2008
You Have to Admit It’s Getting Bigger
This is what 25 1/2 weeks and 17 1/2 pounds looks like. (I’ve gained almost two pounds a week for the last two months!)
And here are the last three belly shots, which I realize I’d loaded onto Flickr for Friends Only and never got around to posting here.
20 weeks
23 weeks (and looking somewhat slim)
25 weeks
Part of me is disappointed that the 25 and 20 don’t look all that different. (Maybe because that part of me knows that half of those ten pounds has taken up residence not in my midsection but on my butt, hips, and thighs.) The SANE part of me, however, is rejoicing that I still have plenty of room to grow without my skin splitting open like a ripe melon during my ninth month, and that’s a good thing (although how delicious does a ripe melon sound about now?)
The weirdest belly development (bellvelopment?) is having to acknowledge that my uterus is utterly lopsided. Whenever I get one of those pesky and almost hourly Braxton-Hicks contractions* (or Branston Sweet Pickles, as Simon calls them), the outline of the babypod sticks up in full relief–way up to my ribcage on the right side and still a few inches below my bellybutton on the left side, like a nice kidney-shaped swimming pool. (OMG IT IS SO HOT HERE. SEND MELON AND A POOL ASAP.) I had an impressive contraction at the doc’s this week, and when I asked her about the bizarre configuration she said it’s revealing how the baby’s laying, most likely with his head down and to the left (where I feel the gentler flicks and punches) and his feet stretching up to the right (the better to kickbox your diaphragm, my dear). While she was listening to his heartbeat (140 bpm), he also smacked the doppler wand twice, which I thought was pretty charming.
Aside from the PT order (which I’m now considering ignoring because the sciatica has been on hiatus and for the last two days and I’m the type of patient who dismisses a prescription as soon as the ailment disappears), the only other exciting thing that happened was the order for the dreaded glucose screening test, which I’m actually sort of looking forward to in the same way that I looked forward to that first uncomfortable full-bladder ultrasound, and the same way I’m looking forward to an excruciating labor. There’s an element of right-of-passage/joining-the-sisterhood in looking forward to things that universally suck, but I also suspect there’s just something about motherhood that brings out the masochism in some of us. I did, after all, sign up for this knowing how much pee and poop and barf and sleepless nights and endless worrying and broken curfews and “mom, can I go to Fitty Cent’s reunion tour”s would be involved. If that’s not masochism, slap my ass and call me Sally. (Seriously. Slap it. Slap it hard.)
*I always knew about Braxton-Hicks contractions, but I thought they were something that only happened toward the end of the third trimester, when they were more likely to be confused for active labor. What I’ve learned on my own, though, is that they can start early in the second trimester and can happen pretty regularly–for me, every time I need to pee, have just gone pee, or need to drink more water, which means ALL THE DAMN TIME. (They’re nothing to worry about unless I have more than four an hour.) The fact that they can be interpreted as early labor, though, makes me think that they’re eventually going to get pretty painful, especially in contrast to what I feel now, which doesn’t hurt at all but is more of just a weird, slightly uncomfortable tightening, almost like a dull hunger pang. So either I’m in for a world of hurt later on or I’m Supergestator and completely immune to the pain that afflicts all the other poor women of the world. Just in case, I guess I should start thinking about which book I should bring to the labor and delivery room in case the whole “pushing” thing gets a little *yawn* tedious.
2008
Taking It Easy the Hard Way
Hello there! Guess who’s on a kinda sorta semi-staycation? My company just moved out of one office building and into another, but since the space my desk will live in is currently full of sawdust and paint fumes and swarthy laborers, I’m stuck at home for a good long while (my three-day weekend became a five-day weekend became an eleven-day weekend!), which is one part bad (I’ve literally dreamt about arranging the furniture in my new office and can’t wait to get in there!) and ten parts good (I’ve developed crippling sciatica and spent ten minutes in a heap on the floor yesterday because I couldn’t even move my head without feeling electric nerve pain shoot down my back at a magnitude of ten times worse than any pain I’ve ever felt. I got a referral for a physical therapist today).
So nothing much else is going on being that I’m having trouble moving and all. “Working” from home is great in theory, but I have a feeling I’d be better off stuck in an office chair at a computer all day instead of on the couch surrounded by a million and one half-completed projects and half-cleaned messes that I can’t take care of, and limited are the number of chores and activities I can do while seated or reclined. Yesterday I went through all the baby clothes and arranged them by size. Then I updated my address book. I had all these visions of practicing my homemaker skills–greeting Simon at the door with a martini, dinner on the stove, fresh slick of lipstick–but I still don’t know how to make a proper martini to his liking (gin not vodka; onions not olives), he makes the dinner while I lay like a lump and clutch my back, and these days even showering is a chore for me, so he’s lucky if I apply a fresh slick of deoderant before he comes home. Poor guy. He’s taking his oppressed-woman time-outs, though, so don’t feel too bad for him.
Maybe I’ll express my appreciation via a bouquet of flowers, a box of chocolates, or a diamond necklace if I’m feeling generous. I hear chicks dig that stuff.
