Keep on Keepin' On

First – no baby yet. Seems that after his/her unsuccessful run towards the border, he/she had second thoughts and crawled right back up into my lady bits.

And proceeded to kick out my belly button.

So there’s that.

Don’t know how many more of these no-baby posts I’ll have before…well, before I have this baby. This might be it. So on to my final not-a-mom-yet thoughts.

What a Difference a Week Can Make
Talk about growth!!

Week 34 - Saturday


Week 35 - Saturday


Seven days, and my belly feels like it doubled in size. I know at this point the baby is packing on some pounds, so that might sort of explain it - but wow. Needless to say, Big Mama over here has DEFINITELY noticed a difference - from my sleep, to how I sit and walk, to even driving a car. Imagine my surprise at how difficult it is to click a seatbelt. True story.

Truth Serum
Did you watch The Office this week? About how everyone was telling Pam how great and radiant she looked as a pregnant lady, but then Dwight was honest and basically told her she looked like crap?

I.Knew.It.

But seriously, you know what I won’t miss?

This double chin.

Actually, it’s not so much a double chin as it is a complete loss of chin, and instead it looks like my mouth just turns right into a big long neck.

I look like that little kid from that movie "Gummo."

How does that even happen? That’s not mentioned ANYWHERE in my baby books.


Real conversation:
Me: Ugh. This apartment is crazy hot. Like, oven-hot.
Husband: No, no it’s not. It must be your newfound fatness.

(In related news, being pregnant makes you sweat…EVERYWHERE)

(Also, before you freak at my husband, it was a joke - even I laughed. He doesn't think I am fat, and probably would be okay if I stayed at this weight even after this kid comes out. He tells me all the time how I've never looked more beautiful as I do now and I know he really believes that.)


Speaking of….
Fuck you, inner thighs.

Fuck you and the chronic swamp ass you create.


Nerves
The closer I get to meeting my little buddy, the more anxious I have become. My husband has a good handle on the excitement part – but me? I’m a mess of nerves. A bloated, tearful, hungry mess of nerves. There’s not one aspect of this that I am not afraid of. And that’s the painful, honest truth.

Did I mention hungry?

I know this will change, but right now – it is what it is.


Now, I Don't Mean to Complain, But...
I am astounded at how little people give a shit about basic courtesy when you're pregnant.

See me and my basketball belly walking in a crosswalk while you wait at a Stop sign? Feel free to honk impatiently, or fuck it - just blow through the sign completely. Who cares, right?

In a grocery store and need to get by me? Sorry my big fat pregnant self is hoggin up the isle, but just go right on ahead and actually use your cart to push me to the side to get through without so much as an "excuse me."

See me right behind you entering a store? Eh, don't bother holding a door - my belly may be big but my chubby little hands work just fine!

What's crazy is that - in all three of the aforementioned scenarios - it would still be a violation of basic common courtesy even if I wasn't pregnant. But you would think that people would actually maybe make a slight better effort seeing me with my enormous front-self. Hellz no. People just don't give a shit.

And while I'm ranting - can someone please explain to me where the courtesy wave has gone? You know, the one you should get when you let a driver into your lane, even if they waited until the last minute or are driving like a super a-hole? They should give you a little, "Hey man, thanks for the favor" wave, right?

Well, either they've outlawed those here in Illinois, or people simply are just so entitled these days they don't feel the need to acknowledge a pleasentry.

Go ahead and discuss because I need to pause and take my third shower of the day – this hobo BO isn’t going to clean itself.

Dry Run

Wow – this was quite a week. I’ve kind of avoided posting these details on the Facebook, so this will likely read like one big sterile update.

