fell on me, hitting my hip. After numerous attempts, I began to panic.
Then, I heard the front door open. I heard the blessed voice of my small daughter,
“Mama, where are you?”
“Come upstairs. I have an emergency.”
She was too little to help me up, except for handing me a big towel which still left me partially uncovered. I told her to go next door to the neighbors. “See if Mrs. Whitman can come.”
My daughter came back with Ellen’s Whitman’s husband, Ken, instead. Evidently, she’d run toward the neighbor’s door and saw Mr. Whitman in the front yard raking leaves.
She proudly told me afterwards, “I remembered, Mama. You told me if I had a problem to find the nearest police officer.” Ken Whitman had retired from the police. He had likely seen much more embarrassing situations and was calm and matter of fact. However, every time I saw him for months afterwards, I tried to avoid him.
The doctor on baby number three went for a coffee break after an examination. “She probably has an hour or more before the baby arrives,” he said to the nurse. Maybe he hadn’t had much experience with women who went from zero to full dilation in record time. The nurse and my husband delivered the baby. I still got a bill from him though.
Each pregnancy, my stomach stretched to bigger dimensions. The compensation was each labor became shorter. I started out at four hours with number one and one hour with number five. The doctor on the last one told me I was an old cow. I was only offended by the old part. I like cows, but thirty-nine is not old. At least, he was there for the delivery.
I’ve been pregnant for forty-five months of my life. This has rewarded me with five fine adult children who visit us often and do nice things for us. Obviously, it’s provided me with a few stories as well.
-Ramona Scarborough
Ramona Scarborough says "Writing is like pregnancy. The fun part is making the baby or story. Editing is the stretch marks, the morning sickness, and swollen ankles. The final difficult labor to perfect your story into something that can come out into the world. The birth is when an editor or publisher says, "Congratulations! Your story will appear soon in our September issue. Ramona is the proud mom to ten books and over one-hundred-forty of her stories and articles have been adopted by magazines, anthologies, and online venues.