Strange Bedfellows

So, pregnancy makes for strange bedfellows. I have had birdfeeders hanging out for the last couple of years but I have never felt the level of responsibility towards the birds that I do now.

I keep looking at the birds flitting about and thinking about how they're getting ready to nest and feeling this wired affinity towards them. I know how sleepy and hungry I always am and can't help but ponder how hard it would be if I had to fly around creation to gather my food and I had to build a new house. I totally feel for the mama birds at the moment. Of course, I do realize that they're BIRDS and I'm not even sure if they are miserable because they're actually just ovulating and I do that all the time and it's not always pleasant but was definitely not pregnancy.

In addition, I'm slowly becoming totally interested in canine reproduction. I keep wondering what my dogs (both spayed actually) would make of it if they suddenly found themselves pregnant. Do they have any inkling of what going into heat means. Do they feel pukey and miserable? How do they ever manage to take care of themselves? It seems like they would quickly be picked off as the weakest link. Do they smell different so all the other dogs "know?"

I've also been contemplating when people would have started to make the connection between missing a period and feeling crappy=a baby. I don't think it would have been that much of a challenge to figure out if you miss a whole lot of periods and get big, you get a baby but, I do wonder about if those first few months. Would the other people have just thought you were sick and shunned you? My mother said that when she got pregnant, in the late 70s, you had to miss 2 periods before they could even test for pregnancy. By then, you've already had plenty of opportunity to do all manner of mischief to the embryo and are in the home stretch of your 1st trimester. I had enough trouble waiting to take a test for 2 weeks. Of course, I also wonder if I would have trusted myself more to "tell" if I didn't know I could take a test so soon. After all, I had definitely noticed a number of indicators that I might be pregnant- I had to wear a bra, I was peeing 2 times a night, I suddenly needed 10 glasses of water a day, I got a headache just when the egg would have been fertilized, really, all I lacked was a flashing neon sign Still, I had no faith that I wasn't just imagining these things until I saw the 2 lines.

In other, non-pondering news, my husband and I will be out of town through Friday so, I will have dropped off the face of the internet but am just wandering the wild blue yonder.