{"id":1241,"date":"2009-08-03T21:48:04","date_gmt":"2009-08-04T05:48:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/?p=1241"},"modified":"2009-08-03T22:34:14","modified_gmt":"2009-08-04T06:34:14","slug":"the-home-stretch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/2009\/08\/03\/the-home-stretch\/","title":{"rendered":"the home stretch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ramahughes.com\/theroadtoawesome.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.maganda.org\/jpg\/20090803_theroadtoawesome.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Christine is tapping away on her computer right now. She is wrapping up the last of her <a href=\"http:\/\/www.darlingstudio.com\/oldnews.html\">Darling Design<\/a> jobs before she takes a hard-earned maternity leave when our son is born in just a couple of weeks. For those of you who have missed her updates here on Maganda.org, know this: No one has missed her writing more than me. I met Christine through this website. Her five-minute crushes inspired my first crush on her. It&#8217;s fair to say, I think, that she seduced me with her words. So, ever so gently over the past nine months, I have nudged her about them. &#8220;Ugh&#8230;&#8221; She groaned. &#8220;Not tonight.&#8221; Finally, I decided that I had to take the matter into my own hands.<\/p>\n<p>Almost everyday this year, someone has asked me how Christine is feeling. &#8220;How is your wife feeling?&#8221; Once or twice, I have extended an imaginary antenna and pantomined the telepathic process by which I might be able to know something like that. Of course, I know why people ask me: I am her witness. I am the one who gets to see everything she has to go through to become a mom. It&#8217;s humbling to see someone you love carry a greater weight every single day. To see easy things become hard. To see your wife become uncomfortable in her own skin. &#8220;Be nice to your mommy,&#8221; I sometimes catch Christine talking to her belly. Our Herculean son is using her ribs for a kickboxing cage match. His opponent is her bladder. Every round ends in the restroom. In her final month of pregnancy, Christine walks like a wind-up toy. Her knees barely bend. At night, she needs six strategically placed pillows and a lot of luck to fall asleep. Every now and then, I feel sleepy too. I get headaches or allergies or wonder how in the world I will get all of <em>my<\/em> work done before the baby arrives. Then I look at my perfectly pregnant wife tappa tappa tapping away at her design work, folding our son&#8217;s onesies, or baking an emergency batch of Heath Bar cookies. I wonder how I became such a wimp. When I express my admiration for her, Christine says &#8220;This (becoming a mom) is what I always wanted.&#8221; My answer, when people ask, is that Christine is carrying her pregnancy &#8220;with grace.&#8221;<br \/>\n<em><br \/>\nGuest written by Mr. Christine Hughes, illustration by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ramahughes.com\">the stinkowitz<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christine is tapping away on her computer right now. She is wrapping up the last of her Darling Design jobs before she takes a hard-earned maternity leave when our son is born in just a couple of weeks. For those of you who have missed her updates here on Maganda.org, know this: No one has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1241"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1251,"href":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241\/revisions\/1251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}