Sigh
Thank you for the suggestions and support. I feel a little sheepish, because, predictably, the whole thing blew over within the next 12 hours or so. It turned out that he just felt sort of left out, and the price tag made him feel like it had been a sort of big deal that he wasn’t a part of, and that the final product wasn’t that great. He ultimately said he felt really guilty for his reaction, and that I was right that he would be glad to have the photos. I showed his mom the photos and told her the whole story, and she supported me 100%, said she loved the photos, and agreed that I had done exactly the right thing. And that further convinced my husband that I had done the right thing.
Obviously the incident upset me hugely, since I wrote out a whole post on it. It has so much to do with my own horror at being humiliated and at feeling like I might have made a mistake, particularly an expensive one. It’s an issue I have that’s been a theme throughout my life–I really don’t respond well to someone suggesting I shouldn’t have done something or I did something the wrong way. It’s like I can’t stand the embarrassment. Anyway, I will get better. My husband has issues of his own, but they have less to do with his own self-esteem.
In any event, thank you again. I’ll try to check in again soon.
I feel like shit right now
First of all, let me get all the good out of the way so I can get to why I’m writing right now. The baby is doing great. He is 11 1/2 weeks old now and he is perfect and beautiful and, cliche though it may be, I never knew I could love anything so much.
Now, on to why I feel like shit.
First, some background: While we were in the hospital, the “hospital photographer” came by and said she could take photos of the baby (and us with the baby, if we wanted) for free, and we could order prints later if we wanted. I could see that my husband, who is always inclined to turn that kind of thing down, wanted to get rid of the photographer and had no interest, but I thought, “How many times am I going to be in the hospital with my newborn baby?” So I had her take some photos. We ended up ordering the cd of 8 photos for $99, and my husband later said he was glad I had insisted the photos were taken.
About 6 or so weeks after he was born, I got a call from the photo company. They said because I had ordered the cd, I was entitled to one free 8×10 print, but that it would have to be from a new set of photos. The photographer would come to my house and take the photos for free, and then someone would come to my house some time later to show me the photos, and I would not be obligated to buy any of them, I could just choose one for my 8×10 and that could be it. I thought about saying no but I ended up thinking, “Whatever, they’re photos of my baby and I don’t have to buy any. Why not?” I knew that the whole thing was set up to be a racket on some level, but they couldn’t force me to buy something, after all. So, without telling my husband (because I knew he’d be a naysayer and I didn’t want to get him involved at this point), I had the photos taken. The baby was almost 8 weeks old at that point.
Then came time for the woman to come to my house with the photos on her computer. Unlike with the photos taken in the hospital, I couldn’t simply view them online. Someone had to come to the house to show them to me, and I would have to make my decision then and there. (I suspect if I had chosen not to buy any I’d have been given other opportunities, but it would not have been super easy, regardless.) I asked my mom to come and help me decide whether they were any good and whether any were worth buying. I still didn’t mention anything to my husband.
The woman came to the house with her computer and showed us the photos. At first I thought they weren’t that great and maybe even a little cheesy. He wasn’t smiling in any of them, because it’s hard to get an 8-week-old to smile on command (we can get him to smile but it’s still hard to capture that on camera). And he was kind of cocking his eyebrows in a funny way. But my mom thought they were cute and the more I looked at them, I was like, “these ARE kind of cute, in a funny kind of way, and anyway, they’re my BABY.” And so, fully aware that it’s hard for a mother to pass up photos of her baby of any kind and that that is what this company is banking on, and with my mom’s encouragement, I bought one of the smallest packages they offered. It ended up costing about $200, including shipping and everything. This didn’t include the cd containing the photos, but it included eleven 5x7s, one 8×10 and one 10×15 (or something like that). It sounds like a lot of money, but we are both lawyers and we have plenty of money, which neither of us denies, and I am generally very frugal, but I thought this seemed like the right sort of thing to spend money on, especially since I knew we would never drag ourselves to get photos taken by some professional photographer that we chose. Also, we do not have a relationship where I am required to run every purchase past my husband. I chose the photos I thought were the cutest. I decided to make it a surprise for my husband.
