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In the corner of my living room is a chair, the Useless Chair that came with the apartment–it’s made of wrought iron and has a plywood seat with crappy cushions. You sit on it only at need, and the rest of the time it’s mostly for stacking your crap on.

On the Useless Chair now is an infant carseat in a rather snazzy blue plaid pattern. The stroller it can attach to is folded up and stuffed ungracefully next to the couch. But the carseat sits there, waiting. In a fit of whimsy, and to show Matt how the little seatbelt harness worked, I put a stuffed animal in it. And suddenly, it was all a little too Real to both of us.

That seat is there for a baby, and it’s going to have one in it soon. A baby not much bigger than a stuffed animal. A baby we cannot even really picture in our minds. Height, weight, hair color, personality…all a mystery at this point. A complete stranger who may or may not take to us right away. But who is stuck with us for the next couple of decades or so.

Trying to imagine a normal day with this person is hard. It seems impossible that we will be entertainment enough. The feeding and changing we can probably manage, but the rest of it—the bonding and playing and talking to him–seems a bit doubtful. Will we just end up sitting on the couch and staring blankly at each other? It’s like preparing for a years-long blind date. What if we’re utterly boring and unstimulating parents?

I know, this will seem funny to me soon. I know the little synapses in parents’ brains fire up and tell them how to talk to their babies, for the most part, and that, strange as it seems, a person who can neither talk nor control his own drooling will come to seem as fascinating to us as if he were a tiny Albert Einstein. And that he, for lack of any better experience of the world, will find us just as interesting. And then our world will include baby talk and discussions about poop, a lot of the time, and we’ll be ok with that. I hope.

In the meantime, I can’t help thinking that I’m on some sort of weird vacation called “maternity leave”, and I wander around the house, doing the bit of work I have left over, tidying a bit here and there, making occasional trips down the block to the store, and feeling mostly confusion over what I’m supposed to be feeling. No dread, just no knowledge of what is ahead of me. No impatience, yet…I’m tired of being pregnant, but it’s manageable.

It’s a very strange place to be in, mentally. Matt feels it too. He and I look at each other now and then, and at the carseat, and we basically shrug and go about our business again.

We wish we knew how things were going to be. But we don’t know a thing, not really.

Current size of belly: 48.5 inches

Number of maternity tops that have fit me in the boobs: 0. Apparently, all pregnant women should never get bigger than a C cup. Or we’re freaks.

Number of pairs of maternity jeans I have outgrown: 4. One would still fit, if it weren’t stupidly cut low in the waist. What am I supposed to hold it up with, the power of my mind? Or my nonexistent butt?

New moles I have noticed since becoming pregnant: 3

Pairs of shoes I can still wear: 2

Time it takes me to consume entire 18-count box of fruit juice popsicles: 1.5 days

Number of those popsicles I suspect are actually being eaten by Matt and Dean: about 3

Types of meals I have the energy to fix myself: 4. They include pasta and sauce, peanut butter sandwiches, cereal, and scrambled eggs. Everything else is either too time-consuming or makes me nauseous.

Length of time it take me to eat an entire half-pint of cookie dough ice cream: 45 minutes.

Number of breakfasts per day: 2. One before I leave the house, one at work.

Number of naps I will take on a day I don’t go to work: 2

Number of times I have tried to watch A Baby Story and ended up throwing my pillow at the TV in disgust because every single woman gets strapped down and hooked up to an epidural the minute she goes into labor: 6

Number of times I have contemplated cleaning up the house for the baby’s arrival and decided to take a nap instead: About 5

Number of actual hormonal, pregnancy-induced freakouts, complete with tears: 2. I think.

Minutes it takes watching something sentimental and sad for me to start crying: 3

Number of times I get up to pee during the night: about 4

Number of times I have hit my foot on the stupid floor fan in the living room while stumbling to the bathroom in the dark: 5, dammit.

In 4 days (since I have Columbus Day off) I stop working at my office and start working from home, in preparation for Imminent Birth Oh My God I Could Go Into Labor Any Minute.

