Realizations Along The Way

There’s moments throughout your pregnancy when you have a horrible, wonderful, or simultaneously both, realization about something. I would give that a more eloquent description, but I’m 35 weeks into this and my brain doesn’t work anymore. Here are mine:

I have to give birth eventually.

This seems silly because, DUH, obviously, how else is the baby coming out? This is my first, though, and I’ve never given birth (believe it or not). It hit me sometime in my first trimester that I was indeed pregnant, like, for real pregnant, and it would end with either me pushing a baby out or getting a C-section. There was no way around it. This baby would have to be born, and I would have to do it.

My period will come back one day, and I will have an infant to take care of on top of it.

Periods are nature’s way of cursing women every single month for most of their life. For most women, it’s not just a week… there’s PMS, there’s mood swings, there’s spending hard earned dollars on luxury items like tampons, etc. Not having to worry about a period is kind of liberating. There’s 400 billion other things to worry about and deal with, but whatever. Pregnant ladies will take wins where they can get them. I was in the bathroom one day and saw a tampon wrapper on the floor. I realized how long it had been since I had to deal with tampons and texted my other pregnant friend so we could brag about it. Then I realized, sickeningly, that some day soon I will have a period again, and not only that but I will have an infant to care for, breastfeed, entertain, keep safe, etc., on top of it. Damn.

At some point, I was officially “huge”.

I can’t pinpoint the exact day this happened, or even the general time frame. I just know that one day I caught sight of myself in the mirror and thought “holy crap, I am huge.” My KNEES have cellulite. My freakin’ knees. I didn’t know that was possible. I knew I would cross into this realm eventually, but it wasn’t until I saw my chunker-legs in the mirror that I really believed it. I looked like an awkward fat kid at the beach that isn’t comfortable in whatever they’re wearing.

“You’re all belly!” is false.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told I’m “all belly”, and how many times I say thank you but scream internally. Why wouldn’t I take the complement, you ask? Well, I do. I’ll take whatever complement I can get, and I appreciate them all.

Pregnancy is a full body and mind experience, and very few people are “all belly”. Yes, my belly is prominent, but my hands are swollen, my wrists have fat rolls, my feet are useless swollen bricks most of the time, I have cankles, you already know my knees have cellulite, my butt is about 20 times the size, my underwear fits for about 1-2 weeks before I need to seriously consider buying more pairs, my bras are starting to cut into places they never have before, all of the extra fluids and mucus have made my ears blocked for about 4 months now, my lower back is almost constantly aching, my hips are starting to shift and cause me pain, SHALL I GO ON??????!~?!??!?!?~!#KIOQW#KJRI

Yeah. Being truly “all belly” would be a blessing. The complement is nice, and frankly it’s probably people’s “I don’t know how to respond to this” type of response when weight gain comes up. “I can’t eat another cookie. I’ve already gained way too much weight. I’m a freakin’ whale.” “Oh! Well! You’re all belly! You don’t even look it I swear!” It’s a good way to diffuse the situation without angering the massive pregnant lady.  

I can’t handle this right now, and I’m using pregnancy as my valid excuse.

There’s a lot of moments when pregnancy is a valid excuse for something and you don’t use it because you have to function as a human being. Examples include:

• Being too tired to go to the grocery store because you’re growing a human being

• Calling out of work because you feel like you got hit by a bus

• Calling someone out on their BS because they deserve it and your hormones give you a low tolerance for BS.

• Not doing the dishes because, again, you’re growing a human being

If you used pregnancy as an excuse for those things, and many others, nothing in your life would get done. You couldn’t function. Very few things are easy when you’re pregnant, whether it’s physical, mentally, or both. I’m blessed with a great partner that helps out with so much around the house, helps me relax, and does nice things for me. Even still, life goes on and you’re pregnant and over it.

Sometimes I have a split second moment of realization that “I don’t have to deal with this”. One of those times was walking from the shuttle to my car after work. It was my late shift – already a killer because if I had it my way I would be in bed by 8:00pm every night. There’s something soul crushing about being done with work but still being so far from home, and for me that’s a shuttle ride from the office to my designated parking that adds about 30 minutes total to my commute. I was pregnant and *OVER IT* when I sketchy man walked up to me and a few others for a cigarette. I’ve had plenty of experience dealing with sketchy strangers approaching me on the street after living in Boston for 6 years. Everyone politely answered, “no, sorry, I don’t”. Usually I would have done the same, diffuse the situation with a kind smile, a firm no, and keep moving. Instead I turned to him and aggressively said “I’M PREGNANT.” Like, NO, I don’t want to deal with you randomly coming up to me trying to bum a cigarette after I’ve had a long day and all I want to do is go the hell home and go to bed. I don’t want to deal with your face. Get out of mine.

