MANDY FLYNN: Memories of missing feet the cure for baby fever

The baby shower for my niece and nephew got me to thinking last Sunday. I want a baby.

“Sure,” my husband said a few hours later when I delivered the news to him. No excitement. No surprise. Just … sure.

He didn’t mean it, I was certain. He didn’t say no or accuse me of kidding or declare I was out of my mind. But he didn’t mean “sure,” I can assure you. Because in his heart of hearts he knew I didn’t really mean it. I wanted a baby to cuddle and smell and love on … but I didn’t want to have a baby. Not at my age or my energy level. If I were to be pregnant at this day and time, it would make for some pretty good reality television, I have no doubt.

I remember the very first reality show I ever watched, in fact. It was 21 years ago and I recall vividly the day my husband came home from work and I was beached on the sofa, crying. I was nine months pregnant with our first child.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked as he gazed down upon his whale of a wife wondering, I am sure, why I was once again wearing that danged black dress with the huge tropical flowers all over it. I looked like Hawaii had thrown up on me. Fact is, the last three weeks I was pregnant I had exactly three articles of clothing that fit — a pair of stretchy black pants, a white button up shirt with an aqua bow on it, and that dress.

“What’s wrong with me?” I wailed, my piteousness punctuated by the crumbs of food scattered down the front of my maternity dress. “Can’t you see? I am fat, I am tired and I can’t … I can’t … I can’t see my feet!” Sob. Snort. Sniffle. Sob.

An hour earlier, I had been sent home from work. Well past my due date, they had decided I should go ahead and begin my maternity leave to give me time to rest. I suspect, though, that my co-workers were really only worried for their own safety, fearing that the incredibly huge pregnant woman who was always hungry might try to eat them. Either that or they were just tired of seeing me in that dress.

So home I went and turned on the television. That’s when I found the reality show – “The Real World” on MTV. They had thrown a bunch of young people with varying personalities together to live in a house and have their every move taped. They were interesting. It was funny. I was intrigued.

Until my psychotic pregnant hormones took over and I realized halfway through a box of Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls that all the girls on the show were skinny little things with cute little outfits – not a circus tent dress anywhere. That’s when I looked down and saw that my feet had disappeared. That’s all it took. I lost it.

My husband tried his best to console me.

“It’s okay,” he said. “You’re supposed to be fat.”

If only I had known where my feet were, I would have jumped off the couch and killed him. Luckily, I went into labor two days later and my feet and I were reunited – the memory of which has got me to thinking again.

On second thought, I don’t know if I want a baby right now. I don’t know if I could handle not being able to see my feet again. Or the hormones. Or the risk of him calling me fat.

For his sake, not mine. Because he may have gotten away with it 20 years ago, but now…

This is the real world. I’m not so sure.

Email columnist Mandy Flynn at [email protected].