BIG TIME

I have to say it…. I’m HUUUUUUUGE!!! I have no idea who that gigantic person in the mirror is. Surely, it isn’t me.

I look down at my feet... or try to …. and wonder where they came from. They don’t even look familiar. My toes look like stuffed sausages and my ankles are so swollen they’re lumpy. When my partner holds them for massage, he leaves a handprint impression that lasts for twenty minutes.

Ah, pregnancy. Since my first daughter arrived so early, I never got to experience the joys of being GREAT with child. Yes, I was large then as well and frankly felt slightly more uncomfortable than I do now, but that experience didn’t prepare me for the sheer SIZE that my body could grow to.

The irony is I haven’t gained any weight at all for about six weeks. I’m not getting heavier or adding fat to my body, I’m just getting BIGGER. Or rather the baby is getting bigger… and bigger… and bigger.

I count the weeks until I’m "supposed" to give birth and I think – no way. There is no way that I’m going to make it that long. I’ve done this before and I feel like I’m carrying around a cinder block on my lap which is being sucked toward the ground by gravity with every step I take.

There is a betting pool as to when I will deliver, and other than my partner, no one thinks I’ll make it to the estimated due date, including my midwife.

Just yesterday I went to the grocery store, partially to shop and partially to scan displays as part of my job. I do this every week, so I know that I DID NOT feel like this just seven days ago. While my partner and I were standing in line at the check-out, I just sort of involuntarily sat down on the ground.

Sitting on the ground in public is not typical behavior for me, so I know that something was up. My partner suggested that I go wait in the foyer on the bench while he finished unloading and bagging our groceries, and I conceded that his suggestion sounded quite logical. Under normal circumstances I would have argued that I was fine, didn’t need to go sit down, etc.. But not last night.

This past Monday we all went to the zoo, compliments of passes we received from Myo at Christmas. I wanted to go before 1) it got too hot, 2) the elementary kids got out of school and 3) before I had a newborn.

It was a lovely day – Sunny, warm but not humid, and not very crowded. We had a great time and the flowers were absolutely stunning. We have a wonderful picture of our daughter climbing up to one of the displays in the Cat House and touching noses with an ocelot through the glass.

She had a very good time, though she got quite upset at one point in a Rainforest display when she realized that we were not actually going to let her get into the waterfall. She kept gesturing toward it saying "Bab! Bab!" which we eventually realized translated into "Bath! Bath!" since the running water sounded very much like the faucet running into the bathtub at home. (Later at home she spent half an hour in the sink creating her own rainforest in our bathroom, so all was forgiven.)

I knew at the zoo that my body, and subsequently my attitude, had changed drastically as well. When my partner suggested renting a wheelchair, I didn’t bat an eye and concurred that it was probably a good idea. (He said later that he was very glad that he didn’t have to waste a bunch of time arguing with me about this.)

Considering that I didn’t even use a wheelchair an hour after I gave birth last time, this tells me something about how my body is feeling. Nope – then I was up, I was spry, I was ready to trot around the block. But now… now I feel like I have a fifty pound bag of frogs under my shirt, heavy and hopping all over the place.

I’m really not complaining. (Really.) I don’t feel "bad," I just feel really, really pregnant. And, as everyone says, all pregnancies are different.

Last time, I was achy and sore from the beginning. My back hurt, my hips hurt, my feet hurt – and that started in the first trimester. This time I didn’t have any of that until after I passed the point where my first daughter was delivered. So, I missed out on several weeks of discomfort, and for that I consider myself lucky.

Even so, now that I’m feeling it, I’m FEELING IT. However, it doesn’t bother me when I’m sleeping (which it did last time) and I don’t have nearly the problems with mobility that I had with my first daughter. I can roll over in bed with no problem and even hoist myself off of the mattress (which is on the floor for safety reasons) with little problem. I can climb around on the floor with my daughter and actually get up without help, which I couldn’t do last time for several weeks before she was born.

All in all I’m in better shape this time I think, though I’ll admit I’m more tired. This double edged sword comes from having a toddler to chase around all day long. On one hand, she keeps me very active. I don’t have time to hold so still that my joints stiffen and don’t want to move anymore. On the other hand, I can’t just lay down and take a nap any time I feel like it, so at times I seem much more fatigued than I did with my first pregnancy.

