Sixty Eight

I just came back from a prenatal checkup. Pee on a stick, get weighed, take blood pressure, and get reprimanded by a nurse. It took about ten minutes.

I was shocked-- just floored to discover the enormity of my weight gain since my last visit. I clocked in at 68 kilos-- a whopping six kilos (that's about thirteen pounds)more than I did at my checkup one month and ten days ago. You're supposed to go up-- what? One pound a week? My friends, I more than doubled that. No wonder I feel fat. I AM fat. The proof is in the pudding.

The nurse yelling at me, by the way, was not about my weight gain (nobody believes me) but about not drinking enough water. She's right. It's my own fault that I've been getting these headaches. I need to drink more.

ULTRA ultrasound

So we went to do a systems scan the other day-- on the fetus, not on our car. That's what they call it here. They have this fancy new technology called 4D ultrasound which shows you basically a photograph of what's going on inside. You can take 'portraits' of the baby. I think it's less practical for medical purposes and more useful just for kicks. Maybe if there is something on the surface of the baby that he is trying to determine, it would be very practical. But mostly they're checking to make sure that all the organs are in place and the right size. Stuff like that.

I was a little disappointed to find out the sex of the baby. I remember that in my last pregnancy, I wasn't sure that I would love the kid-- and I certainly didn't until he was born. I feel the same with this one but with the added anxiety (is there a less potent word to use here than anxiety) of how the birth will affect my DS. He is my favorite child. Of course, he's also until now my only child but what difference does that make? Why does sibling rivalry only belong to siblings? Hopefully he won't be a jealous brother. My brother was quite jealous when I was born but he was a little older. Also, DS doesn't seem to mind when I hold and play with other kids, though he does sometimes demand equal attention.

The little fetus inside me is, however, quite cute(pupupu)if I do say so myself. These pictures aren't entirely telling, since there is a lot of movement and the pressure of amniotic fluid (not to mention layers of skin an fat) floating around between the 'lens' and the subject, but DS, once he un-squished from the birthing process, looked quite like he did in the 4D-- and since he was born a bit early and I had oligohydremanaise (don't ask me how to spell that), he was skinny and bony when born, as opposed to nice and round during the systems scan when I still had enough amniotic fluid to sustain him. But when he filled out again, he started to resemble his ultrasound pic. So there is some truth to the technology.

Still Fat But Better

I know I've been going on a lot about body image lately but I guess that's where I am right now in my pregnancy.

I took the opportunity to evaluate where, exactly the fat problem is happening on my body. I know that I'm bigger and heavier, and a lot of it is just baby belly (or baby bump as the celeb papers annoyingly call it) but there was certainly something else happening. I had seen a video and pictures of me and things didn't look right.

Now, I think I tend to glorify my last pregnancy, but I don't remember this particular shape issue happening last time. I remember my shape last time as just plain old me with slightly bigger boobs and a volleyball-sized bloop protruding out the front of me. Photographs of the time more or less affirm these memories. However, if I'm completely honest with myself (it's rare but it happens), I can dig up memories of me sitting around an complaining to my husband about being fat last time around also. I just don't really remember where all this alleged fat was.

This time, I have located the source of the problem and now I can better hide it if not immediately eliminate it. It seems that what used to be the nice curve of my back-- right up above the butt-- has all but dissapeared. I look more like a guy from that angle now except that guys are still pretty rectangular back there and my butt still has the upside-down heart shape (though it's a bigger heart nowadays, seems to me). Is all this getting too graphic? Skip to the next post.

I vaguely remember someone telling me last time around that when you get a baby belly, it kind of pushes all the fat (as much as there was anyway) to the back of you. So if I remember this from last time, it must mean that I was having the same problem then too.

Other than that, it's not too bad of a prognosis. Maybe a little bit extra on the thighs, but not really. Maybe a little more of that 'skinny girl double chin' thing going on that I hate (you know what I mean? When skinny girls have this incongruous extra fat at the top of the neck? It's worse if you slouch like me.) But overall... well, I think it's mostly stuff that will go away when I start breastfeeding, assuming that breastfeeding goes as it did last time.

