Baby's First Gift to Me

This morning I checked the York website to see if my exam schedule had been published yet. It had. My only exam (for my Milton class) is on April 11 at 9am. I will be 33 weeks pregnant. The exam is 3 hours long.

I have been thinking of this exam for a while now with fear and trembling. How am I going to sit through 3 hours at 33 weeks pregnant? I thought. If I don't drink any water for an hour or so before hand, maybe I could make it. However, not drinking leads to dehydration which leads to Braxton Hicks contractions, which are inconvenient at the very least, dangerous at most.

Today in my Milton class, ironically just the day that I planned on approaching my prof with this problem, I learned that there is another pregnant girl in the class! This is very strange; in 3 out of my 5 classes there is at least 1 other pregnant person. I have never encountered pregnant people in university classes before this year. It is a strange and interesting coincidence that helped me out during the last exam period (the other woman was quite a bit more pregnant than I was, which reminded the professor to make a concession for us during our exam--that is, she let us use the washroom if we needed to). So today, during the break I heard the prof ask the other girl how she was feeling. She answered with a weak "blech" and then she and the prof started talking about morning sickness, the prof reassuring her that the second trimester is much easier. I asked the girl how many weeks she is (6) and then told her that I am 25 weeks and assured her that I started feeling better at around 10 weeks and have felt pretty good for all of the second trimester so far (though I did warn her that close to the end of the second trimester rolling over in bed is sometimes onerous). This conversation was very timely as it made it much easier for me to broach the topic with my prof after class, as she didn't previously know that I am pregnant (unless she is very observant).

So after class I stayed behind and expressed my nervousness about the 3 hour exam. My prof (who is such an understanding and simply nice person--possibly the nicest most down-to-earth professor I've had--and a Milton prof no less!) was extremely sympathetic. She spoke to both of us breeders and arranged for us to come in the morning of the exam and pick up the exam from her and take it home and bring it back the next day. Ah! Beautiful. So, because of this baby I have weasled my way out of my very last exam at the undergraduate level and have a take home exam instead. It couldn't have worked out better, if I do say so myself.

Thank you, baby! This will do for quite a few Mother's Days, I think. No flowers or chocolates required. Maybe in future, though, you could arrange to get me out of my PhD dissertation? Great, thanks.