I am a very young 64 in my own mind, but flights of imagination aside, try to picture my shock when I opened my email to: "Good Morning, Linda. Welcome to the second trimester! At 14 weeks your baby can now squint, frown, grimace, pee, and possibly suck its thumb... "
The fact that I was squinting, grimacing and frowning just trying to pee when I read the news is impossibly ironic. Could this be, I gleefully wondered? Do we really have a baby on the way after all this time? Oh, the thrill of it! After years of selfishly hard-selling the importance of being as young a granny as possible, my Sarah, at 30, is finally with child. I get to have another baby without delivering another baby and no morning sickness, swollen feet or flop sweat. It will be my darling daughter waddling through the summer heat unable to see her toes or remember what her waist looks like. Rather, I'll be the chic, hip granny, beaming with bleached blonde pride as my grandchild produces its first urine into the amniotic fluid surrounding it.
But wait! I may consider myself chic and hip, but the truth is I have injected more Botox than the cast of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, I've had as much dental work as the Anaheim Ducks combined, my hearing is going and I can barely lift my purse since my spine surgery. How am I going to hear or pick up a baby? My legs are still so weak I'll never be able to chase a toddler. I make an immediate decision. Since Sarah has registered me for these fetal updates, I will take them as a challenge. If my baby has nine months to develop and grow strong, then so do I. I'm not going to be like my mother who was too frail in her 70s to play with my kids. I'm going to be up to the task.
As I read further, I learn "in week 14, baby can grasp and even suck its thumb." Inspired, I take my thumb out of my mouth and go for the 5-pound red weights that have been gathering dust on the bathroom sink for months. I used to be able to do 50 lifts without breathing hard, but today I can barely lift the damn things. Reading further, I learn that "the fetus' facial muscles are getting a workout as its tiny features form one first expression after another." That's nothing compared to me. At lift 20, my face is as red and contorted as Rosanne Barr's after picking all her nuts. I wonder when that muscle memory you hear so much about is going to kick in when cramps hit both my biceps at the same time. I do everything I can to not drop the weights on my toes. It wouldn't do to be in the delivery room on crutches.
"... Your baby's stretching out," the alert advises. "From head to bottom, it measures 3 1/2 inches -- about the about the size of a lemon -- and it weighs 1 1/2 ounces..." I won't mention what I weigh even though I cannot stop the smile that stretches out my nasal labial folds. I am the grandmother of a lemon and, by gawd, I'm going to be its best friend. So before week 15, I will make sure to have the rest of my dental work done, get my hearing aides adjusted and (ouch) get back to the gym. It's tough having a baby at 64, even if it is a grandchild! Fourteen weeks down, 26 to go. Stay tuned.