I am a walking GPS.
When we first moved to Greensboro, my husband made a wrong turn. I told him it wasn't a big deal as long we were heading north. With no maps, no knowledge of any of the street names, and no new-fangled smart phones, I navigated the snarl of back roads and we arrived unscathed at our new home. I brag because Greensboro is the sort of town that plans its major roads with only one aim in mind - to confuse anyone not local into accidentally driving to Virginia.
I also brag because the following story isn't very flattering.
Which leads me to the title of this series: Things Your Mother Won't Tell You Because She Wants Grandchildren. There are many. I was one of the first of our friends to get pregnant, and while being a mammoth-sized guinea pig, I discovered that there are lots of things my mother didn't tell me - like, delivery doesn't happen in a 13 minutes window right after your water breaks. I don't really blame her for that one. I blame Hollywood.
Then there's 'What To Expect When You're Expecting', the book that prepared me for detecting a cerebral hemorrhage in my unborn child and helped me to recognize that I should worry about giving my child cancer in utero, but failed to include instructions for figuring out which of the 87 types of pacifier is best for baby's teeth and will actually be accepted by the baby - that is, if you're the sort of horrible parent who allows things like pacifiers.
And while sitcoms prepared me for the weird food cravings, and my research warned about mood swings, nobody told me that I would, overnight, become a completely incompetent moron. No kind OB/GYN patted my shoulder and said, "You know, you're usually capable of dressing yourself, but today you're going to put your shirt on inside out, spill yogurt down it, and not notice until you're standing in the checkout at Food Lion."
This is all very unfair. And since no one bothered to tell me that I might one day have a hairdresser say, "Oh! There's your little pregnancy bald spot!", I feel it is my duty to at least prepare my beloved friends and family who are considering this venture called Pregnancy & Parenthood.
Which brings us back to the fact that - up until my unexpected firstborn made me hate the smell of rotisserie chicken - I was ready for that Ranger test where they dump you in the desert and make you find your way home blindfolded. 'WTEWYE' (what kind of title is that for a book anyway?) warned me that some women experienced 'Pregnancy Brain'.
I experienced panic.
Why? Because I got lost. On an elevator. In a four story building.
A Four. Story. Building. Not the Mall of America. Not Super Target (who hasn't gotten turned around in one of those?). I was completely lost in a simple brick office building.
I'd had my prenatal appointment, where the midwife completely failed to mention anything about oncoming insanity, and was preparing to return to my car. When I stepped from the office, I paused. This hall looked unfamiliar. Was this the same hall I had entered by? Was that window always there?
I glanced over my shoulder. Doctor's office was still there. I had not fallen down the rabbit hole.
This is why they provide little signs with strangely engraved white letters in long, bland hallways. ELEVATOR. I followed the arrow. I had come in on an elevator. I was sure of it. From a parking garage. Yes. That was it.
I got onto the empty elevator and paused, finger frozen over the buttons. There were only four. But I couldn't decide. I hadn't come in on the first floor, surely. The third? I pressed.
Ding.
The doors opened. No. That couldn't be it. That wasn't familiar at all. It must have been the second floor. Silly me.
Ding.
Uh..., that isn't it either. Where was the doctor's office? Four. Right? Yes. Four. I think.
That was when I realized that I couldn't even remember which floor I had originally entered the elevator from. As in, 38 seconds previously. While I wasn't so far gone as to assume I'd been born, bred, and abandoned in this elevator, it did give me pause.
I had lost my mind.
I decided to try floor one. What could it hurt?
Ding.
That was definitely not where I had parked. It was an enormous lobby with windows and people. Two of the people got onto the elevator, an adorable couple who was obviously expecting a child. I was briefly jealous that this gentleman had had the foresight to accompany his wife, lest she go suddenly mad and be lost in an office complex. He didn't look the type that would be amenable to his child being born in an elevator.
They smiled at me and pressed the 4 button.
Since I hadn't gotten off, I realized I had to pick a destination. Any destination. I mashed the 2 and hoped they would believe that I had simply forgotten something and was returning to --
Ding.
Oh dear heaven, that was not the right floor. I didn't get off. They didn't get off.
We exchanged nervous smiles.
Three. Three. Please be Level 3 -
Ding.
I panicked and made a decision. "Oh! Here it is!" I laughed gaily and stepped off the elevator. "It's just so easy to get turned around in this place!"
They nodded and smiled as the door slid shut. The man may have put a protective arm around his wife - I couldn't be sure. But it didn't matter, because I wouldn't have been capable of stalking them if I'd wanted to. I had just jumped off the elevator onto a completely unfamiliar floor.
There was an exit into the parking deck, so I took it. But I was no fool - I knew that my car was lost forever and I was doomed with it. So I called my husband.
"I want you to know that if I'm not home for dinner, you have to come looking for me," I said in a perfectly reasonable voice.
"Uh.... where will you be?"
"I don't know for certain. I'm lost at the doctor's office."
"Oh! Are you at a new one?"
"No."
"Wait. What?"
"Would you please quit asking questions?" I cried. "I've just ridden an elevator up and down every floor of the building and I've lost our car and now I'm hiking up these obscenely steep concrete steps because our car must be here somewhere and if I go into labor you have to find me before I give birth to our child in a parking deck! We'd have to name it something weird like Garage... but with a sort of French accent - "
"Are you telling me," he interrupted gently, "that you got lost at that little office building where - "
"Nope!" I shrieked. "Not lost! Found it!"
"You found the car?"
"Yes. Obivously. Ha. Ha." I laughed. "It was right here. Where I knew it was. All along."
"So... you're going home now?"
"Yeah," I said casually, "where else? Those dishes won't wash themselves!"
"Uh-huh..."
"So - yeah - you know - you don't need to worry about me." I unlocked the door. "By the way, we still live in the apartment, right? The one on New Garden Road?"
"Yeeess...."
We got lost in Greensboro twice within the next few months, so we scraped the pennies together and bough a GPS for ourselves for Christmas. I think my husband preferred the soothing Garmin voice to the hysterical whimpering of his wife repeating, "I don't know, I don't know - is it that? Left? Wait - no - I don't know, I don't know...", and really, who can blame him?
So that's Part I, 'Pregnancy Brain', for my beloved friends and family and ladies (and men, because you need to know what's going to happen to the perfectly rational person you married). You are warned. 'Pregnancy Brain' is no laughing matter. It will substitute salt for sugar and leave you with only one shaved leg. It will make you lose track of time so that you arrive a day before your scheduled appointment and you will argue with the receptionist for ten minutes before she blinks sweetly and says, "But the fourteenth is TOMORROW". You should probably get a tracking device in case you wander off, and an automatic turn-off switch for your oven. Double check and triple check which burner you turn on before you cook a plastic bowl of pancake batter while wondering why the skillet is still so cold.
And expect the unexpected. (Hey! That's what that book should have been called. 'Expect the Unexpected'. I need to trademark that.) Take heart, for some of the brain will return. It will be older, wiser, able to calculate bulk diapers per unit and compile a list of vacation supplies while making dinner, (and talking your friend through a sewing project). But a lot of those useful things, like the Battle of Hastings and what that thingamabob at the end of shoelaces is called will sort of fade away. You better write those down. Tie a string around your finger to remind you of things.
It will remind you to look down and say, "Blast. What is that there for?"
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