Waiting for a baby to be born is a real drag … of time

If you tell me I have nine months to finish a task, my first response is, “Nine months? That’s it? How about nine years? Can I have that?”

Under normal conditions, nine months squirt by like nine minutes. We’re already on edition 20 of 25 of 2016. Edition one feels like yesterday. We’re a little less than three months outside the unbelievable-sounding year of 2017. And we’re about to change over presidents, which wouldn’t seem so shocking if it wasn’t the end of Obama’s second term. He was elected eight years ago. Eight! That’s like five minutes.

As everyone knows, the older you get the faster time slips by…except when you’re waiting for a baby to be born. Then it practically slows to a halt, which I’m starting to think might be the calm before the storm.

The other day, I caught sight of my wife walking down the stairs. She wore a tight top, looked very pregnant, and my first thought was, “My god, you’re still pregnant?” It’s getting cold out again, and she’s been pregnant since the last time it was cold. We’ve literally transitioned through three seasons, and the baby still isn’t here. I’ve even experienced recall of instances that I’m startled to realize occurred after my wife got pregnant because the memory seems so distant.

In the time my wife has been pregnant, I’ve had a birthday, two family members have died, the newspaper celebrated another anniversary, my niece got engaged, I think a nephew graduated college (it all gets fuzzy at this point), another Olympics came and went, and a damn rocket launched a Sun City resident’s writing into space. NASA even added another sign to the Zodiac chart, seriously screwing up dating apps all across the world (it turns out I’m a Taurus not a Gemini…as if). And my wife is still pregnant.

I’m not certain I remember her being “unpregnant.” It seems to be a permanent condition at this point, and we’re two lunatics roaming around our house, talking to my wife’s belly, which bubbles with movement constantly.

At the time of writing this, my wife is 35 weeks pregnant (feels like 350). If he’s born sometime in the term range he’ll be here in two to five weeks, concepts that are like tectonic plates working against each other. On one hand, I think that time might pick up and fly by. On the other, that may as well be a year from now. What’s really blowing my mind is next time I write Happy Trails, it most likely will be with a baby laying across my lap, perhaps kicking happily at the sound of my typing because in utero he apparently likes that sound (that’s my boy!). Or he hates it!

What else has slowed are the quotes you readers have seemed to enjoy. By 35 weeks there’s not much else to say, but I’ll leave you with a few of my wife’s winners over the last stages of her pregnancy.

Talking about him moving inside her: “I think he just turned into the Hulk.”

Having a conversation about being excited to find out what his favorites will be (food, song, color, etc…),
Me: “Which parent do you think will be his favorite?” I was joking.
“Is that really a question?” She meant herself. She was not joking.

Telling me again how sad she’ll be when he’s not in her belly anymore (between tears): “It’s the second saddest thing ever.”
Me: “What’s the first?”
“When Ruppy [our dog] died.”
Me: “I don’t like where this conversation’s going.”

Talking about all the blood tests she’s taken during pregnancy: “They’re taking all my blood. That’s all they do. I’m surprised I have any left.”

Apparently time has not slowed so much for my wife because this is what she said about time moving during her pregnancy: I don’t know what happened. Suddenly it went from three months [to delivery] to three weeks. And why is my laundry not done yet?”

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