I’ve also started leaning on others more for help now that I’m so massive and tired. It’s apparent how kind and giving people are for the simplest things. I got so sick of bending over to tie my shoes that one of my coworkers is my go-to for all shoe fixes. I just put plop by giant leg on her desk and she fixes whatever the problem is. Another is my designated cell-phone-charger-plugger-inner, and the charger falls out of the stupid socket almost every day. He willingly climbs under my desk to fix it every time. Adam basically waits on me hand and foot when I need him to, no questions asked. I’ve gone a long time without “needing” him to, but now I’m too the point where I’ve finally given in and ask him to do almost everything for me at home. Pregnancy, in most cases, is a valid excuse. Eventually you have to use it.

He’ll be on the “outside” soon, and that’s always comforting to know.

Stay in the pouch, little dude!

The closer I get to my due date… well, there’s about 100 ways to finish that sentence, huh? The closer I get to my due date, the more exhausted I get, and that fatigue has resulted in some mixed feelings. I know soon I’ll want the physical symptoms to be over, but at the same time I realized that when the pregnancy is over this little baby will be outside of my body. I’ve only known him inside my kangaroo pouch. The person closest to us, meaning Adam, still isn’t that close by comparison. This baby is part of my every move, every breath, every day, every second, and has been for the past 35 weeks. I feel him every day, he comes with me everywhere, he’s all mine all the time (for better or worse). Of course, we’re desperate to meet him and I cannot wait. On the flip side, once he’s here everyone else will have access to him. I’ll have to share him. He won’t be with me 24/7, I won’t know he’s okay all the time. Even just sharing him with my closest family and friends seems like so much exposure. Is that what they call that “MATERNAL INSTINCT” thing? ;)

I know it won’t be long until I’m like “you want to take him for a few hours? Hallelujah! See ya later!” and run out the door. For now, though, I only know one way of being with him, and that’s to have him be part of me at all times. Anything else seems daunting.

Parenthood changes your relationship forever.

One of the major things I started feeling in my third trimester was that Adam and I had so little time to enjoy our relationship as we’ve known it the past 2+ years. At times I long for those moments when we had basically no responsibility and just drank wine, talked all night, and went to work together the next day. Eventually you realize that you won’t have the same relationship you had pre-baby. Of course, so many amazing things are on the horizon for us, but things will just be undeniably different.

This baby is coming... SOON.

There's nothing like a car full, and I mean literally a car full, of baby items to snap you into reality. You get used to the belly, you get used to the internal kicks and jabs and flips. Pregnancy becomes your state of being. It's always present, but in some ways you just get used to it. Sometimes it feels like you will just be pregnant forever. That is, until you realize you won't be. For me, that happened after we picked up a butt-load of toys and diapers from Aunt's house, then trucked over to Babie's R Us to "complete our registry", aka buy everything that we still needed that wasn't purchased off the registry. You get a one time 10% off coupon to "complete" the registry, so it makes sense to do it all in one trip. The result was a very, very full car. I sat in the front seat as Adam figured out how to Tetris everything into the car and got choked up by how real it all was. Adam had a similar realization, but for him it was earlier in the week when he did a load of the baby's laundry for the first time. He still can't get over how small the socks are. Neither can I. 

*Queue THE FINAL COUNTDOWN*

An Honest Look at the First Trimester

I'm 6.5 weeks away from my due date, and it seems crazy that this journey is almost over. It also seems crazy that I still have to do this for 6.5 more weeks, and that I'll only keep getting more humungous. Now that I'm closer to postpartum life, I'm starting to compile a document of "advice" to pass along to other pregnant friends in the future. I received one of these multi-paged tidbits of wisdom early on in my pregnancy, and it was great to see an honest look at what pregnancy is like. That being said, everyone's pregnancy is different, so I've been writing my own version since the beginning.

For the sake of this blog, I'm breaking it down by trimesters and scaling it down a bit. With that, here is the...

First Trimester

Yay! You're pregnant(holyshit)! Now what(holyshit!)? Well, sister, enjoy the this whirlwind feeling right now because you probably have a shitstorm coming your way.

BODY

The things that happened to my body were far beyond what I would have thought of. I knew about the nausea, the weight gain, I had seen people’s swollen feet and ankles, but I had no idea what my body was about to go through. The changes to my body in the first trimester weren't visible and dramatic like the second and third, but boy did I feel it.

