The Ups and Downs of Pregnancy

I thoroughly enjoyed being pregnant after reality finally sunk in and I had a birth team in place. I made birth art (drawings of my perception of my body, pictures of what I wanted the birth to look like), I practiced yoga before bed each night, I took walks, ate healthy food (and kept a food journal so my midwife could look over it and give feedback). Life was amazing as I carried my mysterious child. This child was somewhat of an enigma to us because we really did not know when we actually conceived it. (It was not until the birth that I actually counted backwards to figure out the exact date.) We also were waiting until the birth to find out the sex. I wanted it to be a surprise. So, in every way, this child remained a mystery to us. Not knowing the sex of the baby was actually the hardest thing for strangers I encountered to understand. I worked as the weekend hostess at Elote during pregnancy. After I started showing, people waiting to eat would strike up a conversation with me. "So, when are you due?" they would ask. "Late March," I would reply. "Do you know what you're having?" would invariably be the next question. "Well, according to the ultrasound, we're having a human being." Yes, I really did say that. "No, I mean like are you having a boy or a girl." "Ooh! You mean what's the sex of the baby." "Yeah." "We're going to be surprised. We don't want to know the sex of the baby until it's born." Now, this was the concept that people failed to wrap their brains around. I can't begin to tell you how many people were bent on ruining the surprise. It was almost as if I had said, "we haven't found out yet, but since I'm sure you've been blessed with X-ray vision, why don't you look inside at my baby and tell me what we're having." The reason I say this is because nearly every time I told someone I wanted to be surprised, they would look at my belly and determine that, "You're having a boy." Excuse me? Did I ask for your medical input? NO! What part of SURPRISE don't you understand? It drove me nuts. That was probably my least favorite part about being pregnant. I wanted to have a shirt made that said on the front, "Yes, I'm pregnant" and on the back, "No, I don't know the sex, and no, I don't want your opinion!" These types of conversations particularly frustrated me for two reasons. The first was that I held a position at work that required me to be nice to the customers, no matter how angry they made me. The second was that every time I dreamed about my baby, it was always a girl. I knew better than those silly strangers. I was the mom. I was in touch with my baby and my body, and I'd be damned if they undermined my mother's instinct. Aside from the weekly barrage of stupid pregnancy small talk, I soaked up every moment of carrying a child. Although, I did start to worry that my baby wasn't moving around by early November. I had to constantly remind myself that Niccole was two months ahead of me in her pregnancy. Her belly bigness and baby movement were far enough ahead of me that I really couldn't compare. I would forget this sometimes and start to worry. I would think to myself, "Niccole's baby is moving, why isn't mine?" It was the week after the 2008 election that I finally made an ultrasound appointment. I had been worrying for weeks whether or not my baby was okay. I wanted to see it for myself. So Corey, Maryn and I met at the clinic in Cottonwood across the street from the hospital and I had an ultrasound performed. Once again I had in my mind all those movies and TV shows where the happy couple hold hands and cry together at the sight of their child on the monitor. First of all, I had to pee like like crazy because I needed a full bladder to have an ultrasound. The extra liquid helps the image pick up better. So, I had a full bladder and cold gooey jelly on my tummy with a wand running over my bulging belly. Nothing emotional about that. We also told the ultrasound technician that we did not want to know the sex of the baby. So she was very careful not to reveal to us the important areas. As I looked up at the screen, I saw this ethereal image. I saw the head, the almost skeletal looking cranium of my child. Then the tech panned down further and I could see most of the body (just not the boy/girl parts). I burst out laughing. It was the funniest sight I had ever seen! This kiddo was inside me doing the running man dance!! It's spine was clearly visible and extending and contracting, arching back and curving forwards. Its arms were flailing about at the same time. This was definitely my child. A born dancer. We also found out during the ultrasound that the baby was actually two weeks younger than we had originally thought. When Maryn listened in on the Doppler the first time I visited her, she gauged how many weeks along I was based on the count of the hear beat and my fundus height. (The fundus is the top of the uterus. Throughout pregnancy, it raises higher and higher on the abdomen starting below the belly button and eventually growing to just underneath the rib cage.) That was also why I wasn't feeling things as soon as I thought I should be. I was actually two weeks behind, which in pregnancy, two weeks can make all the difference in the world and gave me relief to my worry that I wasn't on track. Feeling a sense of calm that my baby was healthy and developing normally, I went through the rest of my pregnancy without worry. A week and a half after the ultrasound, I was laying on the couch watching Horton Hears a Who and I felt the little person say hi for the first time. I turned the TV off and sat there, poised and waiting, hand on belly and then, thump, I felt it again. It was definitely the kiddo moving around in there. I remember it happening right before Thanksgiving. We went to a friend's house for the holiday that year and I sat on their couch, just tickled to pieces that I could share this event with friends and family. I had felt strange things before that event, and I got excited each time, only to realize it was gas or something else moving in my intestines. I had to think anatomically about it before it made sense to me. As a woman's uterus expands during pregnancy, it pushes all the organs in the lower abdomen out of place. The intestines expand outward, the bladder is compressed, and even the liver can get cramped from the growth of the uterus. That was probably the most painful part of pregnancy for me. My liver and gall bladder were smooshed and I would get a burning sensation just under my ribs on the right side halfway through my day. In spite of the chest pain, pregnancy was a joy the first time around. I am so excited to journey back through the land of parenthood for another child.