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This morning I had to make one more quick trip to the dentist to drop off the mold for my new night guard. I wanted to pick up a bagel on my way to work, so I took a route from the dentist to the office that put me past a little cafe with good bagels and coffee. The cafe shares a parking lot with a few other retailers including a large grocery store, so it gets relatively high traffic. I parked in the closest available space, and got my everything bagel with light veggie cream cheese, and my small coffee with skim milk and splenda, and cheerfully headed back towards my car. The time was approximately 8:50, so I was planning on reaching the office by 9AM.

When I got to the car it was apparent that the Mommy Mobile (a Honda Odyssey with a toddler seat in the back) that had parked next to me sometime during the 3 minutes it took to buy a bagel was way too close to my car for a seven month pregnant woman to successfully open the driver’s side door and slip into the seat. The van was so close that I barely would have made it into my car even if I wasn’t pregnant. I tried to get in anyway. When I got wedged into the door I said outloud, to no one, “you’ve got to be kidding me”, unwedged myself, and stood there looking at the car. Then I thought about getting into the passenger side, and climbing over the center console. Normally, I would have done this without hesitation. Reason kicked in, and I thought to myself “you can’t even put on your own socks”. I was hoping that the Mommy who drove the Mobile would come out any minute, but no luck there. At 9AM I called my office to tell them that I was going to be late against my will. They laughed at the situation, which is better than laughing at me, and told me to just sit in the passenger side, eat my breakfast, and go with the flow.

At 9:15 I called Josh to complain and ask for ideas. He suggested throwing one leg over the console to reach the brake, turning on the car, and rolling it back enough to then place it in “park” while I got out and climbed in the other side. Driving my car from the passenger seat didn’t seem like something I should ever attempt, much less attempt with the impaired reflexes of a pregnant woman in her third trimester. At least he was being creative.

At 9:20 desperation kicked in. I tried to climb over the console. This was unsuccessful. The best thing I can say about this was that no one else saw the results.

By 9:30 I knew I had to get out at any cost. I decided that the only way was to find a trustworthy looking skinny person, and ask for help. A young woman came by - maybe 17 or 18 years old - wearing a University of Maryland sweatshirt. She looked like a high school student, and not at all like a car thief. I took my chances, and felt even better about my selection when she hesitated at the idea of driving someone else’s car. I insisted that she’d be gaining infinite karma points by doing a pregnant lady a favor. That she didn’t really have to drive, just sort of roll. Thank goodness she said “yes”. I felt better about myself when this teenager, who couldn’t have been larger than a size 2, struggled to get into the car. When I got to work, I parked at the far end of the row next to the curb.

Ever since college I’ve had this on and off shooting pain in my right lower molars. Every few years it would get really awful, and I would panic thinking that only some horrible infection or other similar affliction could cause that kind of pain. I would go to the dentist and be told that absolutely nothing was wrong, so I took pain killers and got used to the idea that very hot and very cold food needed to be chewed on my left side only. The whole thing made no sense.

About a year ago I found out that the fillings in my molars had all cracked and needed to be replaced. It occured to me that I was grinding my teeth - that I had bruxism. I thought about the times that I had sought out dentists for the worst pain. They were while writing my senior thesis, during law school exams, and during a job search. The whole thing started to make sense. I wasn’t destined to have tooth pain, I was just a Type A personality. This gets a great big “duh” from those who know me I’m sure. Apparently this is a common problem in high stress DC - so common that it deserves a Washington Post article. Secure in knowing that I’m a victim of my own drive to succeed, I put a few hundred extra dollars into my flexible spending account and planned to buy one VERY expensive night guard with the money. The dentist assured me that eventually I would get used to sleeping with a huge chunk of plastic in my mouth, and that it would be worthwhile to spend the money now in order to save the cost of repairing cracked teeth later. The prevention part of that made sense, so I purchased the guard.

I received my new guard six weeks ago, and started wearing it on a nightly basis. Last week I noticed that I had chewed a hole in the area covering my second to last molar on the right. This is the exact spot where I’ve always had the worst pain (and therefore it would make sense that this is where I do my worst grinding). Six weeks doesn’t seem like a reasonable lifespan for a medical device that cost about $800. I called the dentist to complain, and scheduled an appointment. He saw me this morning and examined the guard. He admitted that when he got my call he assumed I was exaggerating about having chewed a “hole” in it. The actual hole that he could see threw blew a, well, hole in that theory. He was a big overwhelmed with how to describe his reaction without offending me as the patient. When I offered “are you trying to say I’m one seriously tough cookie?” He laughed from relief and said “yes”.

He’s ordering me a new guard, at no additional cost. Hopefully that comes in soon. I wonder how long that one will last.

I have only had two car accidents since I got my license. The first was a few months ago, shortly after I found out I was pregnant. It scared the heck out of me because I was still only getting used to the idea of pregnancy, and I had the racing hormones. Here I was trying so hard to do the whole body as a temple thing, and some guy comes through a red light straight for me. Ugh. The second car accident was this past Tuesday. I’m only getting to write about it now because I’ve only just calmed down.

I was driving down Rockville Pike. The Pike is a local connector road of the type that exist in every suburb I’ve ever seen. It’s three lanes in each direction, with lots of lights and lots of strip malls. It was a rainy day, and the road was slick. The cars in front of me, despite there being no light directly ahead, were at a full stop. I had a concrete divider to my left, stopped cars in front of me, and stopped cars to the right of me. When I saw the guy coming at me in my rearview mirror, there wasn’t much to do but wait and pray.

The other driver, his passenger and I got out of the car to exchange information. A police officer and a guy begging for change on the corner ran over to make sure we were okay. Both of them wound up being slightly amused at the sight of us. I don’t blame them - we were quite a sight. I’m standing there seven months pregnant. The guy who hit me, who we will call Frankenstein, had staples down the side of his head, and Frankenstein’s mother, who was in the passenger seat, had a cast on her leg and was walking with crutches. I didn’t even bother trying to ask exactly how many car accidents these people had been in lately.

Truly there is such slight damage to my car that I don’t think I’ll report it to my insurance. Of the 85 scratches on my back bumper, only I know which one is from this accident. Nothing is damaged, crushed, or injured in any way including (thank goodness) myself and the baby. Still, the idea that the baby could have been hurt was the scariest part. I did slam into the seatbelt, but not into the steering wheel. One of my friends said it never occurred to her how problematic it was to wear a seatbelt while pregnant because of where it hits on the body, but of course you can’t stop wearing a seatbelt. If you did, and sailed through the windshield, you’d just take the baby with you and that’s hardly better. I’m just hoping I can erase whatever hex has been put on me and get through the rest of this pregnancy as easily as possible.

Oh, and in regards to the picture in my last post, I’m starting to feel more like the elephant than the boa.

One of my high school classmates asked me when I was due, and in answering her I told her how huge I already feel.  I spontaneously came up with an image I hadn’t seen since high school.  At the peak of my French comprehension (which mostly has valleys), I read Le Petit Prince.  The narrator talks of drawing a picture of an elephant inside a boa.  Right now, I’m the boa.

12 more weeks to go!