And yesterday I spent about 8 hours at Soundwave watching ALL the rock and metal, including some light moshing to a 2 hour Metallica set.
Interestingly, while most of the pregnancy guides are careful to ban any form of fun on the grounds that no one knows if it’s dangerous but it *could* be so best not to (seriously, I have seen this argument applied to everything from riding a bike to jogging to dying your damned hair) not one mentioned metal concerts.
And, to be honest, I would have completely ignored them if they did. I stayed back from the crush, stayed hydrated and my worst injury of the evening was inflicted by my own steel-capped boots rubbing the hell out of my ankle. Some people stay at home knitting baby booties. Some like to attend pre-natal yoga classes. Others like to go to gigs while they still can and don’t have a small child they need to take care of. More power to all of them, as long as they are not judgemental arse-bags who try to ram their uninformed opinions down other’s throats in the guide of “medical advice”.
So yes, baby’s first concert was in utero at Metallica (sadly, not a Nirvana gig, appropriate and all as that would have been). At this rate, my kid is going to rebel by listening exclusively to manufactured kiddy-pop and joining a religion that bans dancing. But not until they are at least teens, oh no. I intend to inform them that no one knows for sure but it’s possible that crappy manufactured pop makes you deaf and religion gives you anal warts.
I went for my 13 week nuchal ultrasound scan last week. This scan comes under the heading of “not fun but highly recommended if you are 35 or over” which I am.
In combination with a blood test and a family history questionnaire, the nuchal scan assesses the chances of some chromosomal conditions – including Down syndrome – occurring in the fetus. It’s not diagnostic and can only give you odds based on the various results (1 in over 300 is good, under that not so much). If your odds are bad you’ll be referred for another more invasive test, probably an amniocentesis, which give definitive results but come with a small risk of miscarriage. I haven’t got the results and have to make yet another doctor’s appointment to get them. (I am very happy I live in Australia where short doctor’s appointments are usually free; go Medicare.)
So, not a happy-joy-time scan but one fun side effect was that we got to hear the baby’s heartbeat for the first time. And it really wasn’t what I was expecting.
Career option for The Child, no 1 – replace aging Keith Prodigy.
In yet another “the movies get this so wrong” moment, the heartbeat wasn’t the normal watery slow “wub-dub wub-dub”, but a Doppler scan made of the various sound frequencies found and all layered together. The result, at a healthy 130 beats per minute, was a catchy multi-toned electronic wub-wub-wub-wub-wub-wub worthy of a pumping dance floor at 1am when the wusses have fecked off home.
(Don’t believe me? Listen to someone else’s one here.)
I found my head bobbing along appreciatively to the speeding beat. The Child themselves didn’t stop moving during the scan. They were mainly upside-down while throwing shapes so it looked like they were also getting into it.
All the articles and books I have read so far talk about the amazing and intense reaction you will have to hearing your child’s heart beat for the first time. Words like “magical”, “ecstatic” and “transcendent” and are thrown around. No one mentioned interest followed by the urge to go clubbing, but there you go.
And The Prodigy are playing Sydney next month. Think I should take it as a sign and buy some tickets?
Yes, this! I get that pregnancy and having kids is hard but some Mums make it sound like it’s actually ruining any happiness they have in life. I’m pregnant and not exactly all gung-ho-go-go-happy-baby-hormones about it, and every article I read on having kids makes it sound less worthwhile and more like torture. Luckily I’m also very hard of hearing so I’ve decided to just stop reading the prophets of unending poo and doom and slide out the batteries in my hearing aids when they decide to bend my ears on it.
Also, I have discovered the best reaction ever but it’s not for the faint-hearted. When people start getting their schadenfreude on by giving absurd examples of how your life will change with mountains of poo and lakes of wee and permanent penury and NEVER sleeping again just look horrified and say, “Oh wow. I had no idea. Are you saying I should abort?”
If we needed any more proof I am a terrible mother-to be, the evidence is in my stomach. I have just broken the pregnancy eating guidelines by accident. Again. Third time this month, by my reckoning.
