My anxiety has two settings: I don't care (at all, not even a little bit) or I can't stop thinking about it.
Strangely enough, one of the things that I don't care about at all is labor and delivery. I can't be bothered to think about it. I know it's going to happy. I know I'm supposed to be scared that it will hurt or be awful or whatever. I know those things. But I just cannot care.
Instead, the thing I compulsively worried about was this: what am I going to do with my hair when I'm in labor??
This is a truly ridiculous thing to worry about when it comes to having a baby, but it's what my brain decided to fixate on. Would I remember hair ties? If I told Danny to buy me hair ties, what kind of atrocities would I end up with (rubber bands? the ones with the metal clasps??)? I'm a hair twirler too, especially when I'm anxious, tired, or in pain. In labor, I knew I'd be tearing my hair out of a ponytail every few minutes, only to put it back in the ponytail, and repeat.
The solution was obvious. It was staring me right in the face: I needed to cut my hair off.
Once upon a time, I was just a college hipster living in Idaho.
For having had a pixie cut for so long, I've become strangely attached to long hair. My long(er) hair has become part of my identity, even though I mostly just put it in a bun most of the time. Having gained weight in the last few years, and gaining more since getting pregnant, I felt afraid that if I cut my hair, it would betray the changes my body had gone through. I was really, really scared that I wouldn't look as cute as I used to with short hair and that people would clue in to the fact that I had gotten, well, considerably larger than I used to be.
My long hair was a security blanket: I used it to hide, to hide the reality of what I look like and what I feel I look like. Even though I knew I look really good with short hair, I was terrified that this time, I wouldn't.
However, as time passed, it got harder and harder for me to do my hair every day. I knew I looked disheveled. I knew I looked like a mess. I knew I looked like I'd just rolled out of bed (in many instances, I had). Something had to be done. Something drastic.
At exactly 35 weeks (last Friday), I cut all my hair off.
Ok, maybe not all of it: most of it.
And you know what?
I didn't look awful. I did have a terrifying moment, post-haircut, where I walked into Target and saw my reflection in the sliding glass doors: do I look like a tick?????!!! You know, big body, little head? I became paranoid, rushed through Target, and drove home... only for Danny to tell me that I looked amazing and, in his words, "more put together."
Which, really, was the goal.
My fears were unfounded. I'd been terrified that, without my long hair, my much fuller face and burgeoning double chin would be revealed. However, I've found with a pixie cut, those things are actually less obvious: instead, people focus on my eyes or my features or, best of all, my belly.