This is not one of those complainy pregnancy entries - actually, it totally is. But I'm laying out the details not because I think it's inherently fascinating that I feel like crap today (and let me count the ways...) but because my first response to badness is to write it down, or type as the case may be.

It turns out that one of the symptoms of the second trimester is shortness of breath and today, I feel like a gasping fish out of water. Maybe it's the heat and humidity or just a bad day but it hurts to breathe and I can't get enough air and I'm having massive flashes of sympathy for my poor old Dad and his diminishing lung capacity. In fact, I've convinced myself this is the early manifestation of his Bad Disease and it will just get worse. I'm utterly limp and have moved from the bed to lie on the couch and I think I'll be here all day. I really really need to watch or read pure fluff: I need 70's Neil Simon movies or Kramer vs. Kramer or something with a "star-studded female cast" but cable is giving me Westerns and Bond movies and endless reality programs about having babies, birthing babies, raising babies. Enough with the babies! I need to read a fluffy paperback novel, the kind with a story, a beginning, a middle, a doomed love, an end. I don't want to learn a damn thing today and all my books seem intent on teaching me. I need to not look at beige carpet, beige walls, plastic plants and black boxy furniture. I sit here and dream of my old bedroom with its pink birdcage curtains moving in the breeze, Japanese lanterns, aqua bedspread. Or my pink couch where I could stretch and watch the street out the bay window, all my kids and YA books at hand to re-read.

I had my first pre-natal appointment yesterday, five days after benefits finally kicked in. Though I am 18 weeks along, they made me go to a "Meet the Nurse" appointment like any other newly pregnant woman and the first hour was a group session. I hate group session anythings. 4 other women and their husbands (man, I have hit the home of Traditional Breeders here in NC) sat in a room with me - and I was alone. I didn't see any reason or even think for a minute that AH should take the afternoon off work and attend this appointment with me but I guess we are already Bad Parents who Don't Care and now, a whole room of people knew it too. Also, they were all just beginning pregnancy and exchanging stories of morning sickness and were kind of hostile that I had almost no vomiting (Nurse: "Well, vomiting is a sign that everything is developing normally, it's a healthy thing"...leaving me to think, "Awesome, so that means mine is f*&$'ed? Thanks!")
And finally, finally after the warnings about sushi and hot dogs and all the usual stuff I don't care about anymore, I got a few minutes of one on one time with a nurse. She was very kind but shocked this was my first appointment. I thought we might listen to a heartbeat or something tangible to prove that everything was okay. But I just gave a lot of blood and took a medical history and the next time they can see me is in 11 days and only then will they try to book an ultrasound which will probably be a month later than most women find out if things are healthy and also, the sex. I am not a worrier or a fretter, honest. I think I've been good and relaxed so far but now that I can actually know something, just one tiny bit of reassurance would help. Instead they are making me do things in the same order as a normal new patient and my patience has suddenly worn thin. So my body seems to have taken up the call and is wallowing. Please send DVD's of "Terms of Endearment", the collected works of L.M. Montgomery and a case of Liberte Peach Six Grain Yogurt. Thank you.