I say working, but it’s more “working” since my child had the excellent sense to be due in the slowest time of the year for me. No new projects, just some dribbles and drabbles from old ones. My last four days will be spent deleting old files and reading over book proofs; once I’m home, I’ll have nothing but the occasional book proof to do, or perhaps answering the occasional question about the finer points of semicolons or em-dashes.

Which means that unless the kid decides to come early, I’ll have a lot of time for thinking and being in the house too much, and I’m a little worried about that. There’s not a whole lot left for me to do baby-wise, and without being in the office 8 hours a day, I’m afraid I’ll go stir-crazy. There’s not many options for amusement in the neighborhood, yet I’m scared to take the train anywhere, because I have this fear of giving birth on a subway seat and having to name the kid “F Train” or “Atlantic Avenue.”

I’m also so freakin’ huge right now that my pregnancy clothes are straining a bit, and yet I’m too close to birthing to want to buy more. Which means my old reliables get recycled quite a lot, despite the fact that I nearly flashed an entire Hasidic family this afternoon when the waistband of my stretched-out shorts tried to make a break for my knees. I barely caught them in time. I’m going to have to start safety-pinning myself together before I leave the house, just to prevent accidents. Or start wearing suspenders.

I am finally getting the occasional, Braxton-Hicks-ish cramp, especially when I’m tired, and I take that as a good sign, though still, it could technically be another month. Though God help me, I don’t know how I can get much bigger without rupturing my abdomen. I’m 48.5″ at my widest point right now. That’s like nearly two skinny people’s worth. Normally I think of myself as kind of stocky, but in the mirror, the non-pregnant parts of me are almost svelte in comparison to the giant gut-ball I’m carrying.

The baby turns and squirms and, I imagine, complains in his own way when I sit upright too long (it cramps him) or toss and turn in bed, requiring him to readjust himself yet again. Ideally, I think he would prefer I was either walking or lying on my right side, where he likes to settle, at all times. And eating, of course.

I’m intimidated, I’ll admit it, by the birth itself, and afterwards. I read lots of birth stories online, as I’ve mentioned, and more than a few tell me that there is indeed pain beyond anything you’ve felt before. Which makes you wonder, why the hell are you considering natural childbirth, you crazy bitch?

I really think it boils down to my disillusionment with drugs (legal ones, can’t speak for the other kind). I am that person who always has the weird side effect, or on whom the drug does the opposite of what it’s supposed to, or actually makes the pain worse. Mild pain-killers like acetaminophin are usually ok, but anything stronger is always approached with trepidation, because I don’t know for sure how I’ll react. Non-drowsy drugs knock me out on a regular basis, and half doses act just as strongly on me as whole ones. The lightest dose of hormones will throw everything out of whack for me. And the few times I’ve gotten really drunk, my hangover started before I even got to bed, and lasted for three days.

So the idea of whipping out the Stadol or Demerol, or epidural cocktails that include god-knows-what and are injected into my spine, gives me nightmares of being both loopy and high, and still in pain. And of having the damn things either knock me out too far or wear off too soon. Which happens fairly often to a lot of women.

I don’t want forceps, or a Cesarean, because I am very attached to my body and don’t want anyone damaging it without a damn good reason. Saving the baby’s life or mine is a good reason; having to fish the baby out because I’m too drugged to push properly, not so much.

It’s a devil’s choice, really. I do get the natural high that comes from natural birth, and the feeling of accomplishment, and even the spiritual transcendence that being completely aware allows you to have after surviving something so difficult. At the same time, those aren’t my primary reasons for going natural. If there were a perfectly painless yet side-effect free way to give birth, I’d hop on that bandwagon without a regret. There isn’t. So I’m going for the one that allows me the most freedom and control of the situation, since I won’t really have control over my body.

Hmm. That was kind of a tangent, I suppose. But at 2am on a night 3 weeks before my due date, they seem like the normal sorts of thoughts to have.

But I think I’ll try to sleep now, all the same.

One of the bloggers I read, I think it was A Little Pregnant, defined something called “drive-by parenting.” Basically, it’s a phenomenon where a parent posts about something that happened…a decision they made about parenting, an interaction with their kid, whatever…and then got nasty comments (or commenters flaming each other) about it. Especially if it had anything to do with different ways of giving birth, breastfeeding vs. bottlefeeding, how to deal with sleep issues, or feeding issues, or discipline. Comments along the line of “you’re ruining your child if you do that!” or “your decision to do that means you think my decision not to do that is wrong and you’re looking down on me!”

