Enter Cousin Oliver

Posted by Wood | Thursday, August 09, 2007 | ,

Three years ago, I was pregnant. It was a summer of weddings in dresses two sizes bigger than I'd ever worn, a summer of double-take-inducing cleavage. In mid-August, when I was about 16 weeks pregnant, three of my best friends flew to San Francisco to see me. When they joked about the size of my boobs, I burst into tears. When discussing where to get brunch, I burst into tears. I spent a sober evening in the Mission while they drank margaritas and I drove everyone home at 2:00 a.m., a few hours before I had to drive them all to the airport. The next morning was the first since Juniper's conception where I had someone else's hair to hold while they puked alongside me.

I haven't written much about being pregnant. Other than a first trimester full of migraines, excessive vomiting, and near-constant exhaustion, I liked being pregnant. For so long it was just a secret that made me smile standing on the bus. Even at 30+ weeks, no one ever gave up a seat for me. I liked to think this was because I was carrying my pregnancy so well, but it was probably just because San Francisco commuters are selfish jerkoffs who thought I was really fat. Juniper was born at 3:30 p.m. on her due date, after 12 hours of labor. My labor was only difficult in the way that getting a child out of your body is always difficult. There were no complications and nothing terrifying happened. We were incredibly lucky.

It's no secret that about a year ago, I started tapping my feet around here. With every month that passed after Juniper's 2nd birthday, my desire to be pregnant again became more impossible to ignore. But to Dutch, the sound of my biological clock ticked fainter than a rat's heart behind a wall. "Look at your friends," he said, referring to the girls who'd come to visit in San Francisco. "Can't you wait till they all meet the right man and settle down before we start talking about another one?" Still, I knew I was getting somewhere when it drove him to parody. Things have been getting rather stale around here, I kept admonishing him. You sit there racking your brain for things to write about. It's time for another one, dude.

Remember when Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen went through that really unfortunate stage on Full House when they were about 3 years old? You know, when they looked like shaved fruit bats who couldn't really do anything except scrunch up their little pig noses and repeat a few stock phrases in response to the zany antics of Uncles Jesse and Joey? They were all, "You got it dude!", "You're in big trouble, mister!" and "Aw, nuts!"? Oh, the dark days of the Olsen Empire. As we all know, when they were no longer able to pull off their relentless adorability, the producers decided it was time to pull a Cousin Oliver and add a double shot of cuteness in the form of Uncle Jesse's twins Alex and Nicky. Twins? Have mercy!

I wish it was as easy to infuse additional cuteness in real life as it is with a Hollywood casting call. Instead of a fresh-faced towheaded moppet showing up on your doorstep, dumped there by his irresponsible archaeologist parents, it takes bout after bout of determined, premeditated sex, followed by Costco-sized boxes of pregnancy tests, and then, if you're one of the lucky ones, several months of migraines, vomiting, and nights where you don't make it past 8:00 p.m. before you're snoring on the couch. On the plus side, your boobs are once again spectacular.

Yes, I am pregnant. Not twins. Just one, whose hummingbird heartbeat and in utero twisting on the ultrasound the other day finally cracked Dutch's remaining reservations, just as another ultrasound had temporarily quieted both our fears about becoming parents three years ago. The baby is due in February, just after Juniper turns three.