I’ve wanted to bring back chamber pots for a long time. It started on a family trip to Springfield, IL during a tour of Abraham Lincoln’s home. In head-to-toe Smokey the Bear, the guide pointed out the sad conditions of life in the 1800s. “This is the tub where they boiled their underwear.” “In this room, Eddie died of tuberculosis.” As a 4th grader it was hard to care about any of it, as the subject matter took place during the black-and-white times, but when we got to Lincoln’s bedroom, I was roused by the sight of a tin pot beneath the bed. “Lincoln lived before indoor plumbing so had to relieve himself in this primitive bowl.”
“Had to”?! Surely he was too tall to sleep in his little bed but the chance to scooch to the edge at 2 AM and tinkle without putting his feet on the floor? Lucky guy! Over time, I doubt he needed to open his eyes. He’d just aim, a wet slam dunk, and get back to dreaming of becoming Best American.
During my pregnancy, I thought of Lincoln a lot in the middle of the night. At times imagining how scary it’d be if he were sitting at the end of my bed, but more often when I was padding to the bathroom for the tenth time, my feet on the cold floor and my bladder somehow full again. I’d switch on the fluorescent light, any remnants of REM gone, and think, if only I had a chamber pot…
I suppose I could have made one – gotten a bucket and thrown a towel at the bottom to minimize backsplash, but I have higher standards and a husband who didn’t marry a caveperson. It was gross enough waking up in cracker crumbs from my attempt to ward off nausea; at the very least I could use modern potty technology before getting back in bed to watch hot people talk about what they eat in a day. Lincoln couldn’t do that.
My baby didn’t know it was November, couldn’t feel that it was 20 degrees. 2 AM meant nothing to her, nor did 2:30, 2:45 or all the other times her presence woke me up to pee. She was a free spirit, somersaulting in the spa treatment of amniotic fluid. For nine months she lived the good life in the Airbnb of my body. Cozy! Clean! Everything you need is right here!
Frequent urination presents itself in the first few weeks of pregnancy, and though the need to go is urgent, the volume that comes out is piddly. Have you ever seen a horse piss? The kind of stream that could put out a barge fire? It’s the opposite of that. The bladder’s bark is worse than its bite – it’s not full, just struggling under the weight of the growing uterus. I can relate. When the crib hadn’t arrived months after ordering it, I grew hot and Kareny and dialed up Pottery Barn Kids ready to ‘let me speak to your manager.’ But when the rep said there was nothing they could do about it and that it'd be another six weeks I landed on, “Okay, that’s fine,” before hanging up and crying.
Worse, my bladder never felt empty. Ask me at a wedding how much I’ve had to drink and I’ll have no idea what to tell you. Two glasses of wine? Six? It’s hard when you never see the bottom, when the server is hellbent on making you have as shitty a morning as they are having an evening. So goes the pregnant bladder – never dry, always down to party. When washing my hands after using the bathroom, it wasn’t infrequent that I’d have to get right back in the saddle.
I knew from reading What to Expect that frequent urination was a common symptom, but the book isn’t the bible it used to be. Yes, the updated version encourages you to “store baby photos in the cloud!” but in the section on meals to freeze pre-baby, it suggests meatloaf. Any woman making meatloaf these days is the same one brushing cigarette ash off her bump.
Between the dated references from What To Expect and the wild west of the internet, I thought it best to check anything I read with my OB.
At my 12 week appointment, after asking if I could provide a urine sample (boy, could I!) the nurse led me to the room and closed the door, taking my vitals while a poster of the female anatomy stared back at me like a taxidermied ram. I was just another prize, another woman’s insurance company to bill (My God, would you look at the fallopian tubes on this one!) Crossing my legs and tearing the tissue paper, I waited the standard 45 minutes for the doctor to poke her head in.
“So what’s been going on?” she asked when she finally arrived, with the ‘sup’ casualness all physicians seem to possess.
“I peed 10 times last night.” I expected her to scream or send me to the emergency room. At the very least an “Oh, you poor baby!” would have sufficed but instead she just smiled.
“Totally normal.”
Resigned to the fact that I was in for 30 more weeks of discomfort, I went through my list of questions and contemplated adult diapers.
The following week is when I read that a fetus’s kidneys start producing urine. So while I was racing to the bathroom like it was my job, my baby was just in there with her feet up, using my uterus as a commode.
