An exact replica of a figment of my imagination: a memoir by Elizabeth McCracken
Authors: Elizabeth McCracken
Tags: Literary, General, Family & Relationships, Medical, Personal Memoirs, Death; Grief; Bereavement, Biography & Autobiography, Self-Help, 20th Century, Biography, Gynecology & Obstetrics, Women, 21st Century, Novelists; American - 20th century, Novelists; American, Novelists; American - 21st century, McCracken; Elizabeth
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was perfect. I believed I understood him.
Of course that wasn’t true of my second pregnancy, when I was certain every other moment that something was going terribly wrong. I was neurotic about food; I washed my hands like an insane person. Among my many worries was that I would feel unconnected to this second occupant and that this indifference would travel through the placenta and warp the developing psyche. But I turned out to feel another sort of closeness. Pregnant with Pudding, I often didn’t even realize how big I’d gotten; we communicated via dream telegraph. During my second pregnancy, I was by necessity obsessed with the physical, and this baby — who was in there, anyhow? — was a great in utero kicker and squirmer. Once the kid was big enough for me to feel, I would think once a day, panicked, When’s the last time I felt the baby move? And then I’d palm my stomach. Thump, thump, thump. What a good baby, what a wonderful obliging baby, was there something wrong with that baby, to make it shift so? Was that a kick or a shudder or head banging? You couldn’t deny it: there was a baby in there. Even so, I sometimes wondered whether I was making it up.
“Shh,” I’d say to my stomach, “you’re all right,” and to Edward, “Who’s in there, do you think? It could be anyone .”
“Not anyone, ” he’d say, looking a little troubled.
I taught my classes and grew subtly stouter but said nothing. It seemed as though something terrible would happen if people knew. By which I mean: not that we would be tempting fate, but that I would have to acknowledge that the pregnancy was real, and if I did that, I was sure, I would take to my bed until spring. I told a handful of friends in October, and a handful of relatives at Thanksgiving.
Lib insisted I was having a girl. Edward, who had correctly and with great certainty predicted Pudding’s gender, agreed. I had no idea. When I was four months in, Ann declared, no room for argument, that I was pregnant with a boy, and listen: her husband’s daughter was pregnant, too, and Ann had said Josephine was going to have a boy, and the first ultrasound had the temerity to disagree with Ann’s prediction, but Ann wouldn’t budge, and then the second ultrasound said, All right, yes, a boy.
This perturbed Edward. “I thought I knew,” he said. “Why’d Ann have to say that?”
At the hardware store a woman behind the counter said, “So do you know for sure you’re having a boy?” but a pedicurist the same day shook her head and said, Girl, and wasn’t a pedicurist almost a medical professional? It amused me to spend so much time pondering a question that could be at any time answered with reasonable certainty. By the last month of pregnancy I had my amniotic fluid checked by ultrasound twice weekly, not to mention plenty of other diagnostic tools. But I never bent.
Maybe I had just acquired new superstitions, and given them disguises.
W e’d planned for Pudding in stories, plane tickets to see family, and tiny French outfits. Then I was pregnant again and we counted on nothing, and so we prepared for the future by taking classes. We signed up for four:
1. A four-week childbirth class through my ob-gyn practice, taught by one of my favorite people there, the nurse coordinator. Of course I already knew what to expect of such a class. I watched TV, didn’t I? We’d sit on the floor in the bobsled position, surrounded by other couples, and Edward would be told to tell me to breathe.
We never left our chairs, and in fact we knew most of what was taught, having been through childbirth before. I wanted to raise my hand and interrupt the lovely nurse every other sentence to say: “You mean if, not when.”
2. An infant car seat installation class. We were the only ones who showed up. The instructor was a thin blond woman, I think in her late forties, who had four sons, aged four, seven, seventeen, and twenty-five. I was dying to know her story, but I
Of course that wasn’t true of my second pregnancy, when I was certain every other moment that something was going terribly wrong. I was neurotic about food; I washed my hands like an insane person. Among my many worries was that I would feel unconnected to this second occupant and that this indifference would travel through the placenta and warp the developing psyche. But I turned out to feel another sort of closeness. Pregnant with Pudding, I often didn’t even realize how big I’d gotten; we communicated via dream telegraph. During my second pregnancy, I was by necessity obsessed with the physical, and this baby — who was in there, anyhow? — was a great in utero kicker and squirmer. Once the kid was big enough for me to feel, I would think once a day, panicked, When’s the last time I felt the baby move? And then I’d palm my stomach. Thump, thump, thump. What a good baby, what a wonderful obliging baby, was there something wrong with that baby, to make it shift so? Was that a kick or a shudder or head banging? You couldn’t deny it: there was a baby in there. Even so, I sometimes wondered whether I was making it up.
“Shh,” I’d say to my stomach, “you’re all right,” and to Edward, “Who’s in there, do you think? It could be anyone .”
“Not anyone, ” he’d say, looking a little troubled.
I taught my classes and grew subtly stouter but said nothing. It seemed as though something terrible would happen if people knew. By which I mean: not that we would be tempting fate, but that I would have to acknowledge that the pregnancy was real, and if I did that, I was sure, I would take to my bed until spring. I told a handful of friends in October, and a handful of relatives at Thanksgiving.
Lib insisted I was having a girl. Edward, who had correctly and with great certainty predicted Pudding’s gender, agreed. I had no idea. When I was four months in, Ann declared, no room for argument, that I was pregnant with a boy, and listen: her husband’s daughter was pregnant, too, and Ann had said Josephine was going to have a boy, and the first ultrasound had the temerity to disagree with Ann’s prediction, but Ann wouldn’t budge, and then the second ultrasound said, All right, yes, a boy.
This perturbed Edward. “I thought I knew,” he said. “Why’d Ann have to say that?”
At the hardware store a woman behind the counter said, “So do you know for sure you’re having a boy?” but a pedicurist the same day shook her head and said, Girl, and wasn’t a pedicurist almost a medical professional? It amused me to spend so much time pondering a question that could be at any time answered with reasonable certainty. By the last month of pregnancy I had my amniotic fluid checked by ultrasound twice weekly, not to mention plenty of other diagnostic tools. But I never bent.
Maybe I had just acquired new superstitions, and given them disguises.
W e’d planned for Pudding in stories, plane tickets to see family, and tiny French outfits. Then I was pregnant again and we counted on nothing, and so we prepared for the future by taking classes. We signed up for four:
1. A four-week childbirth class through my ob-gyn practice, taught by one of my favorite people there, the nurse coordinator. Of course I already knew what to expect of such a class. I watched TV, didn’t I? We’d sit on the floor in the bobsled position, surrounded by other couples, and Edward would be told to tell me to breathe.
We never left our chairs, and in fact we knew most of what was taught, having been through childbirth before. I wanted to raise my hand and interrupt the lovely nurse every other sentence to say: “You mean if, not when.”
2. An infant car seat installation class. We were the only ones who showed up. The instructor was a thin blond woman, I think in her late forties, who had four sons, aged four, seven, seventeen, and twenty-five. I was dying to know her story, but I
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