The pregnancy is giving me an opportunity to learn lots of new German words. I’ve been trying to familiarize myself with root words so that the words themselves are easier to remember. Here are a few of my favorites:

Muttermond – a combination of the words for ‘mother’ and for ‘mouth’, this is the word for cervix. (Don’t think about teeth. Don’t think about teeth.)

Blau – the word for ‘blue’, which is the color that the baby will be when she’s born. Note: this is also the word for ‘shitty-ass wasted drunk’, which she will not be when she’s born unless the midwife we plan on using is actually an anesthesiologist in sheep’s clothing.

Kreissaal – this is the word used for the delivery room where the babe will be born. It, too, is a compound word, made of the word Kreis, or ‘circle’, and the word Aal, or ‘eel’. Easy to remember – it’s a circle eel!

Between trying not to make jokes about how hungry my mothermouth is, and trying not to think too much about how an eel wound up in the delivery room, I’m way too preoccipied to remember which yoga poses help the baby through the birth canal and which are absolutely not to be practiced during delivery. I guess we’ll see!

We’ll see if birth has anything to do with eels.

This doesn’t have anything to do with pregnancy (I think,) but is another fun compound word. The word for mustard is senf in German. On my way home today, I walked by the butcher, who was advertising a Senfsalon. I don’t know what that means, but I’m in.