I really should have known better.
I received the photos in the mail today. I wasn’t necessarily going to show my husband the photos until I had gotten frames for them. I thought we could give a number of them out as gifts. I wasn’t even sure we needed to frame them or put them out, I just thought maybe we could keep them in a box. Tonight, my husband was particularly googly-eyed over the baby, and it occurred to me that now might be a good time to show him the photos because he would have a hard time disliking any photo of the baby. After we put the baby to bed, I said shyly to my husband that I wanted to show him something, but he may not like it.
I know you shouldn’t do anything with a particular reaction in mind, but I did. Here was the reaction I was expecting: even if he didn’t like the photos, I hoped he would laugh at them and think they were funny and appreciate having them. If he couldn’t muster that, I thought he would at least pat me on the head about it and say, “it’s okay, if you like them.”
But I really should have known better. I had worried about spending the money when I bought them, and my mom convinced me that this amount of money was a drop in the bucket for us. Well, that was the first thing he asked about. I really should have refused to tell him how much they were, as they were meant to be a special thing that I wanted to do, and the money was not so much that it was a problem. But it’s hard to do that when it’s money that belongs to both of us, so I told him. He hated the photos, said he didn’t recognize the baby in them. He said he felt left out, that he wished he’d been a part of the choosing or something. He said I should have run it by him, that he couldn’t believe they’d cost $200. He was disgusted by the fact that it was so clearly a racket (which I said I knew from the beginning, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t get something out of it that I wanted). He finally said, “Honestly, if the photos had been cute, this probably wouldn’t have bothered me so much.”
I tried to explain that when I first saw them I wasn’t sure I totally loved them, but I ultimately decided that they were cute and funny, they were photos of my baby, that I would never regret having them, and that $200 was absolutely not too much to spend on such a thing. He kept saying he wished he had been consulted and I explained that I wanted to surprise him. He said, “Well, this is what happens when you surprise me.”
Then he went to bed. And I’m still awake. I feel so totally alone right now. I wish he could see that in a day, or a few days, or a few weeks, he’s not going to care at all about this. He’ll probably look at the photos and laugh. He can be so dramatic, saying that he looks at these photos and them give him a bad feeling. What a fucking asshole. I don’t understand why he can’t see that I was trying to do something nice, and that even if he didn’t like the photos, I wasn’t doing something horrible or hurtful to him. He says he feels like he was ambushed, and I really do appreciate that he could have felt like he was put in an uncomfortable position where he felt like he was supposed to have one particular reaction, but I explained to him that I did understand that and that I had anticipated that he might not like the photos. All I want is for him not to be so fucking mean.
I don’t want to get in bed with him right now, but the baby is in our room and I need to be there in case he wakes up and starts fussing or needs to be fed. When that happens, my husband might reach his hand over and touch me and say he doesn’t want to fight. And I’m glad he has that tendency, to resolve things. I try to do that too. But this just feels so shitty right now.
Am I wrong here? I know it works differently in some families, and that to some people $200 is a fortune and I probably seem like a brat wanting to spend it without consulting my husband and without consequences. The money is not the issue and I feel like he is indulging his own childish feelings that he wouldn’t have done this in this way and therefore it shouldn’t have been done. I feel like the adult thing to do would have been not to make me feel crappy about it. I know I should have conviction enough in my own actions to not let him make me feel that way, but that’s not really how a marriage works, is it?
I don’t want to go in there. I want to stay out here, far away from him.
And most of all, I don’t want to be thinking about stupid shit like this when there’s a perfect little baby in there that needs me.
***
I just walked away and thought about this some more. I’m sure the story probably reads like this: Wife drops $200 on mediocre photos of baby without consulting husband. So maybe I’m the asshole here. Why do I feel so bad? Maybe secretly deep down I knew the photos weren’t good and I allowed myself to be convinced that they were good. And maybe I feel stupid and bad about that now. But on the other hand, I wanted them. Why did I want them? I don’t know, I just did. I liked something about them. I am not generally a frivolous spender, I really am not. So maybe I shouldn’t think of it as me having “allowed myself to be convinced” because I just liked them, and I wouldn’t have allowed that if I didn’t. I don’t know. I don’t know. Why do I feel so fucking bad right now?
