I’m starting to notice Tum Interference occurring. I’m walking funny. My tum gets sore. I feel tired from walking around. It’s difficult to carry things that I would normally carry in front of me. It’s difficult to lean forward. It’s difficult to get up from the floor, or out of bed. It’s the beginning of the third trimester, all right.
I was thinking about my most recent pregnancy, the twin pregnancy. I looked it up in my journal to make sure I was remembering correctly, and I was: It sucked. I had to lie down for awhile, queasy and shaky, after taking a shower. I almost couldn’t face the idea of a short errand. I couldn’t get comfortable in any position. My legs retained water all the way up to my hips–enough water to give me stretch marks. My feet went up two sizes. I could barely walk, and when I did walk it was slow and painful. At around 32 weeks, I couldn’t lie down anymore without excruciating pain in my pelvis and hips, so I had to sleep sitting up in a recliner for the rest of the pregnancy. I felt lousy and sick all the time. I felt like I was dying of a painful terminal illness.
Hard to complain about it, though, when there are women who would have given up one of their limbs just to have carried their twins another week, or to have felt bad but have no actual complications, or to not have been on bedrest for months. But just because I was very, very lucky in comparison doesn’t mean it didn’t still utterly suck. It did. It utterly sucked. I acknowledge my luckiness, without giving up my claim to the suckiness.
I was partially hoping that this pregnancy would be twins again, because I have so loved almost everything about having twins (I have to use that qualifier because of the times when they both had blow-out diapers and then both spit up over their clean outfits and freshly-washed hair), and because it would be so comical and unusual to have two sets of twins less than two years apart. But when I found out I was having just a single baby this time, I felt like I could look forward to the pregnancy. Definitely it is not buttercups and Christmas morning, but there’s woe and then there’s WOE, and I am better able to handle woe.
“I acknowledge my luckiness, without giving up my claim tho the suckiness.” I almost shot smmothie right out my nose!
This makes me think back again, with MUCH love and nostalgia, for that time a month or so ago when one of our friends asked me in utter, innocent sincerity, “Do you even LIKE being pregnant?”
Well, I don’t know buddy… Would you like walking around with a watermelon resting in your pelvis, crushing your bladder and intestines, and pinching every nerve in the lower half of your body? I ain’t something you do because you like it.
“I acknowledge my luckiness, without giving up my claim to the suckiness.”
BWAHAHHA, I love that quote, too. And as a mom who delivered at 28 weeks (not twins), if anybody gives you lip about complaining, send them my way. I’ll be 28 weeks next Monday and I’m already WAY more uncomfortable than I was last time, although holding steady, so very happy.
Um, that’s “it” not “I.” But I guess that sentence might have something factual to it, left the way it is, also…
I liked how you said you had to go back to your journals to remember how bad you felt. It seems like so many women inaccurately remember how “great” their pregnancies were, which contributes to all the “best time of your life” b/s.
I feel like my pregnancies were easy and that I had no business complaining. I carried singletons and knew not to take longer than 2 minutes in the shower or I’d be taking an all-day nap. Sure, my hips were separated, but that only bothered me at night.
Everyone tells about how they have dreams about me having twins, and I’m a little scared of the idea. I think my body would fall apart. But if I had twins I’d be complaining all day, every day! :)
Twins were my biggest fear as far as being pregnant. I can barely manage being pregnant with one and not complain 24/7.
In the very early stage of my second pregnancy, I was measuring a bit big so the doctor sent me for an ultrasound to rule out twins. He said “I think it might be twins because of your measurements, so let’s send you for an ultrasound.” Clearly he didn’t realize that I am A Fretter.
So I went home and proceeded to FLIP OUT about how I didn’t want twins with a 2.5 year old toddler in the picture, about how twins would be too hard too hard too hard for me to deal with, etc. The soonest they could get me in for an ultrasound was about 10 days later, and by the time the day rolled around, I’d come to terms with twins. I had accepted that there would be two babies and I was fine with it. Of course, there was only one baby and I burst into tears when the tech told me that. It was so strange – it honestly felt a bit like I’d lost a baby. I was sad and depressed over this imaginary baby for days. Hormones, man. Sheesh.