Hormones, My Temper and the General Population

There’s a scene in one of my favorite movies, Knocked Up, where Seth Rogen’s character tells Katherine Heigl’s pregnant character that her pregnancy hormones are causing her horrible behavior.  He does so using wonderfully colorful language and goes on to curse at her hormones.  You get the point…her pregnancy hormones have taken full control and he’s giving them the credit they’re due for her bad temper.

 30 weeks pregnant, chatting about my day with Teddy.

I had always loved that movie and that scene in particular, but now I really get it.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve had a complete roller coaster of phases in emotion.  Last week, EVERYTHING made me cry.  When I say cry, I don’t mean a little teary-eyed, I mean, shaking and sobbing like…the-world-is-falling-apart crying. 

This week, EVERYTHING makes me see red.  We’re talking full on rage…for 15 minute segments at a time.  Then, my mood lifts and all is well in the world again. 

Since I am determined to turn a new leaf and be the perfect example of a what a lady should be like for the growing bundle of estrogen, even when confronted with difficult, stubborn, not-so-smart or just plain rude people, I try to project that rage in a controlled manner.

The result?  I end up having deep, heated one-sided conversations with the dry cleaning company over them

1) being one day late with our dry cleaning

2) losing one of our pillow cases. 

Normal Myrna would get ticked off and ask for a manager.  Pregnant-with-a-girl Myrna (because I think the doubling up of estrogen is really having an impact),  is turning phone conversations with the dry cleaners into conversations about feeling betrayed over the loss of our pillow case.  Really!!!! 

The person on the other line didn’t know how to react, just listened.  Then when I asked “Do you know how I feel?”, there was an obvious amount of confusion.  The person likely didn’t know if I was trying to break up with them or still talking about the pillow case.

I will look back on this phase and laugh…as well as realize I have to find a new dry cleaning company, if only out of pure embarrassment.

I hope the next phase, though increasingly uncomfortable, is a giggly nesting phase where the extent of damage I do involves having Adam install professional-grade hand sanitizer dispensers around the house, or something equally ridiculous. 

I know this is relatively normal and I should just take the out-of-body-did-that-verbal-beat-down-just-come-out-of-my-mouth moments and be grateful that my feet and hands aren’t swollen and I still look like me…well, me carrying a watermelon under my shirt.