Monday, July 14, 2008

Miss Jackson Doesn't Mind if I Tell On Her A Little Bit

I have had a really easy pregnancy so far (knock on wood) but I don't mind, and I don't think MJ will mind, if I admit that it's not all rainbows and glowy skin over here. I'm officially in the uncomfortable stages of pregnancy. I don't want to complain because these are all minor, routine annoyances that pale in comparison to the pay-off -- Miss Jackson, as we assume she's going to be worth it. In the interest of full disclosure, though, I'll go ahead and vent here about some of the not-so-pleasant aspects of being hugely pregnant. Rest assured I am leaving out some things that I promise you don't want to read about. (Poor Jake. He has to hear about every single thing, even those things that I will spare you.)

1. I waddle. There is no hiding it. Walking normally is almost impossible. I walk like a penguin now and there is nothing I can do about it.

2. I used to have ankles. Well, sort of. They were always cankle-ish, but right now, they are nonexistent. I am scared to try on real shoes because I am pretty sure that they wouldn't fit. (Bonus to summertime baby -- flip-flops, so I don't have to confront the unfortunate reality that my feet might have grown.) I already wore a size ten before I got pregnant, so needless to say, I have to hope that these tootsies go back to normal eventually. Even my fingers are swollen enough that they are now dimpled. Yes, dimpled. Drinking Diet Coke makes the swelling worse (the sodium), which is a shame because on a list of Things I Love the Most, fountain Diet Coke would be right up there with poodles, television, and books. (Note: I have not stopped drinking Diet Coke. Who's looking at my swollen digits anyway?)

3. Getting up off of low or soft furniture is a real challenge. Forget getting out of the bed. As Jake says, that's a three-step process. Roll, hoist, lunge. Usually the last couple of steps are accompanied by involuntary grunts.

4. Speaking of getting out of the bed, I have to do that at least twice a night now, to go to the bathroom. AT LEAST twice. Sometimes three times. I usually go to the bathroom right before I get in the bed, read, go to the bathroom again right before I go to sleep, wake up twice during the night, and then have to go immediately upon waking in the morning.

5. And it's not like I can sleep very well in between bathroom visits. You have to sleep on your side when you're pregnant, which hurts your hips when you have a bowling ball strapped to your belly. A pillow between the legs helps, but that just makes it more difficult when you inevitably have to roll yourself over and/or get up in the middle of the night.

6. I'm tired!

7. I burped out loud, on the street, yesterday. Out loud! On the street! I couldn't help it! It just slipped out! This had to be Miss Jackson's fault.

8. I have heartburn for the first time in my life. It's not that bad, but I still liked it better when I didn't have it.

9. I have had a few terrible nightmares, which I think are normal, pre-baby anxiety dreams. For awhile they were dreams that something bad would happen to Jake, but last night I dreamed that MJ came out and she was only a head with a tiny, malformed itty bitty doll body. (We know this is not true because (1) we've had four ultrasounds during which her limbs were present and accounted for, and (2) I can feel her kick me ALL THE TIME. It was still a sad/scary dream, though.)

Amazingly, none of these things, even in toto, outweigh the good stuff. My hair is thick, my skin is good, I can wear elastic-waist pants every day if I want, strangers are nice to me, I have an excuse to indulge cravings, and I get to feel Miss Jackson move inside me all day long. Even the heartburn isn't that bad because it makes me think about what she'll look like -- the old wives' tale is that the heartburn means she'll have a lot of hair.

3 comments:

Megger said...

For what it's worth, I had NO heartburn and Thomas had TONS of hair. And he still does.

Also, if you think the pregnancy dreams are rough, wait for the postpartum dreams. I can't tell you the number of times I woke up thinking that I was sleeping ON TOP of Thomas.

You're so close!!

Nora said...

And I was all ready to post that I have not had heartburn so maybe Baby Rigby will be bald but Meg has shot a hole in that theory.

Am with you on almost everything else though. I have gotten to the point where I have Hap help me out of the bed in the mornings because it is such a pain to maneuver it on my own. We're so close now!

Hannah said...

I had heartburn and Nathan had an average amount of hair, I think. But I had an average amount of heartburn.

I forgot all about the burping. Pregnancy introduced me to a whole new world of public gas.