I think part of why I feel so bad is because I am not sure if I’m in the wrong. I doubt myself a lot. Maybe if I were 100% positive that I am in the right, I wouldn’t feel like this. I don’t know. I don’t know who is right and who is wrong. I guess it’s the money thing that trips me up, ultimately–if it didn’t cost anything, or anything substantial, what would any of this matter? But the fact is, he encourages me to spend more money on clothing and to get expensive spa treatments, etc. I really don’t do either very much, especially the spa treatments–I never do that. In this case, I wanted to do something that he wouldn’t know about and so I took that money that I could have spent on a massage or two and I spent it on these photos. I figured it would be my thing, even if he didn’t like it, we could give them away as gifts. It didn’t seem so wrong. And thinking about it this way, I don’t think it was. But I try to see things from his perspective too, and I see where he’s coming from on some level. I wonder if he really tries to see things from my perspective.
***
Damn it. The truth is, now I just feel stupid. Sad and foolish and stupid.
Wow, do I ever owe a post.
Four weeks ago today, I gave birth to my little boy. So yeah, I’ve been busy.
The labor and delivery was not terrible. I was scheduled to be induced the following day as I was 41 weeks and 5 days already. So when I woke up early Saturday morning and felt my water break, I was really glad–labor was starting on its own. I wasn’t so glad when I got up and saw that there was meconium in it. It’s funny when you are told what to look out for and then you see that exact thing. There was brown stuff in the water, and I knew it should have been clear. I was bummed, but knew that something was going to be done about it immediately, which was good. I was in the bathroom by this point, so I called to my husband, “My water broke. And it’s not clear.” We were out the door within 10 minutes.
On the way to the hospital, my contractions were getting more and more painful and went from 5 minutes apart quickly to 3 and then 2 minutes apart. By the time we got to the hospital, I was grateful for the wheelchair they offered me. By the time we got to the room, I was in agony. It took about an hour or so from that point to get the epidural–honestly, I hadn’t planned on getting it so fast but I think this was the worst pain I had ever been in. At the peak of each contraction, I felt like I was going to vomit and/or pass out. I did neither, but my husband and mother saw me in this incredible pain and they said it was hard. The epidural was an incredible relief. It really is as good as they say–I kept having contractions but I couldn’t feel the pain. I mean, I wasn’t as comfortable as I would be on, say, a normal day, but it was so much better than feeling those contractions.
They moved us to possibly the nicest delivery room in the hospital. It was huge, with big picture windows and a view of the Hollywood sign, no joke. There I sat all day, laboring but not really feeling it, which is so weird. My parents were there, as was my husband’s mother. Interesting. At some point we turned on the TV and watched old TV Land shows, and then later the Olympics. By about 9:30 that night the nurse said she was ready for me to start pushing. I pushed for 2 1/2 hours, which yes, was exhausting, but which wasn’t really so bad until my epidural started wearing off and I was starting to really feel the contractions. By the end, they wouldn’t give me any more epidural so I was in a lot of pain when the baby finally came out. Also, I couldn’t believe it when the baby finally came out. It just happened, just like that, just like the books said it would. My husband and mom were there–my mom watched the whole thing from down there, but my husband couldn’t bring himself to look that much.
