My due date came and went on Saturday, and despite the odd contraction, this child is showing no signs of wanting to be born. This total lack of initiative proves she is definitely our baby.
On the other hand, as the inspector at police headquarters told Alex and I today, maybe she's right to stay put. (It's a long story, but basically they've been ordered to investigate whether we have a so-called "Scheinehe", or a marriage for the sake of a visa. Pro tip: If you got married when you were eight months pregnant, chances are good that it wasn't for a visa.) The world is so shit anyway, he explained. And once she comes out, he said, marking up our documents with a highlighter and a great deal of disgust, she'd do better to just stay a child forever.
"Alles, nur nie älter als sechs Jahr werden," he said. "Sechs. Bis dahin geht's grad noch." ("Do anything but get older than six. Six. Until then it's just about okay.")
God, I love this country and the people in it. I'm serious.
The uncertainty about when I'll finally go into labor and what that will actually be like (sources say uncomfortable) makes me anxious and irritable, and my anxiousness and irritability are compounded by the heat and by the sounds of traffic down on Gumpendorfer Strasse, where we live, and by the fact that one of our two devil cats just peed in the corner again. Also, everyone keeps calling and texting to ask if I'm still pregnant, which is very sweet, and which is stressing me the fuck out because it means all I can think about all day is how very pregnant I am and that I am essentially waiting around to lay an egg.
Also stressing me out is the long list of things I want to accomplish while I'm on maternity leave. This includes things like, "Be a good mother," although given the heat and my ill temper this has temporarily been downgraded to, "Give birth". One step at a time, right?
Another thing on my list was to start a blog, because my understanding is that once you have a baby you finally have something worth blogging about. With this in mind, I forced Alex to join me in brainstorming session about what to name this blog (his suggestion: Naomi's Blog) and on the basis of that conversation I was thisclose to going with "Poo & Nipples," something I had previously discussed with another friend, but then I realized that maybe that's a little bit gross and essentialist and in any case I have no right to go around summarizing the experience of blogging about babies (and sundry) before I've even had a baby. I've spent the last week not blogging because I have been going back and worth about whether "Poo & Nipples," which is an awesome name, is maybe inappropriate and degrading, and I feel like it might be... ugh, it's all just so hard when you weigh nearly 100 kg and spend all your time crying and sweating.
Anyway, so THEN I thought: Naomi, how about you pick any old freaking name and you can just reserve the right to change it any time in the event you manage to keep this up and can be bothered.
Et voila, Life & Times on Gumpen Village Street. Enjoy.
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