Side note: Speaking of Facebook, that girl that was preggo and posted literally ten times a day about her progress and who is my own personal marker against how I judge my own sharing habits? Yeah, apparently posting about the mucus plug wasn’t enough – she honored us with a post about her explosive diarrhea. No.Fucking.Shit. ON HER STATUS UPDATE. Now, one might have in fact defriended this lunatic at this point, but not me – me and my abnormal fascination with oversharing wackos against whom I both rage and obsess. And yes, in case you’re wondering (you’re probably not) but she did in fact post throughout her delivery – all the way up to the point where she was 10 centimeters dilated and pushing. Why did she put down the phone, you ask ? (you likely didn’t) Because the doctor actually had to tell her to.

AUGHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Why do I let it work me up so? Seriously. It would be so much easier to hit “remove,” but I don’t. I have no one to blame but myself.

And her. I blame her.

Okay, so getting back to the fact that I didn’t post on Facebook, I did want to say thanks to people that sensed something was up and inquired – I was so not trying to blow it off. I just wanted to wait until I could put it here and avoid being THAT girl.

So Monday was just about as typical as any other day. Since I was already on limited movement and couldn’t do my typical Monday drive out to the cornfields for my weekly meeting (it’s about 79 miles away, so the doctor and my husband said no more at this point – too far away if anything happens), I was working from home.

At 1100am, I threw on some flipflops and sweats and I went to my doctor’s appointment, not thinking much of anything. I didn’t even bother to shut down my work computer because I knew – thought – I would be back in about an hour.

But an hour later, I was on my way to Labor and Delivery.

Turns out that, while the tests results from that pre-term labor test were negative (meaning I was likely going to make it Week 34 without going into labor), my body had in fact started the process anyways. I was dilated, effaced and contracting (all of which are labor code words for “Get the catcher’s mitt ready – batter’s up!), and with enough progress from the previous week that I was being sent to Labor and Delivery to be hooked up to monitor the actual contractions and assess what was happening.

In addition, because my body already started to prepare and pre-term labor was the concern, I was given steroids for the baby’s lungs – with the way my body was progressing, even if we stopped the labor, there was still a chance the baby would come too early (anytime in the next two weeks), and the steroids were to boost the lung development.

The rest of the day kind of drew out – contractions slowed, I got my first round of steroid shots, and watched the Chiefs football game with my husband from the hospital room.

Contractions kicked back in fierce the next morning, but there was no decernable change to my cervix since the day before, so they let me go home.

Where I am now trapped. Indefinitely. Well, at least til this kiddo comes out.

And believe me – my family and especially my husband are hawk-eyeing me to make sure that I don’t get very far from my couch. My job has been extremely awesome in divvying up my responsibilities to lessen my stress (although truth be told its weird seeing other people do my job – makes me feel a bit dispensable but oh well) and I’ve been doing what I can to keep up with my supervisees.

Today marks Week 34, and what we consider the gateway to the Green Zone. This is a big marker because once I got to Week 34, they won’t try to stop the labor again. I guess that Week 34 also represents a big turn in terms of lung development, and the baby has a strong chance of being okay – which is why they wouldn’t stop anything from happening from tomorrow on.

So for the next few days (weeks?), I am ever so vigilant of water breaking, timing my ongoing contractions and all that good stuff. I have another doctor’s appointment Monday (if I make it that point), but this time I have my bags packed, a phone tree ready, and more sense of calm than this past Monday’s chaos.

As for the baby, he/she is getting big, although not as big as expected. At 32 weeks, I was only measuring at about 30 weeks, so right about now the kiddo is about 4 pounds-ish (hopefully). But I feel confident that the pizza/bread stick binge last night will help round the little bambino out. And if that didn’t do the trick, surely the candy/cookie gorge of this afternoon will do the trick.

I’ve missed running and fitness more than ever lately, but I am sure that mass anxiety that these last few weeks have brought might have something to do with that. And I won’t even get into the moment I was going through closet last night and stumbled across a dress I wore just one year ago, simultaneously marveling at how tiny it was and tearing up at the current state of affairs.

Sigh.

Having a baby is hard, yo.

Now back to the couch.