NEW MOM DIARY VOL. II: TWO DAYS TO DUE DATE

By Jackie Weiss

Assuming I deliver on my due date, which is 48 hours from now, this will be my last weekend as a non-parent. According to the doctor our baby's head is firmly in position, and I am already two or three centimeters dilated. I am definitely feeling crampy at this point. People at work seem impressed by the fact that I continue to show up every day. However, it is hard to argue that I'd be better off sitting alone at home waiting for contractions to start, or traipsing around Manhattan, where temperatures have been setting new record highs for August each day. My air-conditioned cubicle is a fine place to pass the time, and I have found that people return my voicemails more quickly when I say that I am expecting to go into labor at any moment.

When people ask when is my last day in the office, my standard reply is to say whenever the baby arrives. However, I have started to imagine some awkward scenarios under which I actually go into labor in the office. Suppose, for example, my water decides to break while I'm in a meeting on my boss's couch, or in a crowded elevator. A friend recently told me the story of someone whose water broke while she was in the supermarket. In order to deflect attention from the resulting puddle she "accidentally" shattered a jar of pickles in the aisle before fleeing. Last Friday I began carrying a towel to work with me, just in case. As the days go on, my game of labor roulette could become more stressful.

So what does one do in one's free time while sitting around waiting for a baby to make an appearance? Last week I defaulted to obsessing over the fact that I did not own a pair of pajamas appropriate to wear in the hospital. This pajama deficit was keeping me from accomplishing a second task of packing a hospital bag. Virtually every list of what to bring starts off with pajamas, and I was unable to follow my husband Greg's seemingly sensible advice to pack everything else on the list until we could procure an appropriate pair.

My office is in lower Manhattan, never a convenient location from which to accomplish personal errands, but much less so since September 11. So every night last week when I came home, Greg would suggest we pack a bag, and every night I reminded him that this was impossible, as I still did not own a pair of pajamas. My bag remained empty. Finally, at the end of the week, Greg called me at work from a department store and asked me to choose between two or three pairs of pajamas he had picked out that I could view on the Internet. So now a bag lies packed on our bedroom floor, complete with a new pair of pajamas (tags still on), and I feel ready to have a baby.

And now for an update on "Alice," as we've come to refer to our unborn offspring (even though we don't know if the baby is a girl): Alice has been spending her nights for the last several weeks honing her small motor skills by pinching various of her mother's nerves, causing a fair amount of pain and plenty of sleeplessness. She is most interested in fine-tuning these skills in the wee hours, although last night while Greg and I sat in a restaurant she tugged enthusiastically at my sciatic nerve during most of the meal, causing me to writhe spasmodically as if in response to some small internal alien. Greg tries to speak sternly to her in these situations, but she generally ignores him. She is forgiven only because she doesn't appear to know any better.

Finally, the next time I write I will (God willing) no longer be pregnant, and the thing I will miss most is the comfort with which strangers approach me to supply their convictions about the sex of my baby and my overall physical appearance. Last week, as the guy in the ice cream store handed me my cone, he informed me that it was clear I was having a boy because my stomach was pointy rather than round. When I turned to take a seat in a booth, a woman looked at me and assured me that it was definitely a girl, because "you're carrying so low." Outside someone marveled at how compact I looked, given how far along I was. When I entered my building and bumped into my neighbor, he took a look at me and gasped, "Oh my! You're HUGE!"

I will also miss the friendly smiles exchanged with other pregnant women. ("Like two battleships passing", said Greg this morning when another late-term pregnant woman and I waddled past each other on a narrow sidewalk.) However, as I graduate to the other side of pregnancy I'm expecting to find another world of camaraderie with new mothers. Like that mother who passed me a few weeks ago while walking with a young boy, a toddler, and an infant in a stroller and shouted over her shoulder "Get out of the house while you still can!" For the next few days at least, I intend to do just that.

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