Date:

April 22nd, 2004

Warning : this post may be more graphic than you want to read. If it’s any consolation, it’s more graphic than I want to live and more graphic than I really want to describe as well.


Yes, hi! I’m still here, and still pregnant. I’m extremely pregnant. I’m strange people stopping me in the street and saying I must be due any minute pregnant. I’m “oh no, you’re still here” from co-workers when I encounter them in the hallway pregnant. I’m moving very slowly, belly button transformed into an outtie, having difficulty with everything, people laughing at me and imitating my waddle pregnant.


When I saw the doctor on Wednesday she said I was 2 cm plus dilated, about 50 % effaced and that she could feel the baby’s head. I am not surprised she can feel the baby’s head, since I feel it with every step I take. There’s a lot of downward pressure on me almost all the time. People keep asking me if the baby has dropped and I keep thinking if by dropped you mean pushing down and hurting me then YES. With Sophia I never really felt a lot of contractions, but I’m either more attuned to them or my body has had better practice or something because I’m having them all the time. Not regularly, mind you, and not with any kind of progression, but at irregular intervals throughout the day. My due date is Monday. I don’t know if I’ll get to Monday. My doctor has been adamant all along that she didn’t want to wait too long after my due date to induce, so we set the date for induction on the Wednesday after my due date. As I said before, I have mixed feelings about being induced, and I’m still hoping I’ll be in labor by then or before then. However, unlike with Sophia, in which I never really felt that there was much going on with my body in terms of labor, this time I feel a lot of signs and symptoms and I think the chances of my going into labor before induction are pretty good. We’ll see, of course. I’m also much surer that this baby is to term, as I know to the day when it was conceived. With Sophia we kind of guessed at the date of conception, because we had no idea I would get pregnant so quickly and weren’t really keeping close track.


My mom came yesterday, so now I feel as though everything is in place and the baby can come. We have selected names (although we are keeping them to ourselves this time around) and my hospital bag is mostly packed and I have finished all the super completely urgent work things (though there are some still to be done that will make my colleagues lives easier if I can get to them tomorrow). In short, I am ready. We are ready. We want to see your face, child, come on out.


I am tired of being pregnant. Last time around, my fear of labor warred with my desire to have the pregnancy over and pretty much left things at a standoff. This time my body is older and less resilient and I’m ready for the end. In fact, I’m struggling with some pretty serious body loathing at the moment. I know that my weight gain is within 3-5 pounds of what it was for the last pregnancy, but I feel so much larger, and am so uncomfortable at this size. The weight is distributed differently this time around, I’m pretty sure. For one thing, I didn’t split three pairs of pants last time I was pregnant. Oh yes, the incident in the daycare parking lot was the third such pant ripping I’ve had this pregnancy, believe it or not. I have had lots of people tell me that pregnancy suits me, or that I don’t look so fat, or that it’s “all baby”. I don’t know whether these things are true or not, and I don’t really care. I feel hideously huge and I know better than any of them that it’s not the number of pounds. I spend most of my time thinking about how overweight people can live like this. I know it’s not the same because, for one thing, they can probably still breathe and don’t have a tiny head lodged up against their bladder, but I just can’t cope with being so gigantic and inflexible any longer. It’s not just my size and my lost mobility either. My feet sweat. I slather them in sweet smelling peppermint lotion, but if I have socks and shoes on for more than an hour, my socks are soaked and my feet stink. It’s disgusting. They hurt constantly too, but that seems less terrible for some reason. I’ve not only got more or less constant heartburn – even drinking a glass of water can make me burp and my esophagus burn – I’ve got perpetual flatulence as well. Disgusting and embarassing. I just don’t want to be anywhere near me, and can’t fathom how anyone else would want to be near me either. I know this condition is temporary and nearing its end. I know I will soon be too tired to care if my feet stink or not. Right now, though, it really bugs me. I’ve even had a small bout – and I must be insane for actually writing this down, but can’t anyone accuse me of being less than honest – with incontinence. For a while, any time I suddenly sneezed or coughed particularly forcefully (which is often, have I mentioned it’s allergy season?) I might also trickle out a little urine. If that didn’t just make you go ewwwwwwwwwww, I’m not sure what I could tell you to convince you that it’s positively awful. I had heard and read that this can happen especially in a second pregnancy yadda yadda but ugh and more ugh. Hate it. Marginal good news in this world of gross and disgusting is that when this first started happening to me about three or four weeks ago and I recovered from the shock of actually peeing myself, I stepped up my Kegel regimen a bit and I haven’t had any more problems like that in the last week or so. But ewwwww anyways, right? So yeah. I’m tired of being ruled by my body. I wish that when I was hungry I could ignore it instead of jumping up to eat something. I wish that when I was tired I could just take in some caffeine and soldier on. I wish I didn’t have to worry about putting one foot in front of the other in such a way as to not fall. I wish I didn’t feel like lifting things, even relatively small things, was such a strain. I wish I didn’t have to grunt like Monica Seles to climb stairs. I wish I could sit down without worrying about whether I can get back up. I wish I could be almost anywhere but in my body right now. I wish, I wish, I wish. I just can’t stand me.


On the other hand (she says, trying to be less negative), my hair looks great and my skin has no blemishes. I truly gloried in these things earlier on, but they seem very small consolation now. I’m already worried about when my hair is going to start falling out. I hated that last time around.


I don’t know when I’ll get another chance to write. Things are understandably crazy at my house, and despite the fact that I say we are ready, there still remains things that could/should/will be done if the baby gives us a little more time to do them. But we are ready. Any time you want to come on out, my dear, we are ready to greet you.

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