...and more than the kind I see in the mirror. natch.
For the past few weeks I've been thinking about all stuff pregnancy-related. I had hit the halfway point a few weeks ago (week 23 coming up on Thursday!), so it seemed like a pretty natural reflection point. Milestones have a strange way of doing that to a person.
Here are some of the things I've come to realize so far:
The bathroom scale and I are no longer friends. We reached an impasse early in this pregnancy relationship. While the "normal" woman will gain up to 5 lbs. in the first trimester (conception to 14 weeks), I gained 5 lbs. by week 7 and crept up to 12 lbs. total by the end of the first trimester. I wanted to blame raging hormones since I'm the type of girl whose weight fluctuates a good 5-10 lbs with her monthly cycle (TMI), but when my doctor started to use phrases like "increased risk for pre-eclampsia" when it came to the weight gain, I got scared. So now I'm re-evaluating my eating and activity habits. Yeah, I can make little tweaks. And maybe I'll be able to reconcile my relationship with the bathroom scale before this 40 week journey is up.
A sense of humor will help you survive. Case in point: the rules of normal social etiquette go out with window with a pregnant woman. Would you go up to an overweight person and tell him/her that s/he is "huge" and could stand to lose a few pounds? Or a person who is severely underweight and suggest s/he eat a hamburger to gain a few pounds? No? Funny, those rules don't seem to apply to a pregnant woman. I get comments that run the gamut, but I try to just laugh most of them off. When a person comments on how big I'm getting, I tend to laugh and grab my belly then reply with something like "Yeah, funny how that happens when you're growing a human."
Thirty seconds can feel like an eternity. Before my daughter became a high-powered martial artist/kicking machine, I worried all the time that something was wrong. My only solace was when we'd go to the doctor (only once every 4 weeks, mind you!) and get to hear her heartbeat with the Doppler. Finding a heartbeat on a baby the size of a small piece of fruit takes a few seconds, but those thirty seconds seemed like an eternity. I never realized how hard I was holding my breath waiting to hear the woosh woosh woosh of the heartbeat until I'd hear it and exhale. Hard. Luckily, God knows that I am an anxious person by nature so Natalie (yep...that's her name!) made her presence known early. At 16 weeks on the nose. Most first time moms don't feel the first kicks until the halfway point. She let Steven know she's in there when he felt her kick for the first time last night , again ahead of schedule.
Your body does some really weird stuff when you're growing a human. I love that my super power is growing humans. It's a pretty sweet gig when you think about it. The miracle of life is happening inside my body! But there are a lot of strange things that happen when you're pregnant because the hormone changes affect EVERYTHING, not just your lady bits. Like I feel like I have a perpetually stuffy nose, my gums tend to be super sensitive, and I think I have the attention span of a fruit fly. It's not all bad or weird, though. Some of the little perks are that your body stops producing smelly sweat, your hair doesn't fall out as quickly so it stays thick, and hello! cleavage! It's also strange how I can distinguish between Natalie's kicks and her hiccups. Sixth sense?
Creating human life makes a person re-evaluate her priorities. I have spent a lot of time thinking about how I spend my time. Redundant, I know. Seriously, though, the prospect of being someone's mother and bringing a little person into the world has forced me to take stock of what takes up my time. I want to make sure that my family is a high priority, so I've started practicing this now by making my time with Steven count. I've tried to make it so late nights at work are the exception and not the rule, and for the most part I'm doing well with it. I'm trying to use my time in the mornings and on weekends more wisely so that the task lists I have get taken care of efficiently and I have nothing distracting me when I get home from work at night.
I really do like the color pink. Most of the girls in my family (all 5 of us sisters and my mom) are not what you would call girly-girls. Okay, none of us are. All of us were rough and tumble tomboys who liked to play sports more than we liked to play house/dress-up/dolls. I didn't learn how to apply makeup until...okay I'm still figuring it out. I never learned how to French braid. I'm more comfortable with a bandsaw than a sewing machine. I like to cook and bake, but it's taken time to figure out how to do more than make macaroni and cheese or cake from a box mix. But I really do like how much pink is popping up in my house. And I can't wait to buy my baby girl dresses and ribbons and bows.
Pregnancy is pretty uneventful for the most part. I feel like once I hit the second trimester and stopped feeling like a zombie, I've been on cruise control. Even the first trimester wasn't too shabby. I never threw up or felt nauseous (I know you hate me). Natalie is growing. I go to the doctor every month like I'm supposed to. For the most part, though, it's a waiting game. I feel pretty normal (sciatic nerve issues and disappearing waistline aside), and the doctor's appointments consist of peeing in a cup, getting my blood pressure checked, hearing the heartbeat, the doctor checking for where the top of my uterus is sitting, and then answering any questions I have (I usually have zero). I'm in and out in less than half an hour. I don't know what I was expecting, but I don't know that I was expecting it to be this....normal.
I know every woman experiences different things and has stories to tell (trust me...I hear everything good, bad and in between!), but I wanted to share mine so far. What are your pregnancy reflections...even from dad's perspective?