My baby is pretty perfect. He is such a good baby–he mostly seems only to cry when there is something we can do to fix it (like feed him). Which brings me to the main reason I haven’t posted since he’s been born–the hardest thing by far has been feeding him. I had so wanted to exclusively breastfeed, but he just wasn’t gaining enough weight and I clearly do not produce enough milk. Which I know they say is never really a real problem, except that I now know that sometimes women who have PCOS or other fertility problems DO have issues with supply. So we started supplementing with formula, and I started pumping after feedings and taking tons of fenugreek, which is supposed to help with supply. But my supply has not really improved much, and this feeding ordeal is incredibly elaborate and entirely unsustainable (breastfeed, then feed him pumped milk from a previous pumping, then feed him formula, then pump for next time). I have been working through my guilt over (a) not exclusively breastfeeding, and (b) the idea of quitting breastfeeding altogether. Yesterday I saw one of our lactation consultants, who said I had done everything right, doing this for this long was “heroic” (ha, I’m not so sure, but thanks for saying so), and that normally when she recommends this routine for someone, it is for a weekend or a week at most. She said that though I don’t need her permission, I have her permission to move on. My pediatrician of course said the same thing: “I love breast milk. I think breast milk is the greatest thing in the world. Second to only one thing: a happy mom.” But I wanted to make it to the four-week mark, which is today. After today, I may quit pumping, or just quit with the breast milk altogether. The pumping, other than the morning session, usually does not yield enough to make it worth any of our whiles. And I want my baby to have a happy, well-rested mom. So that’s where I am with that.
Other than that, I can’t believe I have a son now, and a son who is so peaceful at that. I was, from what I hear, the worst baby anyone could ever wish on anyone. I would cry constantly, I would hold my breath until I turned blue and passed out, I would make my parents’ lives hell. I’m not sure how I got so lucky with this little beautiful boy. Also, I have never been a baby person, but it’s true what they say–when it’s yours, it’s a completely different thing. Even when he wakes me up in the night out of a dead sleep, I might feel annoyed or frustrated, but it’s really not at him. And when I gather him up in my arms, I just can’t believe how sweet and lovable he is, and that he’s mine.
So yes, it was all worth it. It’s not perfect, and it’s exhausting, and I haven’t seen friends in a month, but it’s worth it. I am so excited for what’s to come.
40 weeks and 5 days
Oh yes, so I saw the doctor this past Monday, 2/8, for my 40-week appointment, even though my due date, as I understood it, was 2/9. I learned that day that at some point it had been moved to 2/8. Great, whatever, so I got to be overdue even sooner than I thought. Nothing was happening. Nothing IS happening. Except that I’m growing increasingly uncomfortable. Or decreasingly comfortable. Both, really. I can’t remember the last time I was in a consistently bad mood for this long. Look, I know I don’t have anything real to complain about here, other than inconvenience and discomfort. And if someone could tell me with certainty that this would end in a reasonably not-horrible vaginal birth, I would probably be in a better mood. But I don’t want to be induced and I *really* don’t want to have a c-section. And I will do either or both if necessary, of course, because I want to be healthy and have a healthy baby. And please do not take offense at this if you were induced and/or had a c-section. I know neither is necessarily a terrible experience, and that there are certain advantages to both, but I’d really just rather avoid them. At this point, actually, I’d even be pretty okay with an induction if I could avoid the caesarian. And in the long run, yeah, it won’t matter. And yes, I’m fucking tired of having this baby inside of me. My skin is stretched to its capacity. I have no appetite. It hurts to stand. It’s gorgeous outside but I don’t want to do anything. I’m not seeing the doctor again until Tuesday 2/16, and if I’m still pregnant then (which is looking seriously probable to me at this point), we will schedule an induction. And I will probably be happy about it by then. Especially because, as people never fail to remind me, this baby is getting bigger by the day.
38 week update
I’m 38 weeks pregnant today. I know, I can’t believe it either.
I’d intended to post at 37 weeks, because that’s such a milestone, but I just didn’t get around to it. So 38 weeks it is.
I am feeling good, all things considered. I mean, this bowling ball strapped to the front of my torso is officially uncomfortable now, as is the constant pressure it imposes underneath it (I now actually spend time imagining the intense relief when the baby finally comes out). This little boy in here is still squirming around, so I rarely have to go too long feeling concerned that he hasn’t been moving enough. I don’t think the skin on my stomach can stretch any further, and it alerts me to this with intense itchiness, on and off, all the time. But I am healthy (knock on wood), in good spirits, and slowly but surely getting things ready for his arrival. It’s getting harder and harder to focus on anything else these days.
