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March 06, 2009

Babies Inspired By Babies!

The loveliest people known to all of mankind threw me a Hello Kitty baby shower last week. All without Justin Beck ever finding out. He says baby showers are bad luck. I say baby showers are rites of passage. Tomato, tomato.

I’m pretty sure doing something like that elevates all involved into family status. I am still dying. All of them (gays and ladies alike) are now official aunties to this baby. There was one straight guy there – bless his heart, sup Gene? – so he’s an honorary uncle. But I’m saying.

Have you ever had somebody or a group of amazing somebodies do something so very nice for you that you don’t even know what to do with yourself? I really had no idea how to feel. I walked in and there was just Hello Kitty ablaze. You have no idea. Bottles of pink champagne with pink ribbons with my name on them! And pink straws poking through the top of a pink Hello Kitty tropical umbrella! Totally stupid amazing! Pink towers of cupcakes. Sugary crazy ones. Hello Kitty napkins! Hello Kitty Pez gifts for prize winners. Hello Kitty confetti. A spread of beautiful appetizers, delicious main dinner course and crazy desserts. Pretty pink spiked punch. Like, these people worked like animals.

This party was just gorgeous. Like nothing I ever imagined could happen to me, for me. I felt guilty, it was all so beautiful. It was a baby shower but not a typical baby shower. When I say "not typical" I mean over-the-top Kimora style "fabulosity" really. By the end of the night some folks were perusing The Big Penis Book while listening to Whitney Houston techno remixes -- in front of my mother-in-law. When I said, "Um, that's my mother-in-law right there!" my friend Bradford said, "Girl please. I do not censor myself for my own mother and I'm certainly not going to do it for yours." Okay. Point taken. It's not right, but it's okay.

It was cocktail-y (nighttime, honey) which is so how I would envision a "ferocious" baby shower to be. And the invitation! These fools took a photo of my Maxim picture and put a stamp through it talking about “NEVER AGAIN!” and I about fell out. That is amazing. And so true! And so me.

This entire pregnancy, I have been very much opposed to “baby” everything. I have tried to maintain a sense of the non-mom version of me, you know, until it got to be too ridiculous to bother with blue patent leather high heels. I just looked sad. But I’m trying to still be my true self but intertwine my mom self into that seamlessly. I don’t even really know where one starts and one stops because everything is unknown right now. But I am feeling really confident and scared as fuck simultaneously.

It’s almost as though I am cognizant of the fact that there is a physical necessity to be prepared for a baby’s arrival and yes, I will slog through the pages and pages of blankets so I can swaddle this baby with love but am I emotionally ready to be doing all that? Yes, but I still feel very much overwhelmed about motherhood and what a baby really means and I wanted this! I don’t even know how to explain it.

It’s not even a selfish “I’m not going to be light and airy and come and go as I please” type of thing. It’s a “Do I have what it takes to be America’s Next Top Mommy?” type of thing actually. Will my child sufficiently, effectively, adorably be the center of my universe and will I be able to provide this person with all that a person of this caliber and importance and gravity needs?

She makes me write run-on sentences!

I am in awe of her and she makes me nervous. And I love her in a way that I do not know love so it’s like I am somehow, not smart. It’s like I’m confused by my own inability to grasp what is really happening. Overwhelmed isn’t quite the word. Unconditional love isn’t even close. Those are all cliché things that people say because something has to be said.

There is no category for this range of emotions.

No, there is no category for this. I just tried to think of one again. Nope. None.

You basically grow a human inside your own body. You say, Wow, there are four ovaries in my body right now. Weird, I have 40 phalanges (knock on wood). You endure catastrophic emotional duress, physical pain that knows no bounds but you’re happy about it. You look over at your husband who looks back at you, the vessel for his real live baby, and you feel weird and yet sensational. And you trace the stars and hearts that are beaming from your face in white lights all the way up to the ceiling until they dissolve into glitter that floats back down onto your shoulders.

So in the midst of seeing all the Hello Kitty stuff, I was overwhelmed into an almost numb happiness. Like, I could feel that I was really happy. The presentation and the hugs and the warm wishes and kindness and the thoughtfulness – all that was tactile and I was presently absorbing it. I could taste it and I could feel my heart beat through my skin. My face was flush, warm with hope and shit. I was my meta skinny self floating outside my physical bloated self. Similar to the sensation I felt when he proposed to me. I was looking at myself become this transformed emotional weird lady. And I liked this lady and everything, but I do not know how she got here. Did she hitchhike to this place on shrooms because I do not remember picking her crazy ass up!? You know what I mean?

So now it’s the final countdown. I stop working this Monday!

You know that Justin Beck is the most Jewish person to ever walk the face of the earth (he believes himself to be this) and so we have lots of Jewish rules to follow. There are to be no baby products in this house until my baby comes. It has been a hard rule to follow because I feel like I am going against my own human urges to nest. I have a trunk full of goodies. I have stuff in my mother-in-law’s garage. I even have stuff in my garage now! And only because I diabolically made plans for us to go get “essentials” at Buy Buy Baby at 8 in the evening after he had a full day of work, knowing he’d be too tired to take the stuff to his mom’s after. Umhmm, you have to have a plan! “Justin Lloyd Beck, it’s like illegal to not have a baby first aid kit in your house before the baby is born. Don’t you know anything? You could be fined by the county!” He was so tired and still making business calls on this trip that he didn’t notice the cart filled to the top with inessential modern bath toys, pink booties shaped like bunnies, matching lotions for me and baby girl, Hello Kitty band-aids, etc.

So now I confess on the Internets. This Jewish superstition has not deterred me. I have stuff hidden in the house for when I need my fix. If I put it out to the universe, it's not an ugly omission or lie. It's a pretty admission and acknowledgment. When he’s not around, I put a onesie to my face and breathe in the Dreft. And I giggle like a stupid ass!

Can’t wait to meet our baby.

Posted by melissah at March 6, 2009 03:07 PM