moustaches and momsense

"Obviously you’re growing out your facial hair so you never have to kiss me again "- and other sensitive subjects.

James just shaved his mustache yesterday and it reminded me of a meltdown I had a little while ago:

 For days I had a little problem that was simmering away, bubbling along, waiting for a certain person to take notice.I fully blame the following on pregnancy; I had convinced myself that the only reason my baby daddy was growing out his stache and beard, was because he had devised a secret plan to never have to kiss me again. (When it’s at a prickly stage I find myself bracing a kiss, if you’ve kissed someone with facial hair you know the feeling. Or if you’re a heterosexual male, I guess it would be like kissing an armpit that’s a couple days past shaven... what you haven’t kissed an armpit before? Use your imagination!) This seems really funny to me now since it has finally become safe for us to laugh openly about it, but I have to admit that at the time whatever cocktail of hormones my body was secreting had me totally emotional. To say the least. 

Let me elaborate on pregnancy emotional vs. regular emotional with the following true story examples. 

Example Situation 1: BF leaves small pile of dirty clothes on the floor on his side of the bed. 

Regular response might be: Hmm. That’s annoying. I have to walk around this to access my closet. 

My pregnant emotional response: OMG James is falling out of love with me. This is apparent because he doesn’t even have enough energy left to pretend to care about tidiness. His unwillingness to drop his dirty clothes into the hamper that is inches away from the floor they rest on now, is clear symbolism for his unwillingness to put in any more energy into our relationship. We are doomed. Intense weeping ensues. 

Example Situation 2: My mom gently suggests that we should perhaps think about buying some non-chlorinated gentle disposable diapers to have on hand in case we find ourselves too tired and overwhelmed in the beginning to fuss with the cloth diapers I just told her about. 

Regular response might be: Ya, maybe you’re right. Maybe just in case, if only they are used when we are experiencing genuine sleep deprivation. And maybe just for the very beginning. 

My pregnant emotional response: Well clearly my mother thinks I don’t know anything about babies and am going to fail in my attempt to diaper my child in an environmentally, economical, and most importantly more comfortable for the baby way. Just because she used disposables doesn’t mean I’m going to! Why can’t she trust my judgment? I’ve done the research and she hasn’t! The lesson I must take from this is : tell mom nothing. Be prepared for battle. Weeping again.

***Love you, mom. We got some disposables on hand because to convince oneself that the only acceptable thing to do is cloth diaper right away, no matter what, is crazy. You were right. But I’m sure you know that.

Example situation 3: It’s 2am and I can’t get comfortable, I can’t seem to fall asleep, and my bf is already snoozing away in dreamland. He has been on set for the past gazillion days and is sleep deprived. I decide this is a perfect time to wake him and be flirtatious. Obviously that doesn’t go as planned... he turns the other way and continues to snore. 

Regular response: Do not take this personally. He is exhausted. And you are annoying. 

My pregnant emotional response: I am a huge undesirable cow, with stretch marks, swollen limbs and zero sex appeal. Why would he want to be flirted with while I am in such a state? He probably has realized that I will never look the same, and is missing the skinny minnie he fell in love with. I have brought on my own sexiness expiration date by bearing a child sooner than most. From now on he will look at his friends’ significant others and wonder why he settled for me. He will never see me as his cute girlfriend again, just a ‘mom’ figure. I may as well prepare for a lifetime of celibacy ahead. Weeping. 

These are some examples of the effect that hormones have had on me throughout my pregnancy. The part that is hard to explain and illustrate, is that even though the situations sound so ridiculous and at times maybe humorous, at the time I experienced them, they really had a profound effect on my mental state. With the mustache example, I truly genuinely believed that James just didn’t care about the prickly effect because kissing me wasn’t even a worthy cause to get rid of the prickles. I was convinced that the stupid mustache was going to spiral into a whole whack of relationship problems for us. And when I say melt down, I mean full on sobbing, depressed and helpless feeling. Those are some pretty intense emotions! 

The best thing I can suggest to you when you are dealing with an unstable preggo (or me), is even though part of you probably just wants to look at that person and say, “you’re just emotional because you’re pregnant” - please don’t do this! It may seem so obvious that you feel to pretend anything else would be dishonest (trust me, I am known for having a very limited filter and know how difficult it would be to bite your tongue in this type of a situation). 

 I am so lucky and grateful that James comforted me through my mustache meltdown and pretended that he was so unbelievably sorry that he missed my cues on the whole ‘ouch’ factor, and that if he had known that it was causing me such physical discomfort he would have shaved it all of right away! After calming me down and being amazingly empathetic about the pathetic situation, he immediately shaved it off. 

We laugh at this now and he openly admits that he totally thought I was overreacting, but knew not to give me any insight on his true feelings at the time because it wouldn’t help the situation. 

A more relatable example would be when someone tells you that you’re being emotional or irrational because ‘you must be having your period’. How annoying! Even if it’s true, don’t say it!!!

Mustaches and momsense,

Martyna