I am also gradually recovering from my broken ankle. I did have that second surgery I mentioned last time, during which they took all the hardware out. I think it was a very good move. I fully walk on it now, though I have a limp and it hurts and I can’t be on it for too long and I still have to keep it elevated most of the time. I have been going to physical therapy twice a week, and I’m sure that has been helping. I also feel like this injury is going to be a whole new thing–in a good way–after I’m no longer pregnant. I just feel like it’ll be so much easier to walk around without the extra weight!
Sometimes I can’t believe I’m soon going to be back in the hospital for the third time in the past several months. But this time it’s for a super exciting reason–I really just can’t believe it. I also can’t picture this guy and that is so weird to me. I’ve been having strange dreams about him, for sure, and about what labor will be like and all that. You know, typical stuff. And though I occasionally have the thought, when I’m sitting in front of the tv, exhausted after a long day, icing my ankle and trying to take the pressure off of my back, “Thank goodness I don’t have a kid to take care of at this particular moment,” I’m definitely over this pregnancy thing and ready to meet this new person. I have the vague terror in the back of my mind that he won’t be healthy or that something will go very wrong during delivery, but mostly I just want to see him, hold him, and start finding out what he’s all about.
But all of this is so obvious and unoriginal. Trillions before me have gone through this and had each and every one of these thoughts and feelings. But, well, I haven’t had them before. It’s all new to me. And I’m restless and anxious and I have to have something to talk about. I’ve decided to stay at work until February 5 (next Friday–my due date is the 9th which is following Tuesday) so I can take as full advantage of my maternity leave as possible. It kind of sucks, but people aren’t giving me too much to do so it’s been okay so far. But that also means I have a lot of free time to think about this stuff, which is both good and bad. Basically, my life is about to change more drastically than it ever has before, and I can’t wrap my head around it, try as I might. So I’m babbling on a blog and hoping someone out there can commiserate.
And finally–any words of advice before this happens? What to bring to the hospital, get ready at home, or just do before the baby arrives?
33 week update
Hi! I am 33 weeks pregnant today and, pregnancy-wise, things are good. I am very lucky. Every day, all day long, this little boy pokes around at my insides and reminds me of his presence and his existence. We now have a combo dresser/changer, a glider/rocker (which I put together all by myself!), and a crib which I’m waiting for my husband to assemble. We have adorable bedding, a car seat, and are working on getting a car that can actually accommodate it. Things are coming together…sort of.
I have to have another surgery on my ankle. It will be Wednesday, December 30, and it will be to take the hardware (screws and a plate) out of my ankle. It will be much less of a big deal than the last surgery–outpatient, much quicker recovery (because it’s only soft tissue that has to heal this time, not bone), and should make my ankle feel a lot more comfortable. Or so they tell me. I was allowed to start putting weight on my foot last Monday, but it hurts. A lot. I am using my crutches less and less now, but my foot turns purple when I have it down for too long, and it just throbs when I use it for a little while. I limp severely and can’t really put all my weight on it, even temporarily, even just to put my pant leg on my good leg. It sucks. Part of the reason I have to have the surgery right away is that the screws are too long and sticking out into my tendons and really irritating them such that it will be impossible to walk without pain until I get them out. I think I will still have a lot of pain once the hardware is gone, but that will be due to stiffness and soft tissue healing, and not something hard getting in the way. For the surgery, they will do a spinal block on me like they did last time, and apparently the whole thing only takes about 15 minutes. Phew.
I’m thinking it will be a lot better once this hardware is out. I’ll be able to start trying to walk in earnest. I am so so hoping that this ankle is a lot better by the time I have to deliver this baby, and that it won’t make it more likely that I will have to get a c-section (say, because it hurts my ankle too much to push–which sounds silly, but which was my OB’s main concern when she heard that the hardware would be problematic, and which is why she recommended I get the follow-up surgery right away). There is just so much to do before this baby gets here, and I hate having anything making it any harder.
30 week update
Hi guys! I’m 30 weeks today! I had my 30-week appointment today and though we didn’t have an ultrasound, the doctor said everything looks good.
