Surprise!

The DVR is my best friend these days. It’s always there for me… for the nights that I can’t sleep, or the early mornings where my internal clock demands that I get up at the ass crack of dawn, or when baby Neal decides he wants to practice his Zumba moves incessantly during my much needed REM cycle. The DVR is always there.

In this time, I’ve gotten roped into some ridiculous shows. Most of them are on A&E or TLC. One such show is “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant.”

The title drew me, I must say. I knew I had to see what this was about. And sure enough, it’s stories about women of all ages who carry a child, in most cases, full-term and never knew they were pregnant until they “pee themselves” and start having horrible “gas pains” and lower back pain. Thinking they are near death from some food-borne illness, they scramble to the ER only to give birth minutes later. And that’s for the lucky ones. Some give birth in grocery stores or in their own laundry room during the spin cycle.

Frozen grapes in hand, I sit there in utter confusion wondering how the hell they went 9 months and never realized they were pregnant. I try to put myself in their shoes and I still can’t imagine. That might have something to do with the fact that my pregnancy has been (knock on wood) “textbook” in most cases. I started with regular cycles, conceived in a timey manner, experienced morning sickness, put on the suggested amount of weight, the baby is growing normally and seems healthy, etc, etc. Because I’ve been intently aware of what is going on with my body from the beginning, I notice everything. Every little (or as of late, the not-so-little) kick, every mocking stretch mark, every twinge and turn of pregnancy.

But let’s just say that I didn’t know.

Hell, I can’t even imagine it.

As I lay on the couch with my swollen hooves propped up and the remote on my ever growing belly, the remote starts to shake and dance. No biggie, that’s just Baby Neal. Readjusting. Turning over. Hiccupping. Fist Pumping for joy at the warmth of my uterus. You name it, he does it. And for a few seconds it’s like an earthquake on my tummy as the remote bounces up and down for something I have absolutely NOTHING to do with. I guess that would be the biggest “sign” that something is wrong if I “didn’t know I was pregnant.” Maybe my baby is way more active than some, but if my belly was hard and enlarged and shook and rocked without my doing, I’d take my ass straight to the doctor expecting some alien-filled tumor to be discovered.

I guess that’s why this show doesn’t make sense to me. And maybe I’m just a critical pregnant woman. (It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been called that.) It’s just odd to me, yet I watch every episode intently with the same WTF look on my face. And TLC is laughing all the way to the bank because once again they’ve lured someone in to their ridiculous shows and they know they can’t turn away. Jokes on me.

~Jenn