my first engagement ring
This pregnancy has really forced encouraged me to re-think my expectations of myself and of my body. Pregnancy this time around has been so different from my pregnancy with Elan. I'm more tired and crabby. I have more aches and pains. Back pain, hip pain, pain places I don't want to talk about on the Internet.
The baby is low, and my back is straining, so I have a back/belly brace to help support my back.
I have a map of veins down one leg, so I have black thigh-high compression hose. After I melted-down trying to buy them at the local medical supply store, my husband googled "sexy pregnancy compression stockings" -- mine are Italian.
I can't tell you how sexy I feel.
All the layers of binding and supporting make me crazy after a while, and I just want to rip them off. Sometimes I do. And some days I suck it up and make it most of the day wearing all this stuff to prop my body up and try to keep it from hurting more.
And now the latest occurrence in the "never happened last time" category: my wedding rings are getting tight. I'm not visibly swollen, but I don't want to take any chances about them getting stuck. I'm trying to be more accepting about all these discomforts and necessary adjustments, relax into being in the "so so big" phase of pregnancy, and remember it's all temporary, and really, in the larger picture, I'm right where I want to be. So I put my rings away and got out my first engagement ring. It's silver, and Mikhail bought it secretly in Bolivia and then gave it to me when we got engaged in Peru - on the top of Huayna Picchu, which is the picturesque peak just behind Machu Picchu in all the pictures of that awesome place.
From life B.C. (before child) -
Mikhail and I got engaged on the top of the peak shrouded in mist.
This ring is just a little bit bigger, so it's giving me that much more room to grow. Plus, it's fun to look at it and remember back to a time when our lives were so different. Soooooo different.
A combination of wearing this ring and a form of late-pregnancy distracted tiredness is making my mind wander. I keep thinking about the time Mikhail and I spent in South America - 5 months traveling, and then we went back to live in Peru for a year. I'd love to write more about the adventures we had there, and the discoveries we made, internal as well as external. It's on my mental list of writing projects. That list I'm not getting to before the baby comes. Someday, someday... I have visions of a series of essays that might someday make up a book. How crazy is that? I can't even believe I'm admitting it here, in "public" of a sort. I guess it's the hormones. These crazy confess-everything hormones.
My nesting urges have kicked in big-time, and I want to DO EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW. As my friend said a week before she birthed her baby: "I want to purge every single drawer!" I have that feeling too. But I am also so easily exhausted; I don't make it very far into my projects before I have to put my feet up or take a nap. It's a strange state: rushing and fretting and do-do-doing, and then zoning and resting and just not caring. Back and forth I swing all day long, and more often than I'd like I wake up in the middle of the night and start listing things in my head.
I keep trying to tell myself that I have time. That no matter when this baby comes, it doesn't really matter what I get done right now. Life will continue after October, and though it will be so so different again, I will adjust. I will still have me, my own interests and passions, my own wants and must-dos. Of course I am telling myself this because a part of my brain has decided that after October, my life is over. That I will never again have time to write, or pursue my own dreams. But I've had one child. I know it's that way for a while, and then it's not completely like that anymore. So I keep talking myself down from that particular ledge.
I tell myself: take a rest. You have time. Someday, someday...
Sorry about the formatting glitches as of late - I don't understand why my fonts are suddenly getting messed up. It all looks fine until I publish it! Someday I'd like to gussy up this blog some. Someday, someday...
ReplyDeleteoh Rebecca.. so very much to comment on...
ReplyDeleteI feel you on the terrible pregnancy thing. I had the most insane comments directed at me. "Wow, are you having triplets?", "You look like you were due last month!". Even afterward... 2 weeks post partum: "Oh I see you are still wearing your maternity clothes." WTF!!!???! And of course I suffered from INSANE vulvar veracious veins which is maybe what you are referring too. If it is PLEASE tell me and I'll let you know the few things that helped. I was completely exhausted the whole time, like a brick had hit me in the head... but still had to care for 1 to 2 other children :P I now have hemorrhoids which make me me bleed and cry every time I take a crap. Although let me tell you it has significantly improved with the use of "hemorrhoidal suppositories" and Prep H on the outside like 5 times a day (both). Yes that's what it's come too. Also the purchasing of an Arbonne tummy creme that was like $80 to help with the stretch marks/flab.
So as a warning (and I say this only to prepare you and to pre-commiserate with you) having your second kid is the most awful experience of your life. At least it was for me. Just horrible horrible horrible. Brake through that wall and you can have 12 no problem. Adding Jonas on was NOTHING compared to Margo. It's REALLY FUCKING HARD. I don't mean to scare you I just want you to know what's comming and that we've been there. You'll get through it. Oh and all that stuff that has to do with YOU... yeah right! put that shit on hold for like 5 years.. When's the last time I played piano? Have ZERO expectations and you'll be ok. Someday someday... I chant that to myself. I recently chatted with one of my piano students' mother. (She has 3) her kids are 5, 8, 11. She was telling me how wonderful her life is now all of a sudden. Someday. someday....