Bill Penick: The Perks of Pregnancy

THE PERKS OF PREGNANCY

by Bill Penick

Of the countless books on the subject of pregnancy, not one talks about it as a golden opportunity to reap unimaginable rewards. What a pity! As a result, most moms-to-be are so focused on the baby or babies in their bellies that they completely overlook the plethora of possible perks that come with pregnancy – but not my very savvy wife.

As the proud parents of three perfect products of propitious procreation, Julie and I have experienced the miracle of creating a human life. It is a distinct honor for women to be the ones to compose and carry such a precious cargo in their own bodies. It’s also an awesome responsibility and we had some anxious moments during the course of Julie’s pregnancies, but they all turned well, in part because my wife gamed the system so perfectly. I know what you’re thinking: this sounds just like a guy who never had to deal with morning sickness, unpleasant exams, labor pain, or stretch marks, etc., but please hear me out. I’m not talking about mundane perks like maternity leave or not mowing the lawn. I’m talking about really important stuff like free beer and free grades.

Free Beer

Julie and I were season-ticket holders and loyal fans of the New Orleans Saints for several years at the franchise’s outset. Starting with the initial season in 1967, we sat on the hard wooden benches at old Tulane Stadium with several friends and watched in despair as our new football team usually got demolished. We all drained our sorrows in cheap beer on those long Sunday afternoons in a hot, uncovered stadium.

Julie was pregnant with our second (born 1/3/69) and third (born 2/13/71) children throughout the 1968 and 1970 seasons but still managed to attend all of the Saints’ home games. Between her enlarged uterus and compressed bladder, the usual mismatch on the field (the Saints were 4-9-1 and 2-11-1 in those two seasons), and the cold beer she drank in moderation, Julie spent a lot of time going to and from the bathroom. Since there wasn’t much happening on the field, her comings and goings were definitely observed by our nearby (mostly male) neighbors, not surprisingly, because Julie was a beautiful woman (and still is at age 69) who absolutely glowed during her pregnancies.

But her effect was not limited to the fans in the stands. In some mysterious way, Julie also galvanized the Saints on the field by just going to the bathroom. It was uncanny and even a little spooky: the few times our team ever scored any points occurred when Julie was in the bathroom. She was the Saints’ 12th player.

The causal connection between Julie’s bathroom visits and the home team’s success did not go unnoticed by the desperate fans around us. After the first couple of home games, they began by asking Julie to wait until the Saints had the ball. When she did go, our new, overly solicitous friends cautioned her to be careful and take her time. Then, in a “Eureka” moment, some beer-swilling dude behind us suddenly realized that beer and bathrooms were intimately linked and started buying beer for Julie in hopes of triggering her bladder reaction. Other fans picked up the cue and did the same, so we were rolling in suds. I happily drank most of the free beer but that didn’t matter to our generous pals, who figured if Julie only took a sip or two out of each beer, that could make all the difference in a close game.

Tennessee Williams was certainly right about “the kindness of strangers.” Never in the entire history of the human race was a single individual’s bathroom schedule manipulated, monitored, and anticipated so intently by so many observers. Julie’s fame spread like wildfire. Toward the end of the season, our section of the stadium erupted in loud cheers whenever Julie left her seat. It was like I was married to a real saint (which she is): Saints’ fans, who are a little crazy to begin with, jumped out of her way, reached over to touch her sleeve, and blessed her reverently for just going to the bathroom! Despite their adoration, I was always worried that some extreme fan would lock her in a bathroom stall since she was too big to crawl under or over the door.

Unfortunately, Julie’s bladder was not nearly as porous as the Saints’ defense and they continued to lose, but because of her offensive contributions, Julie almost won the team’s Most Valuable Player award twice.

Free A’s

It’s a small jump from Tulane Stadium to a Tulane classroom. Julie had finished two years of college before interrupting her education to help with her very sick father and later to marry me and start a family. In 1968, when Casey was three, Julie decided to resume her studies by taking a night class for credit. She took one or two classes at Tulane, Loyola, and UNO for almost every semester after that, in addition to raising three children and teaching at the JCC Nursery

School for 25 years. Julie graduated cum laude from Tulane in 1996 in the presence of her very proud family.

When she started that first class in the fall of 1968, Julie was about five months pregnant with our second child, Ginger. She enjoyed the class and did well, but when the date of the final exam was announced, it happened to fall exactly on her due date. She therefore talked to her professor about the conflict, which produced this memorable exchange a month before the exam:

PROFESSOR: “Well, Mrs. Penick, I can’t change my schedule.”

JULIE: “Well, Mr. _________, I can’t change my schedule either.” (Score 1 for Julie!)

So the impending conflict was not resolved. However, as Julie’s belly continued to expand, the professor finally started to realize he might have a serious problem if Julie went into labor in the middle of his exam and he, a music teacher, had to deliver a baby. Julie thought the issue was closed until, out of the blue, he promised her an A in the course if she skipped the exam! Now that’s an offer that very few sane students would not jump at with both feet, but he did not know my wife very well. What he’d done by arrogantly refusing her earlier overture was to arouse her fine sense of right and wrong, so she declined his new offer, to his obvious discomfort. He renewed the offer after every ensuing class, with growing urgency in proportion to her growing girth, but her mind was made up. He clearly had no previous experience with very pregnant women of any kind and was mystified by her determination (which he probably called something else).

By the time of the exam, the poor man was a nervous wreck. He could barely remember who wrote Beethoven’s Fifth. When the final exam took place, I waited outside the room with the car running in case Julie did go into labor, but that apparently didn’t ease the professor’s anxiety. Julie said he hovered nearby and came running over whenever she stood up to stretch her legs or even just frowned. She came through it all in good shape, no doubt better than he did, and aced the exam with a real A, the first of many in her subsequent college career.

As fragile as the professor was just then, it probably would have sent him over the edge if we’d told him that Ginger waited another three weeks after his exam to make her entrance into the world.