Out of character experiences
This baby has clearly taken over my body. That much was to be expected, I'm sure. But what surprises me are the other ways pregnancy has manifested itself:
1 Heaven help me if our desktop (with my Endnote library and research notes and everything else) ever gets fixed and comes home and I have to start writing real academic papers again.
- I'm weepy and moody. (To be fair, that probably isn't strictly a pregnancy symptom, I'm probably always like that. But I do think it is more pronounced because of my pregnancy.)
- There's the preggie rage. Yes, I simply cannot keep my pregnant tongue under control.1
- My vocabulary is shrinking. Much like the letters of the alphabet in the fabulous Ella Minnow Pea, words are simply vanishing.1
- My control of language is disappearing. As my vocabulary becomes more limited (soon to be composed exclusively of monosyllabic grunts, I'm afraid), one would think I could tighten my grip on what little remains. Not so. I'm incoherent most of the time. Poor Werner has no idea what I'm saying. (But, then, neither do I when he's speaking German. Fair's fair?)1
- My spelling. In school, I always aced spelling tests, (ok, tests in most other subjects, too), and since then not only have I written theses and published papers, I've done my share of copy-editing too. I'm a good speller, honestly. But not lately. And my command of grammar and punctuation is worsening by the day. In an earlier entry, I caught myself typing companies rather than company's. As a devotée of Lynne Truss' Eats, Shoots & Leaves, I'm terribly nitpicky about punctuation, yet now I'm often in flagrant violation of the truly sensible ground rules for commas, apostrophes, and other such necessities.1
- I cannot sleep with blankets or sheets on top of me. Up until now, I could never sleep unless I was covered. Even if it was 35 degrees Celsius and the room wasn't air conditioned, I needed to have at least a sheet - if not a duvet - on top of me. Now I cannot tolerate having any covers at all, even when I feel chilled.
1 Heaven help me if our desktop (with my Endnote library and research notes and everything else) ever gets fixed and comes home and I have to start writing real academic papers again.
posted by Melanie A at 7:07 p.m.
1 Comments:
Baby Brain. My lovely male boss at Bell was knowledgeable about it and compassionately patient in the face of it (including when I would completely forget something he'd asked me to do . . . *blush*)
One of the male managers, who was decidedly not lovely, said in reference to me and a pregnant colleague he'd heard somewhere that pregnant women's IQs dropped by 20%, and that it showed. I just said, "so, we're finally getting through to you on your level?"
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