pregnancy

Oh pregnancy. How I love and loathe thee at the same time. Sometimes the love is stronger, sometimes the loathe.

Love:

1. Feeling a tiny little person moving around, doing summersaults, moving, playing with its fingers and toes, kicking in the ribs. I even love the painful movements of third trimester (though I grumble, I really do love it.) It’s a little less fun when ribs get moved because baby think s it’s awesome to stick his bum in there and then never move away (thanks, Alpha), but it’s just a wonderful feeling.

2. Watching my other kids love up the little baby. Alpha and Bravo regularly talk to my belly. Alpha has felt the baby kick him a few times now and then he over-reacts and rolls onto the floor saying “oooh, baby, you’re so strong, you knocked me all the way across the room”. Adorable.

3. knowing that I have life inside of me. It’s pretty incredible.

4. Feeling confident in my belly and body. Pregnancy is the one time of my life I’m not worried about my body image or how far my belly sticks out. It’s all good. The belly is SUPPOSED to be huge. And I seem to be one of the lucky pregnant women who simply look like they swallowed a beach ball and weight goes away from my face and legs and everywhere else and lands straight to my belly.

5. The fact that when it’s all over it ends with this incredible rush of joy and emotion and a tiny tiny perfect little wonderful-smelling new baby.

6. Pants without zippers. Handy. Just pull ‘em down and you’re good to pee! It always takes me a while to re-adjust to zippered pants.

7. Looking at tiny new-born clothes and going through the clothing in storage and washing and folding and sorting it and imagining the tiny person that will fill those tiny sleepers.

8. Naming small people. Coming up with all these names and trying them out with the other kids’ names and how they fit and what type of personality would come with the name. I guess it’s the dreaming part of pregnancy that I like. Dreaming of the name and the person and what they’ll be like and who they’ll turn out to be, and which sibling they’ll bond with the most as the years go on. Boy? Girl? It’s fun. Sure, it comes with heartburn (oooh, heartburn) but I love the dreaming.

Loathe:

1. Round ligament pain. It seems to be particularly bad this go-around. I woke up thinking I was dying and my belly was being torn in half. Then I recognized the agonizing pain of my too-big belly not being supported by a pillow and stretching these horrible round ligaments to the point of them screaming in my side. So bring on the body pillow. Today they were just so stretched out from last night that any time I move at all pain goes ripping down my side. Comfy.

2. Heartburn. Ooooh, heartburn. I would shake my fist at you but that would probably make you worse. Matthew thinks that copious amounts of Tums Is what makes our kids so darn cute.

3. The incredible instability of my emotions. Curse you, Pampers commercials! Why is your goal to make pregnant women cry? I’m still not buying your stinky smelly diapers, thank you very much. And now my face is red and blotchy. Jerks.

4. Not being able to take NeoCitran and other wonderful sick-relieving drugs. Though I suppose having a child born with all its appendages is worth the discomfort, but STILL.

5. The fact that pregnancy ends in labour and then post-partum. Yuck.

6. The worry of 40 weeks of pregnancy. Being terrified that something will go wrong. This is worse this go-around after Thomas, but it was bad with all of them. And then it leads to a life-time of worrying about your little person. That part I don’t mind so much. Worrying about them when they’re on the outside is easier because then at least you can hug them and smell their sweet little heads. But worrying about them on the inside is just so hard. How many times with the four of them have I poked and prodded my belly after drinking juice and laying on my left side just willing the kid to kick me in the ribs?

7. All the strangers who think that just because you have a cute belly means that you WANT to talk to them. I didn’t like people before I got pregnant, I certainly don’t like them now!

8. Trying to name small peoples. I am really out of names. And if this poor child is a boy it’s screwed. Alpha want to name him Bob after his teddy bear, and at this point it’s all we’ve got! Baby Bob. Named after a small brown bear. Either that or “Storm Trooper”. We’ve gotta get thinking on this…..