aura of hormones
Sometimes I get these back pains during the pregnancy, as if the baby’s shifted and is resting on a nerve. Downward-facing dog any time of day and usually the pain subsides. This isn’t so good if I’m driving because the pain makes me want to leave the road, but often I’ll wake up in the middle of the night with that pain and do my best to shift the baby around. Sometimes if I pee he has more room and he moves for me.
Two days ago, Rosie fell on the ice and hurt her knee. It swelled up to a size impressive enough that her mother made an appointment for the doctor’s and I drove her there, each of us walking very slowly from the car to the doctor’s office. It was important to make enough sounds of awe when Rosie showed off her knee, I learned that.
This morning Steve drove Rosie to her driver’s ed (!) class, dropping her off right at the door and with a borrowed cane. When he came home he hopped on the treadmill for his run. I was in the dining room eating breakfast and working on a poem, and then suddenly my back wouldn’t let me sit down. He came up from his run, didn’t say a word, filled a plastic bag with ice and went to the bedroom. Five minutes later I was joining him, downward-facing dog, groaning in pain that wouldn’t subside. He had pulled something in his neck while on the treadmill. The baby was poking at my spine. And Rosie was hobbling on a sprained knee.
Someone had to get Rosie at class, and it was supposed to be me. Steve got up to get ready for work, bitter at his neck and stuck in his own body, and as he said goodbye, he was off to work, that’s when I started to cry. I couldn’t get Rosie at class, I couldn’t get out of bed, I cried. He drove to get her. The three of us lay low for the next half-hour, Steve with ice for my back resting beside me with ice for his neck, and Rosie on her bed with her knee propped.
Then Joon started to shiver, and her shivering kept getting longer. She lay on top of me uncomfortably and shivered, shivered. Steve let her outside and she lay in the snow. When she came back inside, she seemed okay, though still she stared at me with those eyes — something was off inside of her.
My friend came by to drop off a present and she assured us that it was my fault. I have an aura of hormones that we can’t see, she said. Joon plopped down right on my friend’s feet as she stood at the door. I stood like a caricature of a pregnant person, my hands on my lower back.
Rosie begged to have friends over tonight — she’s been left stir-crazy right at the beginning of her winter break with a swollen knee. Steve agreed, though I was hesitant and pretty much locked the basement door once the girls descended. Once in a while the pain will return and I’ll be back in bed groaning, crying, alternating hot pads and ice cubes. Steve is still in his own pain, and sometimes we bond because of it and sometimes we clash. There seem to be so many things to take care of right now — bodies and present-wrapping and a pivoting fetus and a swollen knee, a strained neck, sympathy lower back pain, a shivering dog — I suddenly want a doula, or a mother, or someone to take care of everything. Or a television, at least, to compete with the hormone aura.
