Y'all sent me so much good advice on the job thing. I'll hopefully try to summarize some of it in an entry soon, but first, I thought it was about time for a State of the Pregnancy report. I'm at 20 weeks today, just about exactly halfway through. (I'm due May 26th.)
In general, things are mostly fine, and getting better. But I was thinking on the train recently about all the ways in which this is not what I expected. Here's some of the list:
- burping all the time
- no painkillers but Tylenol (I love me my Advil normally)
- most other medication is off-limits including all the anti-nausea stuff -- and let me tell you, ginger tea and ginger soda and ginger cookies are not much of a substitute
- my sense of smell is incredibly heightened at times -- the dog park was briefly unbearable
- random sharp pains in my groin, which is apparently normal and related to muscles stretching, but which still scares me over and over
At five months, I'm still tired. I feel okay in the mornings -- in fact, much like myself again, but then I get exhausted sometime between 1 and 3. I can power through it for a while, but I pay the price with exhaustion and shivering fits. That happens pretty much every day. The closer I get to feeling normal, the more frustrating it is, actually -- it feels like I was very ill, and am now recovering, and I want to be all better right now, dangit. I am so sick of feeling like an invalid.
I had a good old meltdown about that a few days ago; just so frustrated at my inability to keep up. I managed to do all the teaching work I had to do, but at the cost of not cleaning my bathrooms for four months, not ever getting all my clothes washed and put away, letting the closets get so disorganized that I was tripping over stuff trying to get things -- I just can't think straight when the house is in such disorder. I can't write. It was driving me absolutely batty, and I started just bawling.
Kev was great. He said all the right things -- that pregnancy was like having another job, and that I should expect it to take that much time. That even though he knew it was a cliche, it was still true that if he could do half the pregnancy, he would, and that since he couldn't, I should stop trying to do all the household stuff I normally do and just tell him what I wanted done. (He does do stuff on his own, but how is he to know that the state of the hall closet is what is currently driving me crazy? :-) That we can hire someone to come in and clean the bathrooms once in a while. That I probably should learn to let this stuff go a little, but if I can't, he can help me find other ways to get it done.
I keep feeling like there are all these women out there who are single parents, with full-time jobs, maybe even with other kids, who manage to cope with pregnancy just fine. And Kevin says yes, that's true, and if I had to cope, he's sure I could, but since I don't have to cope, there's no reason to work myself to the bone trying to.
I also feel cheated sometimes, because I think I had this image of a happy pregnant woman who went around just glowing all the time, beaming with joy at this miracle of life going on inside her. I am not beaming most of the time, I can tell you that. I am whining and tired and cranky and convinced the baby is malformed or sick or dead or even just not there. Maybe my pants don't fit because I'm just getting fatter. The scale does say that I've gained eight pounds. Maybe it's all fat, not baby and amniotic fluid and extra blood etc. and so on. This is patently ridiculous, but I'm telling you, most of the time, that's what I'm thinking. And my breasts are too big and half the pregnancy clothes make me look like a big thick block of wood, and blah blah blah whine complain...
On the other hand, there are lovely parts too. Like how thrilled Kevin's family is about it all, and how all their friends were congratulating us over the holidays, and talking with Kevin occasionally about names, or about how we'll raise the kid, or about whether or not to circumcise (not), and how I really do feel in some strange sense like I've joined some conspiracy of women who have been through this -- and of parents, or parents-to-be at least. Much of this is unpleasant, but it's all interesting. That's something, anyway.
Pregnancy is weird, is what it is.