PsychoBird and Captain Nemo

Okay, okay - I was wrong last week. I was too excited: I miscounted. Shrimp was eleven weeks old. Now Shrimp is twelve weeks old. (I wanted to write he’s twelve weeks old – how odd is that?) And I’ve got my first appointment with my ob-gyn this afternoon…I’m not sure what he’ll do. Something about checking the height of the top of the uterus, along with the usual prodding around where only H usually does. H is coming with me. Not to supervise the prodding around. But hopefully to hear the heartbeat. I hope we get to hear it this time – I hope ob-gyns do this. I just can’t believe we have to wait to twenty weeks to see our mini-us at our first ultrasound! That’s at five months, yo! Long time to wait. I’m just saying. So, more news later.

I read it’s important to have your questions ready when you have appointments like this. Weird thing is – I don’t have questions. I’m not worried about anything. I am feeling great. I am eating okay, I am sleeping sort of okay (read on for explanation on title of this post), and I just don’t have weird, bothersome things happening to me. Well, besides having painful (impressively big) breasts and having shooting pain for a couple of seconds when I sneeze. And a swelling belly. So long story short, I have no questions for the Dr. this afternoon. I’m going to tell him we’re thinking of having a doula and that we want to hear our baby’s heartbeat. We might stage a sit-in if he tells us he can’t. I’ll rip the stethoscope from his neck, run to the nearest bathroom with H in tow, lock the door behind us and do it myself, dammit. Oh – you need a Doppler. We’ll figure it out. No sweat. My man’s a technofreak.

And now the moment you have all been waiting for: the explanation for the title of this post. Why PsychoBird? Because a PsychoBird lives in my neighborhood. This little fucker is playing with my mind. I’m sure he is all cute and fluffy-brown with his beady black mini-eyes and his cute head cocking thing and the little hopping move I adore, he was maybe even born this spring, but he’s playing with my mind nonetheless. I suspect his favorite spot is right outside my bedroom window.

Other interesting feature of pregnancy: you have to pee a lot. So I almost always (read: six nights out of seven a week) need to get up in the middle of the night. Usually only once, around three or four. If it’s three, I get back to sleep. And if it’s four, that’s when my feathered foe strikes. He waits till I get back in bed and close my eyes, then starts screaming. Technically, it’s not called screaming, but that’s what it sounds like to me at four in the morning. And it’s not melodic little fluffy birdie chirping – it’s wake up cause I’m telling you to screaming.

Since it’s impossibly hot at night, we sleep with the window open. So I hear this bastard going tweet - no wait it’s not tweet it’s eee! - waiting one or two seconds, then eee! again, and keeping this up – I swear you could use this in techno he’s so timed – for fifteen, sometimes twenty minutes at a time. Just long enough to get me annoyed. And fully awake.

Eee! Pause. Eee! Pause. Eee! Pause. Wake up! Pause. Fuckin’ now! Pause. Eee!

Even after shutting the window when I hear the first couple of eees, I can still hear him. I try to fall back asleep, every time. It never works. So after half an hour to 45 minutes of tossing and turning, which half the time wakes H up, I get up and go sit on the couch with my mini-wheats and Boo. And thus my day begins at four, with PsychoBird.

I have (almost serenely) chosen to accept PsychoBird as my new conditioning partner. Surprised? Me too. But PsychoBird is getting me used to waking up at four in the morning, because he/she knows Shrimp will eventually emerge from his Nautilus and demand breastmilk from Captain Nemo, sometimes at four in the morning.

This morning, I didn’t fight it or get pissed off. I just got up and had some cereal and spent quality time with Boo, who was delighted. And then I fell asleep on the couch with a purring heap of happiness next to my belly.