The eve of my son’s twelfth birthday seems like a good time to sit and reflect on the last decade plus two years we’ve had together. People I know make a lot of posts on social media about their kids but since he hit 9 or 10, he’s been more hesitant and self-conscious about me posting pictures of him for the world to see. Which is fine, honestly, as time goes by, the more I hate social media anyway and don’t think it’s really your fucking business what my kid is doing or, for that matter, what *I* am doing. (Unless I’m recapping Game of Thrones while drinking and posting it to my Instagram stories because LET ME TELL YOU, this is my new favorite hobby. I’m sure it’s annoying but whatever because you people post the same 7 pictures of your dogs every day.) Anyway.

A month before I had my kid, my doctor put me on bed rest because my blood pressure was spiking. This was after a completely miserable pregnancy, chock full of morning sickness, sausage fingers, more morning sickness, scraping my child’s drunk father off the floor (literally AND figuratively), sciatica, working 14 hour days, boobs that got bigger than my head, creeps I didn’t know rubbing my tummy and alluding to wanting a threesome while I was working one of those 14 hour days, and other fun things like my body deciding it was going to reject certain food immediately upon consumption (mandarin oranges) or just…leaking like an old car. You know fluid is coming from somewhere but you’re not sure where, or what it could be. So a friend drove me to my final doctor’s appointment (before which I’d spent the whole weekend pissing into a large orange jug and keeping it in my fridge so she could monitor my urine protein) because my kid’s dad couldn’t be bothered to get up. At the appointment the doc takes one look at my blood pressure and orders me to go to the hospital. I looked her dead in the eye and said, “You mean I pissed in this jug for NOTHING? UGH.” I was already pragmatic about pregnancy and motherhood because I romanticize nothing but seriously, do you know how hard it is to piss in a jug EVERY FUCKING TIME you have pee when you’re 9 fucking months pregnant?

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