Hormones

I’ve been dreading the onset of the “evil hormonal mood swings” that are to accompany all pregnant women and turn them into the monstrous, fire breathing harbingers of ill will and antagonistic creatures fabled in the forums and many pregnancy texts available. I have been working steadfastly on keeping a wary eye out for any “irrational flares of emotional behavior,” but this has proven to be quite a challenge. Keeping an eye on oneself is damn near impossible and absolutely exhausting, especially when it has become apparent that even if such inner intuitive prophecies of hormonal outrage begin to manifest I have about as much chance as the proverbial snowball in hell to stop them.

With that said, I must give a textual pat on the back to John, for he has been such a tremendous sport. He insists that I have not yet transformed into that crazed hormone-ridden beast, but I have instead remained rather calm and collected…. I think he’s lying. I theorize that he must be tapping into some great inner well of tranquility (which I was unaware existed in men, especially Italian ones), and clinging to the sides of the well in desperate hopes that such peace may be contagious.

He has struggled through my “moments” of irrationality, always finding a semi-graceful (albeit superbly graceful for a man), method of calming me. His last dazzling show at appeasing the demon followed a brief yet rather unexpected outburst on my part about being overwhelmed. Now, I have to justify a bit for both of us. I’m in school full time, and working part time, and John works full time in a high stress environment. I was frustrated because I simply cannot manage to clean the house from top to bottom every day, do all the laundry, wash the dogs, and get all my homework done on a daily basis. Some women can, I don’t know how, but I can’t.

So, I came home from school at 10PM Tuesday night to find that John had left for work and there were a number of dishes in the sink, as well as a pile of laundry that could have been folded and the house was kind of disheveled and my back hurt, and I was tired, and I was cranky, and John had gone to work so I had no one to complain to, so I did what all irrational women do: I got mad that John couldn’t read my mind and know that it would have been really helpful if he had done one or two things while I was at school.

Mind you, many things had in fact been accomplished; just not the things that I had hoped would miraculously have been taken care of during my 12 hour day. The next day, I unceremoniously brought it to John’s attention that I was in need of more of his help. He kind of wavered a bit on the subject thus opening the door for my full fire breathing activities to commence. I lost it, and in the midst of losing it realized with crystalline clarity that I was indeed allowing those godforsaken hormones to carry me off on this wild ride. All of my efforts at introspection were paying off incredibly well, for I was fully aware of the situation, but, much like President Bush, I didn’t have a withdrawal plan. Yes, I was fully engaged in the war, aware that things were not going so hot and feeling unequivocally stuck in my current situation.

John pulled one of those mystical band-aids out of his hat and soothed me, all the while looking at me with a somewhat confused and befuddled look, promising that he would do better. I don’t know how I managed to land such a good guy, but he rewarded my tirade with treating me like a princess for the following two days, coincidentally his two days off. He rushed to help me with the laundry, Cloroxed the kitchen floor, emptied the dishwasher not once, but twice, and put the dirty dishes in it, pulled out a heating pad for me when my back hurt, and asked me continually if there was anything else that he could do.

Yeah, I felt like a monster. I can’t believe that I could blow up at someone so perfect, but what the hell, he loves me anyway. Today at breakfast we were talking about what is going on with my pregnancy and all of the developmental things that are happening at the moment. Hormones were mentioned briefly, and with the charming smile that I fell in love with oh so quickly, he informed me that I had been an angel, and of course my hormones hadn’t gotten the better of me.