Leg Cramps & Pins and Needles

I remember a difference between this pregnancy and the last one. Last time, I kept getting horrible foot and leg cramps. I would bend or flex my toes and they would just lock painfully in that position. It lasted for a couple of minutes each time. I think this is a fairly common symptom of pregnancy-- something to do with potassium? Maybe having a 'nana' obsessed toddler at home that has helped me keep the house stocked with bananas has aleviated the symptom this time. I have gotten a couple of cramps but minor ones.

I also have fewer episodes of my various appendages falling asleep. I still get pins and needles if I'm sitting at my desk or on the toilet too long or sometimes in my sleep, but last time I remember waking up with completely immobile arms almost every night. But last time I was also sleeping on a rather hard mattress and I think that contributed to the problem a lot.

Coffee Break

I'm drinking coffee this morning. Decaf. Since I first became pregnant, I have had almost no desire for coffee. I've taken to drinking tea with milk. Coffee didn't nauseate me or anything like that. In fact, I wanted to want coffee. I like the smell and the taste... I just didn't have the desire to make and drink it. Can't explain it. I've had it a few times but only when we go to a restaurant or out for coffee or something like that.

Aside from the coffee thing, I'm trying to eat more healthy foods lately and less garbage. I don't mean a fat-free or junk-free diet. I just mean that I eat a meal of real foods first and then I'll indulge in a chocolate after instead of gorging myself on chocolate and then filling up whatever leftover space there is with salad. In civilian life (okay, in non prego life) I eat pretty well, but I definitely consume my share of junk food. But when I feel like things are getting out of hand I easily transition to healthy foods. In fact, if someone was to prepare nice, healthy meals for me on a regular basis, I'd be very happy to eat those most of the time. I just hate preparing and then especially cleaning up after cooking. I hate it. I prefer to eat toast and butter on a napkin five times a day.

Butter, by the way, is considered a whole food on my list.

Giving In To My Size

I've been resisting pulling out my maternity clothes. I'm not exactly sure why. I remember being very excited to finally get some last time around because I was so darn uncomfortable already in my regular attire. "But you're barely showing" people would say. Well, that may have been true, but the fact was and is that my regular clothes just weren't fitting me comfortably. I had an embarrassing incident today which I already wrote about in my last post but which bears repeating. I was wearing a golf shirt-- the kind with three or four buttons on top and a collar-- only this one is made for hoochie ladies. It's tight and a tad long, which would normally be good for pregnancy. In fact, I bought it during my last pregnancy and wore it until the last month, though not that often, I think. Anyway, when I put it on this morning, I prudently buttoned up until the next-to-top button, as I am not into bearing all, even though what I've got now is more worth bearing. When I got home from picking up my son, going to the organic market and then the grocery store, I realized that all the buttons had come undone and my rainbow bra, not to mention generous sections of my breasts, were available for all to see. It was certainly the most embarrassing thing to happen to me in a while.

Anyway, I did pull out my fave maternity skirt a couple of days ago, to mixed feelings of dread and relief. I have been wearing the oversize hooded t-shirts that my mom sent me, but I'm in denial that they are maternity clothes since, technically, they aren't. But they sure are comfortable. I have a couple of maternity dresses that I'm waiting to get big enough to wear. Some things look OK when you're really protruding, but really grandmotherly-like otherwise. I gave in and wore a skirt that my mother-in-law sent me to a wedding the other day, even though it was literally falling of me the whole time. It was a medium, and I'm a medium but for some reason it was made really big. I pinned it to my tights and then those started coming down from the weight too. I spent a lot of time rearranging my attire that night.

