PREGNANCY | Hey yo.  So let’s start right off with the good stuff: I’m officially 35 weeks along and my evil spawn continues to marinate.

After the whole saga with being hospitalized, this is positive news. I’m technically still threatening preterm labour, and in case you’re interested, my annoyingly irritable uterus has been contracting every ten minutes or so for the past three weeks (super fun, you should definitely try it), but whatevs!

The fetus is still pickling and that’s what matters. I’m not worried anymore.

Closet progress. It looks like shit now, I know.

My apartment remains only semi-ready, but I’m making slow progress day by day. We built some shelves in a narrow closet in the former guest room/office (now baby room/guest room), and I’ve made some progress on the worst of the cleaning.

I’m exhausted all the time.

Even mild exertion (from say, walking, bending over to pick something up, or being alive, etc.) leaves me dizzy, and I’m also bored with being largely confined (I’ve barely left the apartment in weeks), but the good news is we’ve got a window AC up in here, so at least it’s comfortable. And at least I can still work, since all my work really requires me to do is sit at my computer in my pyjamas. All in all, things are going well.

You know, I complained a lot about pregnancy recently, but one thing I’m finding, especially since this whole complication, is that people can be really nice to you when you’re pregnant.

Yeah, annoying strangers are always touching you without your consent, old grannies give you obnoxious advice when you’re trying to read your book on the bus in peace, friends you thought you could count on disappear, and acquaintances you never liked much in the first place show up to share every condescending, fear-mongering anecdote in the universe.

People treat you like an incubator instead of a human woman. But, despite all of that, other folks can be really really nice.

Tiny beebee clothes!

See this cute little baby outfit? It’s a cardigan, a hat (or touque, specifically, because we’re Canadian you know), and a set of wee booties. Handmade from a cotton/acrylic/silk yarn. Machine washable. It’s pre-shrunk and pre-washed. It’s seasonal and gender-neutral. And you know who hand knit it for my unknown spawn? A girl I knew in University who I haven’t seen in approximately 15 years.

Thank you, Rejeanne!

We’ve had, maybe two interactions since I left Queen’s, but she saw that I was pregnant because of a Facebook post, wrote me a congratulatory note, and then she mentioned that she’d like to knit something for the baby and asked what colours would I like, etc., and I was all ‘Sure, sure, go ahead, any colours are fine, blah blah blah’ not really expecting it to happen, because so often in life people say things, but actual follow through is way less common.*

But lo and behold, just a few weeks later, this little outfit arrived at my door all the way from Edmonton, perfectly executed, super soft, paired with a nice card. Amazing.

I could not have been more surprised. I mean, it was a really sweet thing to do. Wasn’t it?

NOBODY does stuff like this. Nobody.

Nathan keeps bringing it up because he can’t believe it actually happened either. “I’m so touched!” he keeps saying. And also, “That is the nicest thing.” He seems truly astonished. What does that mean about us? Are our friend-expectations too low at this point, or is this sort of kindness really as unusual as it feels?

One of the main things I’ve learned in pregnancy is that having expectations will likely lead to disappointment.

Friends don’t always do what you want them to. You land in the hospital and you’re surprised because the people you expected to care don’t, and other people do. Folks don’t always react or act in the ways we might have hoped for. But there are these funny little moments, where people do the kinds of kind things you never expected and never asked for and it gives you a little boost when other things are a bit of a bummer.

That’s a pretty nice to thing to discover, right?

And I guess it’s true for life in general, and not just for pregnancy. People can be sweet. And when you’re not expecting much, sweetness is that much sweeter.

*So often, we run into someone we used to know on the street or something and we go “we should have lunch” or “let’s get together to catch up soon!” but rarely do such sentiments turn into actual meet ups.

And that’s okay. That’s just how people are. Sometimes, the over-promising is a little extreme, however.

I have a cousin who, beginning in 2004, kept announcing that she was going to give me a housewarming present of some kind. She must have mentioned it 15 times, nearly every time I saw her, over the course of years. Two apartments later, said present had never materialized (which was fine because I didn’t actually want or need or ask for anything), but because she kept mentioning it, we had to do this weird little dance where I had to thank her profusely every time she mentioned it, as if the phantom present was a real thing. It was very odd.

2018: Alas, since I migrated the site, all the original comments on my posts were lost. I’ve tried to preserve them as images, as below.

Original comments from “35 weeks and all’s well”.