Over at this post at The Leery Polyp, you can see this in action. There is some sort of weird compulsion that grips certain commenters whenever another parent shares their opinions on these topics. Jo, the blogger there, posts her amazing birth story, and talks about what it means to her. Most of her commenters agree that yes, it was amazing. But the drive-by types start sniffing immediately that her happiness with her experience must mean that she disapproves of people like them, who had very different experiences. If she thinks her natural childbirth was great, in other words, then she is by definition looking down on their less-natural childbirths or adoptions. Despite the fact that she never said anything of the sort.

And that is just pure bullshit. And I’m going to say right here that if it shows up on my blog, I won’t stand for it. My experience is my experience; I am going to feel about it however I want. I am going to make the parenting decisions that I think are the best. And if that offends someone, they are free to say so or go write their own blog about it or what have you, but I am not going to try to placate them. If they hassle me too much, I will ban them.

It’s not that some things aren’t up for discussion, or that I won’t ask other people’s opinions on occasion, but the fact of the matter is, this is my kid and my blog and unsolicited hostile opinions about how I’m handling things are neither needed nor wanted. Every kid and every parent is different. I will do what I think is best, and the rest of the world can go hang as far as I’m concerned; I don’t owe anybody an apology for the decisions I make.

So let me just lay it out up front. Oh, and when I say “I” and “me” I am not leaving Matt out of the equation; it’s just that this is my blog, so I mostly speak in the first person. All these issues and decisions are ones that we have made together. Just to be clear.

I am, unless medical reasons prevent me, going to have a natural, active childbirth. I may or may not choose some sort of painkilling drug depending on how things go. Overall, I do in fact think that’s the best way to birth, though certainly not the only way. If you didn’t birth your kids that way, that’s your business, not mine. I’m not going to apologize to you for what I’ve decided to do, though.

I also intend to breastfeed for the first year. Again, I think this is the overall best way to go. If you bottlefeed, yay for you. I don’t really care. I’m not judging you, nor do I think your baby will be mentally defective because he wasn’t breastfed. I wasn’t either, come to that, and I turned out ok. If for some reason I can’t breastfeed or breastfeed as long as I like, I’m not going to feel guilty about that either.

In general, I find the attachment parenting style appealing, though I reserve absolute freedom to adjust what I do as a parent based on what works for my kid. I don’t think picking up a baby and feeding him when he’s hungry spoils him. I think some babies need to be held and cuddled to sleep, some don’t, and I will have to see which one mine is. I will toilet train when the time seems right, not when other people tell me I should. I will do my best to teach my child politeness, but I think it’s unrealistic to expect small children to be quiet and polite at all times. I will do my best to keep him from annoying other people, but I won’t always succeed, and I won’t beat myself up too much for that.

I will not spank. I don’t think it works as well as time outs and other punishments, and it teaches a child fear and violence. I know this because that’s what it taught me, and it permanently damaged my relationship with my dad. I really don’t care what anyone on the pro-spanking side has to say, I think they’re completely misguided. There is no debate on this for me. It will make my job harder, no doubt, and make some people think I’m spoiling him. I couldn’t care less.

I am not raising my child in an organized religion, though he will be free to talk about and explore any beliefs he finds interesting. Or be an atheist if that seems right to him. This is something I’ve given a lot of thought to, and while I’m happy to talk about what I think about religion, I won’t tolerate anyone hassling me or my kid on this decision.

I will teach him about reproduction and the opposite sex and responsible behavior when he’s ready. When he’s a teenager, I’ll tell him that I’d rather he wasn’t sexually active, but that if he decides to be, what kind of precautions he has to take. Also, that I will kick his ass if he gets someone pregnant, and make him get a job and pay child support to boot, because it will be his responsibility to take care of any child he brings into the world.

That’s pretty much it. I wanted to have this post up for future reference, so I could link it to any commenters who decide to bust out with the drive-bys. Maybe I’ll be lucky and not have much of that to put up with, but it’s always good to be prepared.