Slice of Lime for Jocelyn-Great with Child

My life is kind of consumed with trying to get this quilt done for Diana before she goes to college in a couple of weeks. Free time from that is generally spent schlepping her about to procure items she is certain she cannot live without while off in the wilds of a college dorm. Jocelyn made the comment that she had difficulty picturing me carrying a 9.5 lb baby. Well, since I am bereft of other inspiration for this week's entry, I am going to share the "great with child" pictures. We'll work up to it slowly...

Above we have a picture of me about a week before I delivered Diana. This was during the home invasion baby shower some friends gave me due to my 5 week confinement to bed rest. They descended upon my living room one evening and came bearing decorations, cake, and gifts. They barged in, set up, threw a party, cleaned up, and left. It was fairly impressively orchestrated and executed. In any event, since I had spent 5 weeks as the immovable mass on the couch I had given up on dressing to impress, hence the grody sweats at my own shower. Oh, and that string around the belly...that was a game called "guess the girth." I was providing the correct measurement for all the other lengths of string everyone else had cut in estimation of my proportions. This was my first pregnancy so it was the "cutest." The belly just popped straight out the front. From behind me you wouldn't guess I was preggers. In fact, just before I was ordered to bed by my doc I had been walking downtown when I heard someone come up behind me and catcall whistle before making a comment that let me know it was directed at me. Not that this was a regular occurrence mind you, but my normal response would have been to ignore it. However, I was pretty sure whoever was whistling didn't realize it was at a pregnant woman so I swung my belly around and patted it as I winked at him and said, "Thanks!" The look of horror on his face was priceless.

Here we have baby bump #2 about a month and half before delivery. It was the end of dry season in Trinidad when Calypso was born. The combination of that heat and being pregnant combined to make me a fairly immovable mass again even though this time around I had no medical complications. Mr. Lime described my daily schedule thusly, "She gets up, gives Diana breakfast, then sits down. She gets up to give us all lunch, puts Diana down for a nap, then sits. After the sun goes down she gets up and cooks dinner, cleans it up, then goes to bed." Well, add in doing laundry (this included cloth diapers which necessitated boiling the needed water on the stove since we had no hot water heater), and grocery shopping, and house cleaning too but yeah...I did sit a lot. When I sat I fantasized about standing in a cold shower for about an hour to cool off. Did I mention it was the end of dry season and we only had enough water to take sponge baths? Yeah, fun times. This picture was before we realized the water tank was almost empty or we wouldn't have filled up the kiddie pool. (Most folks have water tanks which fill up during the few hours a day the city pumps water to your neighborhood. That way when the city isn't pumping water you still have running water in the house coming out of the giant tank. As dry season goes on the city pumps less and less frequently so you could go days or even a couple of weeks without your tank being replenished.)

Ok, ok, so here's the picture just a few days before Calypso was born. I sewed that dress. It was just about the only thing that fit me at the end. Really, wasn't that huge, wildly bright flower print just the right choice for making me look svelte? Those sandals were the only things I could get on my feet. I told you, the heat and I did not get along during the pregnancy.

Finally, we come to the shot of me about a week before Isaac was born. I am pretty sure in addition to developing a 9.5 lb fetus I had also developed my own gravitational pull. I was avoiding cameras at that point. I only tolerated this one being taken because we were christening the deck on the back of the house Mr. Lime had just finished. It's such a becoming picture with me in my ugliest glasses, squinting into the sun, sweating to death in the early September heat. Yeah, that was the summer of '95. Ninety-five was also the number of days in a row the thermometer cracked 95 degrees and 95 % humidity and when I carried a 9.5 lb infant. We had no A/C. It was horrid but at least I could stand in my shower whenever I wanted to and I only had to endure 3 months of summer instead of a full 9 months of it.

Unfortunately, I was also horrid. One male friend made the mistake of trying to nicely inquire as to my well-being one day. I snarled, "You strap a 30 lb basketball to your gut and swell your ankles to twice their normal size and tell me how you'd be doing!" As soon as the words left my mouth I was overwhelmed by guilt and turned around in tears to apologize. The poor guy never knew what hit him. To his credit we have remained friends. Just before delivery my doctor estimated I had "a nice 7 lb baby in there." I laughed in his face as I reminded him my other 2 were bigger than that and I could tell by my inability to breathe, the need to remain within close proximity to a bathroom, and by the way this kid was crushing a nerve in my legs that he was going to dwarf his sisters. When I saw his cantaloupe cranium and linebacker shoulders I have to admit to thanking God for c-sections.

Now, if you want to see a truly adorable pregnant woman skip on over to Kat's place and send some prayers and good vibes for a healthy delivery for her sooner rather than later so her hubby can be home with her when the lil punkin arrives.