The One and Only Pregnancy Update

Well, today marks exactly one month until my due date, so I guess I should write something about my pregnancy.  I realize my first time around I wrote an update every couple of weeks and included belly bump pics, but this pregnancy has been different for me in just about every way possible.  This pregnancy has been no fun from the very beginning; it’s just been rough – not in a medical, “you’re on bed rest til the baby comes” way (man, I wish) because all of my “ailments” are typical pregnancy symptoms according to my 7ish? doctors.  So, I’ll just list out all the ways this pregnancy has been a big ball of suck compared to my first. (Sorry, Baby #2).

1. I blew up like a whale from the very beginning, and my bladder completely failed me from the start.

I was so hungry my first trimester.  I could not eat enough or sleep enough.  I ate everything in sight, and at night, I ate even more.  So I gained a lot of weight very quickly, and it didn’t take long before I had outgrown my clothes and was already pulling out my maternity bins.  My leaky bladder also got worse and made it basically impossible to teach my Sh’bam classes anymore, so I had to give those up which did not help with the weight gain.  My first few Ob appointments I was given warnings about too much weight gain, and I wanted to punch the Ob in the face and cry at the same time.  I tried switching to yoga/pilates/flow types of classes to maintain my physical health as I could no longer do any of my high-cardio classes, but there are no prenatal classes in my area, and I grew tired of having to make up my own options for half the class.  It didn’t take long before I was wearing my 3rd trimester clothes (and underwear – hello, giant ass), and by the start of my 3rd trimester I practically weighed the same as I did at the end of my first.  In fact, I think I have now surpassed that number, and I still have a month to go.  I never had the cute bump profile because I gained weight everywhere, not just in my belly.  Now that my bump is so large, I look more proportionate, but I’m to the point that I can’t imagine how I ever fit into my regular clothes and doubt I’ll ever return to fitting in them again.

2.  I changed doctors and have been less than enthusiastic about their care.

I decided to switch doctors because we moved last year, and I wanted to be able to deliver at a closer hospital.  My old ob has an office a block away from my house, but in order to have a sonogram, I’d have to drive to their downtown office, and to deliver, I’d have to go downtown as well.  So, I asked around and decided to see a practice that was in the same group as my other Ob but would allow me to deliver at a closer hospital, and their offices are next door to it.  I went from having four doctors that I saw regularly to more than I could count.  I’m 36 weeks and still haven’t seen every one, have never seen one doctor more than once, and have seen the RNP at least 4x more than them.  I don’t know any of their names, and I wouldn’t recognize them if I passed them on the street, especially since my typical meetings with each lasted on average less than 2 minutes, and most of them had dud personalities from what I could tell.  With my first pregnancy, my Ob appointments made the whole pregnancy seem more real and special.  We had a sonogram done nearly every visit (hence, not wanting to drive downtown for every visit this time around) and a good amount of time with the ob who monitored the heart and measured the belly.  Usually my husband attended, too, so it was an event.

This time, my husband has come with me to exactly one appointment – the anatomy scan where we learned of the baby’s gender (another underwhelming experience because the sonographer spent most of the time trying to capture all 4 heart chambers and zero time showing us all ten tiny fingers and toes.  The pictures she took sucked, too).  I know it’s most common to only have two sonograms, but I was used to having them done at almost every visit, that this was a huge change.  I know basically nothing about the baby growing inside of me, and with Ellis, I knew she was going to have a head full of hair and the cutest nose.  Additionally, it’s the nurse who monitors the heart at the appointments, and the doctor basically takes a two second measurement of the belly, asks if I have any questions or concerns, and then says, “Okay, peace out.”  There has been nothing magical or special about this pregnancy, and I leave every appointment disappointed.  Sure, I could have found a new practice or gone back to my old doctors, but I am so lazy busy and tired, that I just didn’t want to have to deal with either finding someone who delivers at my hospital of choice or dealing with hassle of the downtown hospital for all of my visits (hard to find parking and a train that passes right by adding to the congestion and travel time).

3.  I have a toddler.  And stairs.

Ellis weighs around 25+ pounds now, and she still wants to be carried everywhere.  She is also obviously very high energy, so there is no time to relax during the day, with the exception of sweet, sweet nap time.  We also have stairs in our house where we didn’t with my first pregnancy.  My trips up and down are strategically planned to avoid any extra ascents.  I’m to the point now that I don’t carry anything up with me.  It all is placed at the bottom of the stairs waiting for my husband to carry it up for me.  And I try to get Ellis to hold my hand as much as possible on the stairs because she often prefers I carry her.  Every time I go down the stairs, I have to be careful because I always have a moment where I feel off-balance and get the feeling that I’m going to topple forward.  Thankfully, I’ve avoided tripping or falling down or up the stairs.

4.  I’m not getting any younger.

Really, I’m not.  My body hurts in more ways than I thought imaginable.  Sitting hurts.  Standing is exhausting.  Laying down is uncomfortable.  Walking is painful.  My pelvis feels crushed every time I stand up.  I always feel like I have to pee.  It’s even worse when I have to carry a toddler around.  My last pregnancy, I had some round ligament pain and some discomfort with my sciatic nerve, but the pain this time around is on a whole new level.  About 2 months ago, I moved to our guest bedroom because it has a much firmer mattress.  I wake up less often with round ligament pain on it, and when I do, it’s easier to get up and massage it out than our pillowy-soft mattress that I sink into and struggle to get out of.  But the farther along I’ve gotten, it gets harder to lay comfortably without pain, and I still have to get up every couple of hours to pee.  I always have to have a pillow behind my back when I sit down or else I have to sit straight up on the edge.  The other day we went shopping for a new recliner, and I left the store wobbling in pain from all the sitting and pulling myself out of the chairs.  I think if I had stuck with yoga and pilates I would be in much less pain, but I just can’t make myself get back to the gym.

5.  We still don’t have name for this kid.

We had Ellis’s name picked out not even a full week after we found out we were having a girl.  This time around, we are still trying to come up with a list of possible considerations.  I have favorites.  Trav has favorites.  Our favorites don’t mesh, and neither of us loves the other’s choices.  It’s possible we’ll just end up letting the nurses name him.