My mother keeps worrying about me, saying that I look so tired and sore. Well, yes – that’s because I am. She compares how she felt when she was pregnant with me to how I seem to feel sometimes, or at least she did until I pointed out that she was thirteen years younger than I am when she was pregnant with me. That kind of put in into perspective.

I think that being pregnant when one is younger is probably easier. I remember the things that I could do when I was, say, twenty, that would kill me now. Back then I smoked, I didn’t particularly eat well, sleep well, or generally take care of myself. However, I could still stay up all night long then go hiking for fifteen miles through the woods in the heat. If I tried something like that today, I’d fall over.

On the other hand, I think that it is easier to actually be a parent when one is older. There is NO WAY that I could have been the kind of mother I am now when I was in my early twenties. I have so much more patience now and feel happy and blessed to take care of my daughter. Years ago I think that I would have been too self-centered and immature to enjoy it and may have resented how much I was needed all the time. Now, it’s really quite fun and brings a tremendous amount of fulfillment to my life.

Since I only have to be pregnant for nine months (give or take a few weeks) and I’ll be a parent for the rest of my life, I think I’ll take the temporary added discomfort that probably comes from being a bit older.

This pregnancy has also had it’s little complications and surprises. The last one did as well, though then everything was normal until we got one big SURPRISE!!! at the end when my water broke ridiculously early.

This time it seems that the inverse is happening, i.e. the pregnancy itself has had all kinds of weirdness, but now toward the end it is all resolving and will probably culminate in being very normal.

First of all, I ended up having gestational diabetes. This is caused by placental hormones which make it very difficult for the body to utilize insulin. Every pregnant woman must increase their insulin output because of this, but for some reason some placentas just produce an abundance of the hormone and there is really nothing that you can do about it.

For a few weeks, this was definitely the cause of my Larger Than Life Fatigue which had me sacked out on the floor several times, barely coherent, just trying to make sure that my daughter didn’t climb all the way up the curtains or set the house on fire. There were times that my partner came home from work early or called my mother to ask her to come up because I just couldn’t stay conscious, no matter how hard I tried.

Luckily, this condition was caught very shortly after it started and I began the Very Strict Diet which ultimately allowed me to avoid insulin injections several times a day. (Ewww!) I still have to stick myself with a needle four times a day (first thing in the morning and after every meal) but drawing blood doesn’t bother me nearly as much as actually injecting something foreign into my body.

Really, it’s been quite interesting to learn what foods make my blood sugar rise. There are general rules for this, i.e. no sugar, no processed white flour, no pasta, no rice, no potatoes, no fruit, etc., but everyone’s body is different. For instance, some people can’t drink milk at all without their sugar going up, whereas it doesn’t seem to bother me. Other people (like me) can’t eat beans at all without a spike in sugar count. So, really, it’s good to know.

The diet itself isn’t all that difficult to follow, especially with a little practice. And in this day and age of the Low-Carb Craze, finding sugar-free and low-carb food isn’t difficult. Basically, the diet is "Atkins Light" and is actually quite healthy. I eat a lot of veggies, cheese, low-carb yogurt and whole grain, high fiber bread.

I’ve jokingly called it the "Kool-Aid and Chocolate Milk Diet" because that seems to be what I’m drinking. I mix protein, vitamin and vegetable powders into sugar-free Kool-Aid a couple times a day. I’ve also found a truly decadent "chocolate dairy beverage" that tastes just like pre-made chocolate milk, which I just love but never indulge in more than once every two or three years because it is just so over-the-top unhealthy. This stuff tastes almost exactly like that, but has only three grams of carbs but with twelve grams of protein and 35% of the RDA of calcium. So, chocolate milk it is!

And, I haven’t gained a pound since the diet started, which is good news for my feet as well as my backside. I exercise at least once every day, and sometimes more, but I was doing that before the gestational diabetes diagnosis.

My daughter LOVES to go outside – I think that she is ready to build a little hut out of sticks and mud and just have all of us live in the woods on roots and berries. She INSISTS on going out at least two or three times a day, and often we just set up camp in the yard for hours on end. When it is time for her nap, she’ll indicate that she wants in her stroller, so off we go for one of our very regular walks around the neighborhood. If she doesn’t fall asleep right away, we stop by the playground for some swinging before the inevitable nap on the way home.