That’s the stuff that gets me through the rest of this bullshit. I have been lying on the couch for OVER FOUR WEEKS NOW. I am so ridiculously sick of this, you guys. My ankle seems to be healing pretty well, but I’m still in pain and I still can’t put weight on it for another two weeks. I am on disability leave from work right now, which would be pretty awesome if it weren’t cutting into my future maternity leave. Seems really wrong, doesn’t it? See, I am entitled to 12 weeks of short-term disability leave in any rolling 12-month period. I was anticipating having 18 weeks of maternity leave, because that was my understanding of what everyone gets at my firm, but the catch is that 8 of those weeks are provided by that very same short-term disability I’m using right now. I go past 4 weeks of disability now, I cut into those 8 weeks later, so long as they’re in the same 12-month period, which, of course, they are. Well, this week is week #5, and it’s looking like I may end up using at least a full 6 weeks. Actually, I’m approved for 6 weeks and 1 day, and it’s like I’ll use them all. So, goodbye to part of my maternity leave.
It blows.
Sigh. Seems like we should be able to recover some of these costs from the woman who hit me, right? I don’t know if I talked about her in my last post. She’s young, she has the minimum auto insurance ($15,000 per person, which our medical expenses will easily eat up), and it’s not clear that we’d even be able to find a lawyer or investigator willing to find out if she’s got any money. We’ll have to look into it. Look, we don’t want to take her for all that she’s worth, but it does seem worth it to find out if she happens to have a trust fund or something, which is not totally unheard of. This is LA.
I think I did mention our issues with the medical insurance in my last post. That’s still going on. It’s all kind of a nightmare.
But really, we will be okay, even if we lose some money at the end of all of this. And the person in my stomach has been moving around so much, and every time he does it makes me happy. Seriously, no matter how uncomfortable I am, or pissed off I am at being in this situation, when he kicks or pummels or flips or does whatever the hell it is he’s doing in there, I get happy. I’m getting to that place where I’m starting to get really excited to meet him. I can’t believe I don’t even know what he looks like yet. He’s just this huge mystery. And I can’t believe he’s practically a whole person now.
Important update and 27 weeks
Hi. I’m 27 weeks today. And before I write the rest of this post, I want to let you know that everything is okay.
On Saturday, October 31 (a week and a half ago), I was walking across a busy street (Hollywood Blvd, heard of it?) to meet a friend for dinner at about 6 pm, and I got hit by a car. Miraculously, the baby is completely okay. I landed on my face and broke two front teeth and my right ankle. The facial stuff is healing quickly (shouldn’t be any lasting scars), I had surgery on the ankle a week ago, and I am in recovery. I’ve never really broken anything or had surgery, so this is a new and difficult process for me. But mostly, I know that I am really, really, really really REALLY fucking lucky that I am going to be okay in the end and that my baby is going to be okay.
Still, it was probably the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me, as I’m sure you can imagine. After it happened, I lay in the street (I never lost consciousness) and screamed “help” over and over to make sure I got plenty of attention from people around me. I got it. The woman who hit me did stop and gave the cops her info, so it wasn’t a hit and run, thankfully, though her insurance isn’t looking terribly impressive. We’re having a nightmare of a time with our own medical insurance because I transferred hospitals from the hospital all the way on one side of town to the hospital where my OB is on staff and we subsequently learned that if the transfer was not “medically necessary” then none of the subsequent services are covered. What utter bullshit. We’ve got teams of lawyers on both sides of the family working on it, so I’m trying not to worry too much about it at the moment.
I’m not going to lie, this sucks. It sucks being injured and pregnant. I mean, it sucks being injured, period. Being pregnant just adds this whole layer of complication to it. Any idea how hard it is to sleep on your side while you’re trying to elevate a booted broken ankle? I’m staying at my parents’ house for the time being because my mom is home most of the day and can take care of me far more easily than my husband can, but he tries to be here whenever he can. I am incredibly lucky, as well, to live near my parents so this can be as easy as it is. And of course, I am incredibly lucky that my baby is still kicking away inside me.
