All This and a Pinching

Why don’t your friends who have babies before you tell you about The Pinching Phase?

It’s like the final few weeks to Kate’s due date when I was compelled to go to Target once every 48 hours. (Buy curtains, return curtains, rinse and repeat.) Mark and I just thought this was my own breed of pregnancy madness, but when I called my friend Sue to tell her I’d be late to her house one night–since I was in traffic coming from Target–she said, “Oh yeah, I remember that Target phase.” Well why the hell don’t they write about that in What To Expect When You’re Expecting?!

So, the pinching. A few weeks ago Kate starting in on it with a fervor. And man, she is a good pincher. She just takes the smallest amount of skin (no fat) and gives it a nice hard squeeze. And they come out of the blue, in moments when your guard is down, like dozily nursing her, or holding her while trying to empty the dishwasher.

Mark was undressing her for a bath a couple weeks ago and strarted screaming for me to come check something out. Of course, I envisioned that the devil had spelled out BITCH across her stomach, but no. Mark was flipping out over the fact that she was pinching herself. Making her way up and down her stomach, and coming oddly close to her nipples a couple times.

Why doesn’t this hurt her? Is her desire to perfect her pincer grasp (one of the skills that is all part of the first year child dev journey) so great that she is willing to overlook her pain, and the pain of others, to practice?

When my mother’s group met last, Megan was holding young Ella and saying her goodbyes when all of a sudden she let out a little cry. “Agh! What is UP with the pinching?” she wailed. Ah well, at least Kate is not alone.