Pregnancy

Last night I had a dream that Al Roker was demonstrating proper breastfeeding techniques to me and a room full of 18 other pregnant women. He had gigantic nipples and was handling them with an almost unlawful carelessness, just swinging them around and pinching them and mooshing them like little red meat patties. He made sure to warn us that we shouldn’t try this at home, not yet anyway, because persistent nipple stimulation has been known to induce labor. And I know I had this dream because I just read about the whole nipple stimulation technique, that there are some doctors who recommend that a pregnant woman past her due date try twiddling her nipples for up to three hours at a time.

Three whole hours of nipple twiddling.

I can hardly imagine doing anything for three whole hours. I did see that three-hour plus movie about the hobbit people, and I must admit that Gollum was just so cute that I wanted to take him home, slap a diaper on his butt, and dress him in itty-bitty pink onesies, but I wouldn’t describe that experience as watching a movie for three hours. I’d describe it as more of a three-hour countdown until I could pee again.

I’m not yet in a desperate enough position that I would consider even a whole hour of nipple twiddlage, and that’s mainly because I’m not officially due for another 12 days. But I am already so horrendously uncomfortable that if I go even four seconds past that due date I’ve got a fool-proof list of strategies that should send my body if not into labor at least into labor-like convulsions.

At the top of that list is watching back-to-back episodes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” specifically the ones guest starring Ben Stiller. There is no other television show that makes me more uncomfortable, and the sound of Larry David’s voice alone causes my body to contort involuntarily into a pretzel-shaped spasm on the floor. Watching that show is pretty much the equivalent of being chased down by a gang of thugs and beaten to death with a blunt, lead pipe. And then they asked themselves this season How can we make this more uncomfortable than a bloody death at the hand of a plumbing utensil? and called up Ben Stiller and asked him to play himself. I’d be willing to bet that midwives could stop prescribing castor oil and just advise their patients to watch Larry David blind Ben Stiller with a shishkabob skewer, and no one would ever have to have their pregnancy medically induced.

If that doesn’t work (how could it not?), we’ve got several episodes of “Trading Spaces” archived on the TiVo, ones featuring Her Whoreness Hilda Santo-Thomas gluing things to walls that ought not be glued to walls. I know that anyone idiotic enough to sign up for that show deserves every bit of injustice perpetrated on their home, but there are few sins in this world so evil enough that they warrant the punishment of having two tons of goose feathers hot glue-gunned to the bedroom walls. And then there’s that one episode where she wraps a room in cardboard — no, seriously, CARDBOARD — and she makes sure that even if the homeowners don’t want the walls of their guestroom covered in CARDBOARD, that there is no possible way they would ever be able to remove it because of all the nails and glue and tape and concrete she uses to seal it to the drywall.

My thinking is that my baby would see this happening through the semi-translucent wall of the womb and be so outraged that she’d have to try to force her way out so that she could choke Hilda with her little chubby newborn baby hands. How proud I would be of my little violent chubby baby!