Soft Spot

Pregnant women are delicate creatures. Some people interpret that to mean we are sentitive, hormonal, emotional and irrational. I speak very fluent Pregnancy, so allow me to translate.

For whatever reason, carrying a baby means every single part of your body gets to participate in the action. Your skin stretches, your hips widen, and your stomach acids do NOT stay in your stomach where they belong. Today I noticed that even my fingers have taken a turn for the worse as they have decided to swell to the size of traditional Irish breakfast sausages. It only makes sense that your brain would react to the pregnancy as well.

I recall reading that pregnant women can experience forgetfulness because less of their blood supply is being allotted to their brains and more of it goes to the baby. My child is literally making me stupid. On that same note, babies make you sensitive. That's the best explanation I have...

Today I stepped outside only to realize that my pug was innocently sunbathing on top of a bunch of ants. Because I love her and do not want ants crawling all over her, I promptly grabbed a can of Raid from under the sink. After spraying the affected area of the porch (and covering my face with my t-shirt because who knows if bug killer is pregnancy-safe), I was left with a cement battlefield of little ant corpses.

This is the part of the story when normal people would just go back in the house and pat themselves on the back for a job well-done. Pregnancy, however, prolongs the event because I needed a minute to mourn the ants I had slaughtered. I felt genuinely sad for having killed them all so dismissively. After all, they don't know they're doing anything wrong by coming up on the patio. Poor little ants...

Basic human reasoning says this is not something to be sad about. When you decide to have a baby, though, that same reasoning goes out the window in lieu of some more entertaining thought processes. The following things did not used to make me sad, but they do now:

1. Pest control
2. Crying children
3. Not understanding things (This used to just make me angry.)
4. Movies in which people die even though they deserve to live (i.e. "The Bucket List")
5. Spilling things

I'm not going to pretend to understand the cocktail of hormones coursing through my body at all hours of the day messing with my emotions. For all the pregnant women out there, however, I must ask that you don't write us off as lunatics. In the same vein that no woman ever wants to be asked, "Is it that time of the month again?" we don't want to be written off as uber-sensitive and dismissed because of a pregnancy. Even if it's true, you don't have to point it out. Saying something like, "Don't you think that might be the hormones talking?" is just as hurtful as "Don't you think your ass looks huge in those pants?"

On a side note, a fly the size of a Cadillac came in my kitchen this afternoon while I was making lunch. I grabbed the fly swatter, smacked it out of the air, and it landed in the sink. The only reasonable course of action was to wash it down and turn on the garbage disposal. I didn't feel bad about it for a second. Flies are gross.