Nausea – Nausea is flat out the worst symptom to deal with, in my opinion. I had persistent nausea for my first trimester; it eventually eased up around 16 weeks. After that I had a really sensitive gag reflex on and off. My stomach didn’t necessarily feel upset, but for some reason my gag reflex could be trigged by something as simple as clearing my throat. I spent many car rides looking at the car door handle, wondering how fast I could grab it if suddenly I did vomit. For me, it was not morning sickness. It was pretty much all damn day sickness. Things like preggie pops, ginger chews, PsiBands, and never letting my stomach be totally empty did help, but a lot of it was rest and mind over matter. I WILL NOT vomit in public... I WILL NOT vomit in public...

Fatigue – The tiredness you experience while pregnant is like no other. The worst days make it feel like it’s impossible to get out of bed. It's like having the flu almost every day.

Pimples/blotchiness – Ah, puberty. It was the last time I had really terrible skin. Now here I am working to bring a child into the world and suddenly I have pimples again. I didn’t suffer from acne for long (or even that badly), but I suddenly got super blotchy skin. It was the first time since high school I found myself in the makeup aisle of Target texting a girlfriend asking how the hell to choose a foundation. 

Headaches – This was the bane on my freakin’ existence for a lot of my first trimester. First of all, I was/am a caffeine addict and going cold turkey was absolutely miserable. It resulted in a steady, pounding, unrelenting migraine for about a week straight. I suffered from bad, bad headaches about 2-3 times a week throughout my first trimester, the kind where any light, movement, or sound makes you nauseous. I eventually found some sense and added some caffeine back into my diet, and it helped a lot. 

Constipation – I’m a firm believer that if you ain’t poopin, you ain’t livin’. When I have stretches of feeling unwell while pregnant, I stop and think, “when is the last time I pooped?” If the answer is more than two days, I start to blame the constipation. I didn’t realize how much digestion would slow down in pregnancy.  I kind of lost sense of time in my first trimester, I didn't work for almost two months and I spent most of my time on the couch. I'll save my worst horror stories for the "unedited" version of this list. It was brutal, but it could have been worse (ah, the pregnancy mantra). All you need to know is that I actually Googled "how long can you go without pooping before you die?". 

Constantly Peeing - I got up at 3am every single night to pee. It's annoying, but I can almost guarantee that you will be asleep within 7 seconds of laying back down because you're so tired. It's actually a good opportunity to eat a small snack so you don't wake up with an empty, extra-nauseous stomach. 

MIND

Hormones - You thought your PMS mood swings were bad? Say hello to the worst case of PMS you've ever had that doesn't end. You're going from being absolutely enthralled and amazed at this mind-blowing process going on in your body right now, to wanting to cry, throw up, cry more, scream... all in about 10 minutes, pretty much all day. Your hormones go freakin' buckwild in the first trimester as your body develops the placenta. What can you do about it? Whatever you've been doing to mitigate menstrual/general mood swings your whole life, and hope for the best. 

Insanely vivid dreams – Had I known that weird, vivid dreams were a pregnancy symptom, I would have suspected I was pregnant before I peed on the stick. I had extremely intricate, bizarre dreams every night my entire first trimester.

Pure wonder and joy - This is probably just the upswing of your mood roller coaster, but hey, enjoy it while it's there. It all seems metaphorical in the first trimester, because you can't feel the baby yet and it's so damn small that it seems impossible. That won't stop you from having those amazing moments every time you look up "how big is the baby at 7 weeks?" Answer: the size of a blueberry.

Absolute terror - The Internet is your best friend and worst enemy. It can reassure you that your chances of miscarrying are very low after a certain point, and it will also remind you that more people miscarry than you realize. I became obsessed with reading every article I could about miscarriage. I followed the May2016 due date board on an app I used and read every post of another poor woman that lost her pregnancy. Being pregnant is amazing, but it's also really scary. The stupid Internet doesn't help.

Looking back on it now...

I tried to find the silver lining of this period, and literally the only thing was finding out I was pregnant. The rest, for me, sucked. I was downright miserable almost every moment of the day. My emotions were out of control, I didn’t feel like myself, I was constantly on the verge of vomiting, etc. I wanted people to pity me, I pitied myself when no one else was pitying me, and when people were around I wished they were gone. The only thing I enjoyed was watching the Ellen Degeneres show every weekday. I wish I could paint a prettier picture, but there isn’t one to paint. I would wake up every morning with my stomach lurching up until 15 weeks. I finally stopped taking Unisom & B6 for nausea around 25 weeks. I thank the high heavens I wasn’t expected to be a functional human for a good chunk of this time. It’s just one of those things you have to muscle through, because eventually it does get better. I've really "sold" this whole amazing pregnancy thing, huh?