Foreign Body

I'm trying to remember if I felt this way last time. Certainly, there were times during the pregnancy that I felt 'fat', but now I'm convinced of it. Looking at my thighs, the word 'thunder' comes to mind. Where did they come from? How can I make them go? I feel like my lower back, where my waist used to be, has merged with my buttocks. In fact, I'm convinced of this since I shot a video of myself and my son hanging laundry today (he's very helpful with the clothespins) and caught a glimpse of the wide expanse I used to be so proud of. Interestingly, since we are discussing my butt, it was only a few months ago that I noticed it had disappeared altogether. My body has gone through some really radical changes in the past two or three years since I first got pregnant. I was much more accepting of it last time around. Maybe this time I have the expectation of fitting right back in to my regular clothes after I give birth the way I did last time. Okay, it took me 4 months, but that's pretty fast, they say.
Because of the shape I'm carrying in (wider as opposed to the beach-ball-in-my-shirt look that I sported last time), it's suspected that I'm having a girl. Of course, that's an old wives tale, but even old wives are right at least 50% of the time when predicting gender, right?
I know for sure I'm getting bigger up top. This morning I was horrified to arrive home and see my bra and part of my enlarged breasts hanging out of the top where my buttons had popped open. For someone who's been an A-36 most of her life, this new development can be both warmly welcomed and also a bit alarming. It took me until the 9th month last time to figure out my new bra size wasn't a B-36 but an A-38. Try finding THAT size at your local Sears. Nursing bras were an even bigger challenge, but I digress. I think I'm even bigger this time because even the two A-38 bras I managed to find last time around aren't so comfortable right now. Talk about a foreign body-- who ever heard of gaining three inches of fat on your back??

Warmer

I spent most of December and January on the couch under blankets. That was partly because of my tiredness and partly because I just couldn't shake the winter chill from my bones. Well, it's still relatively cold outside but now it's DH who is cold and turning up the heat. Maybe pregnancy is making me warmer.

Getting Cleaner All The Time

I'm no neat freak -- which is a blessing since I have a toddler who habitually dumps the contents of his dinner bowl on the floor and likes the sound of his toys falling off the bookshelf more than he actually likes playing with some of them -- but I do try to maintain some sort of order and hygiene in my home. You know, making sure that surfaces aren't grubby from neglect, washing out the fridge shelves when they get grimy... that sort of thing. These are the kinds of things I take care of on a regular basis as I notice a need for them, but not with any sort of regularity. This is in contrast to more regular chores like washing dishes or scrubbing the floor which I try to do every day and every week respectively.

Well, in the last couple of weeks or so I've been battling some serious buildup of mess and dirt in our house. It's due to the first few weeks of my pregnancy when nothing got done unless it was an absolute necessity. Anything that required getting off the couch, would've had to have been crucial or acutely important to take care of such as a sink overflowing with dishes or laundry when DH was down to his oldest, grungiest pair of undies. Of course, I had help from him but housework takes second place to his schooling with regards to priority setting, and I'm party to that decision. So what had to get done got done, but things like washing the cupboard doors of those mysterious drippings or cleaning the fridge handles didn't happen for ages.

It's only now, about a month after my last terribly nauseous spell, that I'm feeling as though I'm starting to get a grip on the situation. Sure, things get messy around here, but they don't stay that way for long. And the messes don't build up on top of each other, resulting in a pile of work that is as intimidating as it is large. We have manageable disorder.

It Kicks!

I felt it for the first time last Wednesday, 5 days ago. Well, to be more accurate, it was more of a poke-- a series of them. And they've been coming on strong ever since. I was lying in bed reading when I first noticed it. Who knows, they might have been going on for days already but I was never still for long enough to pay attention.

I don't remember when I started feeling kicks last time around (hence the need for a blog this time around) but I do remember that it was much more gradual. In the beginning I felt a kick here and a kick there. It was a while before I was really sure what it was. If they started out as a ballet, they ended up as a parade towards the end of the pregnancy. This time it began as a good, fast paced walk. That's what it feels like when he (she?)'s active.

The pokes made me feel... something towards the fetus. I know that until the birth of my DS, I wasn't entirely sure that I was going to like my offspring. I mean, there is a pretty good historical precedent that parents tend to love their kids, but I wasn't entirely sure it would apply. Now that the kicking has begun, I can't help but feel a little bit connected at least. I mean, all of a sudden there is living proof-- more so than an ultrasound-- that a little baby is growing inside. Everyone loves a baby, right?