I am 21 weeks pregnant, and it seems like all of a sudden the tum is getting bigger. It surprises me every single time, how long it takes for the tum to be of Public Recognition size. It seems weird to spend half the pregnancy looking “kind of fat.” But now, finally, I am starting to look pregnant. I was crabby when I went to a social thing the other night and no one guessed I was pregnant, and everyone acted surprised when I announced it. Considering I was wearing a snug top, I had thought it would be instantly obvious to everyone. Instead, they evidently assumed I’m just normally this bulky shape. Paul tried to reassure me by saying that everyone probably did guess that I was pregnant, but no one wanted to be the one to say it and have me respond that I wasn’t. It’s true that I myself often don’t comment on an unknown tum unless it is covered with a t-shirt that says “Baby!” with a down-pointing arrow.
Speaking of t-shirts, I’m so glad I bought those four maternity shirts the other day. I spent about a week putting them in an online shopping cart and taking them out again, thinking, “Am I really going to spend nearly $50 on four shirts I’m only going to wear for four months?” But as soon as I started wearing them, I wondered why I hadn’t spent the money earlier to improve the amortization. Even so, I’ll wear each shirt about 30 times. I should be good and sick of them by May.
I’m feeling more tired, more inclined to sit or lie down, more inclined to nap in the afternoons, more inclined to go to bed a little early, more inclined to stay in bed until someone’s really crying. I’m eating all the time, or else thinking about what I am about to eat.
I get little rushes of energy, which a recent post about not-cleaning accidentally inspired me to start using for cleaning. The other day I moved the loveseat and removed four thousand toys and crayons and game pieces from underneath, then vacuumed up two dustbusters’ full of dust and dirt. Paul said, “Would you like me to take all those dustbunnies and help you build a nest with them?”
I get a frequent, unpleasant “can’t breathe” sensation. Sometimes it helps to walk around a little, if I’ve been sitting. Sometimes it helps to sit, if I’ve been moving around. I’ve had this with all my pregnancies, and nothing cures it except childbirth. One of the happiest feelings after the baby is born is “I can breathe!!” Oh, yes, and “The baby is born!,” of course.
There are lots of baby movements now. Some of them are general “moving around” feelings, and some are distinct little bappy kicks: bap! bap! bap! BAP! If you have not yet experienced pregnancy, these feelings are just as mesmerizing and gross and thrilling as you might imagine. I get this combined feeling of wonder and ick: “There’s a real live BABY in there! My baby!” and “Oh my god, something alive is INSIDE MY BODY.”
We are still stuck on boy names. Nothing emerges from the pack as a name for Our New Boy.
We will need to buy a car seat–we got rid of the ones we used for the twins, thinking we were Done. And now there’s that whole Consumer Reports thing, where their recent car seat test needs to be redone. Probably I’ll go ahead and buy a Graco, since that’s what we used for the twins, and since that’s a seat Consumer Reports has liked in previous tests. I usually spend about a third of the pregnancy agitating about which car seat to buy: different stores often carry the car seat in a different fabric, and the fabric choice seems like The Most Important Decision In The World while I am pregnant. (Afterwards, when the car seat cover is really only a difficult-to-wash cloth backdrop for the baby to yack milk and have astonishing blow-out diapers on, it seems less important.)
It seems as if this pregnancy is going very quickly. I’m already looking forward to the food at the hospital, which is truly excellent. Big huge chickeny caesar wraps, and still-warm brownies. Fresh-fruit cups, which you are allowed to order more than one of. Cinnamon french toast with butter and a little cup of warmed syrup. Turkey sandwiches piled so high with turkey you almost want to take a little of it out, with pickle wedges on the side. Most important: someone else making it, and bringing it to me after I pick up the phone by my bed and ask them to. It’s almost worth the entire pregnancy and recovery, just for that food. I always cry when I go home and the food part is over. See? I told you I was always either eating or thinking about eating. Right now I’m doing both, since I am also eating a bowl of ice cream with hot fudge sauce.
Oh my gosh, you made me so jealous with your food descriptives! Man, where the heck are YOU giving birth that they serve you warm brownies?! At our hospital, which is actually pretty decent as hospitals go, all you get as reward for pushing a watermelon out of your body is crappy coffee and watery scrambled eggs!
D.H.–I KNOW!! I had heard so many stories about “hospital food” and how bad it is, so it was a total shock to me. My first baby I had at a different hospital, and there the food was more like what I’d expected: basically TV-dinner-quality. My other babies have all been born at this current hospital, and the food is an entirely different story. The hospital itself isn’t so amazing–typical rooms, typical everything–but the FOOD! It’s so good, we’ve considered driving (40 minutes) over to their cafeteria to go out to eat sometime!
Lol! Forget birthing suites, water birth options, level 3 nurseries- give us the hospital with the good brownies!
the other night i was in bed and my partner was asleep next to me and my baby was moving around inside me… and i suddenly felt kind of CREEPED OUT. i had to wake Vim up to tell him about it to make it less strangly horrible. usually i happy to feel it tho.
Sometimes it occurs to me that our method of reproduction is WEIRD. We grow children INSIDE OUR BODIES. When I was pregnant with the twins and feeling really miserable, my oldest son said, “Why can’t they just grow babies in big jars?” I told him the person who invents that system is going to be wealthy beyond wildest dreams.