If I were to redesign the human body, I’d do many things, like give us wheels for feet and a third hand for odd jobs. I’d also increase the bladder to the size of a basketball. That way you could sleep through the night during pregnancy, and as a bonus on road trips, not have to venture beyond the snacks to the bathroom with the mop.
Over the nine months, I spent as much time in restaurant bathrooms as I did at the table. I wish I could say I mastered the art of patience, letting the hand dryer do its job instead of making a loud noise on my palms before I wiped them on my pants, but I did get some reading done on the stall walls.
Besides the ‘call me for a good time’s’ scrawled next to mini penises, the primary genre was tragedy.
“FML.” I saw this a lot, which I never understood. You’re at a place where people bring you food! Isn’t that one of the best parts of L?
“Why does life suck so much?” someone would pose. In theory, it’s a smart way to conduct an unbiased study – everyone uses the bathroom. But to me, the only thing sadder than a person with their ass out having a depressive episode between appetizers and dinner is the person with their ass out who responds.
“Feel better,” I’d see beneath it. “Change your attitude, change your life!” Is the depresso really planning on returning? Heading back to the scene of the crime to find out why life does in fact suck so much? I don’t think so. The well-meaning person is just trying to tell themselves what they need to hear, choosing to journal in a place where people regularly have diarrhea. This is the same person who announces to their friends that they’re “in a really good place right now,” which we all know never lasts for long.
“Remember, you are never alone! xoxo.” Of all places one hopes to be alone, a public bathroom is it. We can only pray that the little black hole in the door isn’t hiding a camera.
The biggest question I was left with after reading in the stalls was just how people find themselves with Sharpies. Do they carry them around just in case, like a raincoat or a banana?
If the stars aligned, and thankfully they did the night my overall strap fell into the toilet bowl, I’d return to the table and the food had come, which I think speaks to why people have dogs – there’s always something to come home to.
Maybe it was practice. I was forced to tend to my bladder like a newborn baby to prepare for tending to my newborn baby.
When your newborn cries and you don’t pick them up within ten seconds, you risk a diaper that will leak so fast it’s as if your child has been placed in a dunk tank, or worse – they’ll be developmentally stunted for the rest of their life. What’s more important? That you put on a second shoe or that your baby learns language? So goes the call of the bladder. Now, it says.
Before I went anywhere, I went to the bathroom. When I arrived anywhere, I went to the bathroom, and it became a new game to find all the different restrooms in town. The chain supermarket has one in the back by the specialty cheeses, where I’d park my cart outside the door like I was hitching my horse at a trading post. “Howdy,” I’d say to my trusty stall (the first). The independent grocery store, which sells organic produce and stocks multiple brands of nutritional yeast, keeps theirs on the second floor, allowing their patrons to feel even more superior about shopping locally. When you go three times in one visit however, you’re no better than the deadbeats buying Kellogg across the street.
The outdoor clothing store has two – one on the first floor for when I couldn’t wait for the privacy of the second one upstairs hidden behind the sale rack.
The town itself has its own public bathroom which was a dream when I didn’t feel like buying anything or more accurately, pretending like I was going to buy something, in order to relieve myself.
All the while my baby was kicking back and listening to the whooshing of the womb like she’s in a Corona commercial.
After a brief respite during my second trimester, my symptoms came back full force by my third. I arrived at my doctor for my 37 week appointment with only a couple hours of sleep.
“What’s up?” she said, already bored.
“I peed–” pausing for effect, “30 times last night.”
She smiled. “Totally normal.”
Like the normal diagnosis I’d gotten previously, today would be no different. Of the billions of pregnant women, I would be no different. I was finally understanding – I’m not special. FML!
As disheartened as I was to hear there’d be no cure for this like there was no cure for heartburn or evening crying, I couldn’t help but be reassured by her nonchalance, because when you’re pregnant for the first time all you really want to hear is that everything is normal.
“Everything’s looking great!” she’d said at my 20 week ultrasound.
“But is great normal?” I asked.
At my 38 week appointment the baby’s head was super low, which is why it felt like I’d been peeing through a cocktail straw. Birth was the only remedy, and as it was still a few weeks away the only thing I could do was wait and continue preparing the nest. When it finally arrived, we set up the crib. I washed onesies on gentle (for the first and last time), and armored the dresser with diapers. For midnight rendezvous to the bathroom, I set a rug in front of the toilet to keep my feet warm and plugged in a nightlight to see by. After Hall fell asleep, I cranked the heat to 70. As long as my baby was staying warm and cozy, then I would be too.