June 29th, 2009
My Post-Pregnancy To-Do List
My Post-Pregnancy To-Do List:
- Sleep on my stomach
- Eat a spicy tuna roll or 3
- Have a michelada (my favorite way to enjoy a light Mexican beer)
- Sleep on my back
- Have a filet mignon, on the rare side of medium rare
- Eat a giant italian cold-cuts sandwich
- Enjoy being able to get up and down from seated without help
- Revel in not having to pee every 10 minutes
- Have every cheese that’s been denied me the last few months: brie, blue, feta, goat…
- Wear real shoes again. I never thought I’d be tired of flip-flops
This week, I am 31 weeks pregnant, which equals either the end of my 7th month or the beginning of my 8th depending on which calendar you chose to use (how this ends up so confusing, I’m not entirely sure). But either way, I’ve theoretically got another 9 weeks to go before having this baby. 9 weeks. Just over two months. Can I just nap until the end of August?
I haven’t had a horrible pregnancy by any stretch of the imagination–on the contrary, I’ve been very, very lucky. I haven’t had any really horrible symptoms in any of my trimesters (so far, knock on wood), and beyond a little anemia (easily fixed w/iron supplements), there have been no major health issues that should affect me or the baby. The little guy is growing well, he’s got a good strong heartbeat, and we’re both just chugging along day by day. But I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that I’m not one of those women who loves being pregnant.
Do I like being pregnant? No, no I don’t. I don’t like the fact that my body is not my own. I don’t like the fact that I’ve taken to sleeping in the lazyboy to get a remotely decent nights sleep. I don’t particularly care for the fact that I have to pee every ten minutes. I don’t like the random aches and pains (the new one that feels like a groin pull is particularly not awesome). I don’t like the whole pregnant woman as public property thing that seems to happen (seriously folks, don’t touch my stomach, don’t tell me how big I am, don’t warn me about having twins. Just don’t). I don’t like the restrictions on my own movement, eating, sleeping, walking,etc. I can’t wait for this baby, but I also can’t wait until this baby is out of me!
For a long time, I felt bad about feeling that way. Really bad. I mean, you hear about these women who claim to love every minute of being pregnant. They are so overjoyed at the miracle growing inside them that it feeds into a feeling of joy at just being pregnant. I fought with a silly notion that it made me a “less-than” mom, ALREADY, just because I don’t like this part. Would people think I don’t love this kid just because I sometimes wish he could punch someone else in the ribs? Or that I wasn’t really excited about him because I would give almost anything today to not have to figure out whether to risk trying to sleep in the bed to help the groin pain, or to just give in and sleep in the chair because of the hip pain?
But I’ve finally accepted that no, I don’t like pregnancy–if there were a way to get this kid where I didn’t have to go through this, I’m pretty sure I might. But that doesn’t have one smidgen of anything to do with my feelings about the little guy. Those are my feelings about being pregnant. The two are only related biologically–not emotionally. I can, on the one hand, be sick of being pregnant and on the other be totally thrilled to be having a kid. It’s not a contradiction, and it doesn’t make me a “less-than” mom, and it doesn’t say anything about anything really. And while pregnancy is the means to an amazing, wonderful, can’t wait to meet him end–I still just can’t wait until it’s over. And the sushi rolls and sleep positions that await me there.
As always, more lists can be found over at abdpbt:
Tags: baby on the way, lists














