Limp Shapelessness is one of the Most Terrifying Aspects of Pregnancy
September 15
Out to dinner and Pat away on business, but my hostess said to corne anyway. I sure should have eaten before I left horne. Dinner was scheduled for 7:30. Came 8:30 and still no dinner, and by that time I had eaten so many hors-d’ oeuvres that the maid (a pal of Lucretia’s, too) began to look at me just like Lucretia does. Askance, I think it’s called. Hope they don’t compare notes!
September 17
Back to the doctor’s at last, this time to his White Plains office instead of all the way into New York. I was supposed to go the first day I was up bur, just as I told him, I’ve been busy. Now I begin to see some of the things I’m paying for. He sure is efficient. Keeps all the latest magazines in his office-current issues of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Mademoiselle. Bur it’s bad promotion. Even I, to say nothing of the bulging women around me, could have nothing but hatred in my heart for a man who flaunts pictures of heavenly clothes I can’t possibly wear.
There was utter desolation in the face of one little girl who was peering at a Vogue number in sequins. She had about as much shape as a slightly warmish jelly mould. This state of limp shapelessness is one of the most terrifying aspects of pregnancy. Even your best friends won’t jell.
Of course, I’m a good deal better off than those poor souls sitting around in smock-dresses, coyly holding their share of the magazine supply over their fronts and trying desperately to be nonchalant in the face of such as I. Sucking in my stomach (still no job at all) I paraded in front of them, sat down and crossed my legs with telling effect and, from my superior position, surveyed them. There was another flat-tummied girl, in a very smart Fall suit-last year’s though-and she and I exchanged meaning looks over the heads of our farther “gone” sisters. A guilty looking crew, if ever I saw one.
It was a sad spectacle to see the women haul themselves to their feet when the call came from the inner room, and then, after the check-up, go scurrying out into the world as fast as their rolling sailor’s gait would allow.
The prettiest, trimmest, slimmest, little nurse came out for the next patient. That doctor certainly needs a promotion manager. If Pat were doing the job he’d have a fat, ugly, dowdy misshapen nurse so that the more misshapen wretches in the waiting room wouldn’t be reminded of their plight. But it doesn’t bother me; my stomach’s flat.
Finally ushered into the presence, but no excitement at all about my threatened miscarriage. How that man can keep calm! His questions didn’t seem very interesting and he scarcely waited for my answers.
“How is elimination? Good. How do you sleep?
Good. How do you eat? Force yourself to eat often, not a lot but often, and take the pills as soon as you feel you are able to. Very necessary, you know. And take special care those usual five days and don’t do unusual things. After the next period you may be more active. Then the danger of a miscarriage will be negligible.”
He waved me into the examining room, but this time it was all pretty cursory, blood pressure and a few coldly professional pokes at my stomach.
“Flat, isn’t it?” I said. “Just wait,” he said.
“How about me going to Chicago?”
And I was really delighted when he gave an emphatic “no” until after the first of next month, anyway. That postpones that little problem.
Still, that “just wait” of his gives me to ponder.
I don’t think I could fool my Mom if there’s a bulge, no matter how slight.