That’s another thing–I feel like something special happened here, like I protected my baby, like I’ve acted as a mom already, I did my job. That’s sort of neat and amazing and it’s helped me through some of the rough moments of this. Of course, that first night I was having lots of contractions and they made us sign things saying they could do an emergency c-section, etc. They also put me on magnesium sulfate to stop the contractions. They made me stay on it for 2 days and by the end I was begging, crying and negotiating for them to let me get off of it. It’s really, really unpleasant stuff. It just made me feel like I was depressed, like I was weak and couldn’t really use my muscles, and just generally not like myself. My husband said I just wasn’t me while I was on it. I am still having some contractions now, which made me nervous at first, but they’re not terribly frequent and I think I may have even been having them before and just not noticed them before. They’re not painful and I’ve had no bleeding or fluid so I guess they’re Braxton Hicks. Keep your fingers crossed for me that they don’t get too frequent.
In the mean time, the little one has learned to dance on my bladder (providing isolated moments of suddenly having to pee very badly) and to hiccup. He does move a lot now, which is a relief. Any sign that he is alive these days is very welcome.
And that’s all for now. Happy to answer any questions if I’ve left anything out. I’m also happy to be alive, to have a baby inside me that’s alive, to have all my loved ones, and for everything in general. I’m a lucky girl.
So my life has changed drastically in the last week and a half, but I feel like I’m growing up a lot too.
25 weeks
Has it been 5 weeks since I last posted? Time moves very quickly these days. In part that is because I have been busier at work. Also because I guess I don’t feel like I’m constantly waiting for something like I have felt for so long…
I’m generally very happy. Everything seems to be going well with the pregnancy, which somehow seems totally amazing and yet totally expected at the same time. He’s been kicking away at me–it feels like I’ve got a popcorn popper in my stomach. I’m looking very obviously pregnant now. Strangers and acquaintances alike are now comfortable saying, “When are you due?” and “Is it a boy?” based entirely on my appearance. I was told by a couple of people I am carrying very typically for a boy–on the high and narrow side. Who knows, though.
My problems these days are high class, like figuring out where to register and what to register for (my mom’s friends and sisters are throwing me a shower in January), daydreaming about sushi and determining whether we can afford a house. Yeah, I am incredibly lucky. We are also working on names–we have a front runner but I’m not going to disclose it here. Maybe later. There are lots of little administrative things I feel like need to be tied up and it feels like time is running out, but for the most part they’re fun to think about so I’m generally enjoying it.
My weight gain seems to come in spurts and plateaus. As of this morning I was up 13.5 lbs from my pre-pregnancy weight. I assume that’s fine and I’ll probably have another spurt again soon.
I don’t even know what else there is to say. If you’re still reading this incredibly boring blog, bless you. There’s nothing less scintillating than reading the disorganized thoughts of a generally happy person. Not that my life is perfect by any means. There are lots of things I’m uncertain and terrified about, and regrets and all the usual things that come with being human, first of all, and the particular flaws that come with being me, secondly. But I want to acknowledge that I have things really good, and make it clear to the powers that be that I am ridiculously grateful. Thanks. And thanks to all of you out there for still checking in on me now and again.
20 weeks
Today I am 20 weeks, and that certainly feels like a milestone. Duh, I guess. We had our 20 week anatomy scan today, and everything is perfect. I feel so lucky that I almost feel guilty. He’s still definitely a he, and he has all the parts he should have. He is even measuring exactly 20 weeks today. I guess I’m proud? I’ve been feeling his little kicks for awhile now, but they are pretty subtle. And I’ve been getting pretty excited at the prospect of meeting this dapper young fellow. I know we have a long way to go, though.
I am clearly showing now and pretty obviously pregnant to anyone who actually looks at me from the side. I am also feeling a BILLION times better, and though I still think pregnancy means just feeling physically worse than not being pregnant, it’s pretty good right now. I am hardly nauseous at all anymore. And I am able to take my iron every night, which is probably also helping how I’m feeling.
And that’s that. I just wanted to provide an update. We are agonizing over names (well, it’s not really agony; in fact, it seems to be the most fun my husband has doing anything these days–he likes to bring it up at parties and get people going about it) and I haven’t bought a single baby item yet because I’m terrified and overwhelmed. When will this feeling end and when will I get my shit together?
But really, everything’s pretty wonderful and I just wanted my 2 1/2 or so readers to know.
talking about myself 