"...someone tell my dirty, filthy baby to keep its hands to itself until it's outside my body and alone in its crib..."
Two Arms, Two Legs, April 4, 2006
It's still there.
We saw it again this morning, the baby. A sonogram tech rolled metal over my stomach until we saw a familiar little shape. It was moving alot- bouncing and stretching. Then the baby scratched its stomach. I think. I hope. If it was touching its naughty parts... well, someone tell my dirty, filthy baby to keep its hands to itself until it's outside my body and alone in its crib.
Oprah, like alcohol, has to be postponed until after delivery. On Tuesday, she featured birth defects, congenital disorders and obsessive behavior in children. I was crying during the Tourette's segment, hoping for a child that would hurl expletives at me only if it was really pissed off. The girl with Tourette's was nearly suicidal. "How awful," I sobbed to El Babydaddy, "how awful!" He agreed and we waited for Oprah's next devastating flaw. Would it be cerebral palsy, multiple scelorsis?
If only, Reader. The next segment featured the
Mermaid Baby . I was not paying attention to Oprah's intro. I only remember that I looked up from a birth defects
web page and saw video of a newborn with a fucking monofin for a lowerbody. I screamed like Geena Davis when the fly-man exited her womb in
The Fly.
"Oh my God, oh my God! OH MY FUCKING GOD, WHAT IS THAT!!!"
"All right, that's it, no more Oprah for you," said El Babydaddy, turning off the tv.
So many things can go wrong right. Downs Syndrome, heart defects, blindness, deafness, mermaid legs, no fingers and two sets of sex organs. Brown eyes. And after birth, there's your daughter getting drunk at a Bowery bar, leaving herself vulnerable to a bouncer who kidnaps, rapes and murders her. There's your son getting raped by a Boston priest, your daughter getting fondled by her swim coach (been there! recognize all the signs! will strangle any and all pedophiles!), melting polar ice caps, the national debt and Scientology.
I will never again get a real night's rest.
We were looking at the baby from the side. It appeared to be swinging in a hammock.
"Are those legs?" I asked the sonagram tech.
"Yes."
"
Two legs?" I asked. Because of the angle, I only saw one.
"Cough," she said.
I did. The baby spun around, and we looked at it from above. Endless limbs stuck out like branches from its torso.
"Two legs, two arms," she said.