This has definitely kept me moving.

I’ve also been taking a pre-natal water aerobics class several times a week for the past many months, and that has been fantastic. There is nothing more wonderful than being WEIGHTLESS when you’re pregnant. I’ll kick and paddle and flail all day as long as I’m in the water.

So, though I’m HUGE I’m actually in pretty good physical shape and haven’t been gaining weight, which is nice.

The next weirdness that happened with this pregnancy had to do with placenta placement. Near the beginning of the pregnancy when they do the "do you want to know the gender of the baby?" ultrasound, they found that my placenta was low.

No big whoop – this is true in nearly 25% of pregnancies and it moves up 99% of the time. It was really nothing to worry about.

Then, later, they did another ultrasound just to make sure that it had moved. According to the pictures they got, it was still low.

This was not good news. I was scheduled for another more complex ultrasound at the hospital and prepared for the very real possibility of bed rest, either in or out of the hospital, for the duration of my pregnancy. The most likely scenario was that I would be flat on my back for several weeks followed by hemorrhaging and an inevitable c-section.

What fun! I had already increased my odds of a c-section by having gestational diabetes, though because I had controlled it with diet and exercise so well and because I was VERY INSISTANT that I could and would happily and naturally birth as large a baby as I happened to have, I had more or less put those concerns out of my head.

I have always said that with the hips I inherited from my mother’s side of the family, I could birth a twelve pound baby without breaking a sweat. And, if it came to that, it was what I intended to do. My mantra was "I will not have a c-section," and luckily I have care providers who totally respect and support that very strong desire.

However, in the case of placenta previa, even I could see why a c-section would be necessary. So, I just tried not to worry about it until more testing was done.

Luckily, it turned out to be a false alarm. On better equipment it became apparent that though the placenta was in the lower part of the uterus, it was nowhere near the cervix and wouldn’t cause a problem at all. It also helped that the baby moved out of the way during the ultrasound so that they could get a better look. I left feeling relieved with a diagnosis of "perfectly normal."

However, the baby was breech.

Sigh. Still in the womb and already giving me gray hair.

I spent the next few weeks researching and enacting all of the positions in which I should hold my body in order to optimize the baby’s chance of turning into the correct position. I sat up perfectly straight, did pelvic tilts until I felt like Elvis, sat leaning forward while I worked at home, never put up my feet and always kept my knees lower than my hips.

I sat looking longingly at my comfy, cushy rocker / recliner, wanting nothing more than to slouch and put up my feet while eating ice cream, pasta and fruit. But alas… I stuck to the mantra "I will not have a c-section," and there was nothing I wasn’t willing to do to make that a reality.

I remember the morning that the baby turned. It was a Sunday and the bells at the Catholic church next door had just gone off when I felt a very strong pain in my lower abdomen. The baby has been tremendously active all along – sometimes I don’t know when there is time for growth because the activity seems constant some days.

This time, though, something was different.

My partner had to take our daughter downstairs because she was distressed that Mommy kept making strange noises, but there was no way that I could help it. There was a hard, sharp pressure and the sensation of a soccer team competing for the world championship in my uterus.

An hour later when it was all over, I looked totally different. My stomach looked larger, which seemed inconceivable, and much, much lower. Now I could feel a hard little head in the lower part and the kicking feet up under the right side of my ribs.

Sigh. All was right with the world.

Even though she is no longer breech and is turned to be in the optimal position for an easy birth, I’m still sitting with my perfect posture and resisting the urge to slouch. Though from here it is very unlikely that the baby would turn that way, I have no desire to experience posterior positioning or "back labor" as it’s commonly called. I watched a good friend of mine go through that and it didn’t look at all pleasant. Not to mention that it resulted in a c-section.

(I will not have a c-section…)

Now that the baby is where it is supposed to be and has dropped, there is little chance of turning again to a less optimal position. Of course, this also means that I feel like I could give birth AT ANY MOMENT, which is probably true. Will I last until my due date? Bets are being placed….

And until then, I’ll just amuse myself with my hugeness.