The culprit in this case is my lunch – a chicken schnitzel wrap. It’s not as if it looked particularly evil, being stuffed to the gills with loads of different veggies and minimal mayo. None the less it was a no-no, something I completely forgot when I left my office to forage for food. I wanted salmon sushi – oh, how I want salmon sushi – but remembered the You’re-Pregnant-Bitchface list of things I can’t have include raw fish. What I forgot is all the other stuff that gets pushed off the menu once you actually apply the list.
Meet your new nemesis. If you are pregnant all chickens are now out to fucking get you.
The Don’t-Eat-While-Up-The-Duff list doesn’t sound too exhaustive at first. No unpasteurised juices or dairy products. Soft and blue cheeses are off limits (sob!). So are raw eggs. And pate (double sob). Raw fish and any refrigerated shellfish. Undercooked meat. Salami, processed meat, cold meats generally. My old and excellent friend, Mr Alcohol. They also recommend washing the hell out of all fruit and veg, skipping buffet and bain marie items and avoiding pre-made salads full stop.
It seems pretty reasonable, you think. Surely I’ve can beat into my fluffy fatigued omni-starving pregnancy brain into remembering this small list of off-limits items. There are some things I’ll miss in there, it’s true, but not an unreasonable amount of foods to take off the menu for a few months.
Or is it? It’s only when you think about how that list will work in practice when you are out and about you realise how many easy eating options are suddenly on the naughty list. Meat that has been cooked but is now cooled is right out, especially if it’s chicken, so unless you’re a vegetarian most pre-made sandwiches are off the menu before you have even checked if the cheese is safe to eat.
That’s where my poor old chicken schnitzel fell down – I wanted a hot schnitzel, but they had none left so I took a wrap, completely forgetting that the reason I wanted it hot was the “no cooked but cold meats” prohibition. I was half-way through when I remembered it and you know what? I just sighed, and finished my fucking sambo.
The term undercooked meats actually means anything other than incinerated-until-it’s-well-done, making me less than popular at roast meals and barbecues, especially as I have turned my nose up at the pate, cheese and salami board passed around. Swordfish and shark are out due to mercury levels, which is reasonable, but they also recommended you don’t have more than two servings of tuna, salmon, crab, white fish – any fish really – all the while admonishing you that fish oils are something most prospective mothers don’t get but are needed for brain development.
They recommend you avoid food from a bain marie or a buffet table. And don’t think you can just get proactive and bring in your own – if you’re having leftovers at home, they must be under a day old and reheated until they’re at tongue-burning temperatures.
And if you’re preggers chickens are really out to get you; cooked but cooled their delicious flesh hide naught but listeria and DEATH, and pre-stuffed poulty you cook yourself may have so much DEATH even 2 hours at 200C won’t kill it, and unless their eggs are completely cooked, you are apparently rolling out the red carpet for listeria and salmonella both.
And raw egg? It turns out that it’s in loads of stuff, from mayo to dressings to delicious desserts. I’ve just discovered the tiramisu I had last week was off-limits, as was the gelato the week before. And I don’t care, because they were fucking delicious. In fact, I have no idea about the dressing used in my wrap was okay for me to eat. Did I ask if it contained raw egg? Did I bollocks. I was tired and hungry. I just finished the fecking thing.
And that’s before you even look at all the advice on what to eat for a healthy pregnancy because there are five million tons of crazy out there and all over the internet. One magazine I read insisted I needed to be eating help, chia and seaweed by the bucketload, because apparently I need to both build baby’s brain and be able to shit ropes. Another recommended “whipping up” a warm chicken salad for work lunch, because most people can cook at their desk – just bring in a camping stove if you don’t have access to a Masterchef kitchen! Several suggest going completely organic to get away from pesticides and other nasties, because as someone with a small and terrifyingly expensive child on the way who will need to take almost a year off work my main goal at the moment is to spend as much money as I physically fucking can. Twats.
I will try not to do it again, but I will not be berating myself for today’s slip-up. My pregnancy diet plan is less about obsessive eating and more about chilling the fuck out. I eat plenty of fresh fruit and veg in a varied diet with minimal fast-food or frying, and I take a multi-vitamin. I’ll be grand, thanks. Assuming the chickens don’t get me.
Sceptimum 