Bump in the Night

**warning: the following contains 'belly' photos


Last week, at a birthday party for a one-year-old, at least two mothers informed me, with much scorn in their voices, I was not 'showing' at all.

They then went on to tell me 'not to worry,' with my second one I will be showing straight off the mark.



How does one respond to this kind of comment?  It's like planning a wedding all over again.  Everyone has an opinion and feels within their rights and even obligated to pass on that opinion.  In this case, I am doing it all wrong because I have not 'popped' to their satisfaction.  That the 'belly' is a mark of some kind of achievement and I have failed.

It should be said, these women and I had never met before this occasion and so have no reference on which to judge whether or not I am 'showing.'

This was my first experience of a kind of 'mummy shame.'  I'm not a fan. Surprise, surprise.

To be honest, my changing body is one of the hardest bits of this experience for me thus far.  At the time I got pregnant, I was the fittest I have ever been in my life. I had worked for over a year to get there and it was finally a part of my everyday life.  I'm not talking about being 'skinny.'  I'm speaking of feeling fit in my body and mind.  Knowing what my body can and can't do.  Being aware of what was going in and how it affects my mood and energy.  Knowing that I could run across a train terminal with a full backpack and not die on the concourse.

I was in tune with my body.

Or so I thought.

Now, my body is harboring an almost completely independent being and it is really bizarre.  My body can no longer manage simple tasks like bending at the waist.  Getting dressed below the waist requires the kind of concentration I normally reserve for yoga balances (I have fallen over putting on my underwear more times than is comically allowed).  I give myself a mini pep-talk before descending the stairs EVERY TIME as I am now a tumble risk and I am inexplicably tired after a few mundane tasks around the house.

I have had to learn a lot of patience with myself and my body.  I am learning this little by little through my yoga class.  I attend a pregnancy yoga class but it's more a place to practice breathing than anything else. I still attend my usual class and this is where my 10 years of yoga practice and body awareness is becoming really important.

In the past, I had no question that my body could do what my instructor asked of it.  Now, I am amazed at what my body can no longer do and how frustrated I become when I can't follow the class in the same way I did before.  However, in that frustration I have found a deeper connection with my body.  I truly have to listen to my body and what it can't do.  Instead of serenely following along with the class I am mentally involved in creating variations of each pose based on those 10 years of practice.

Surprisingly, not being able to follow along in class is strengthen my yoga practice and my patience.  I find I am much more patient with myself and others.  It also allows me to take care of myself for myself as well as for the little being inside.  It's not a one way street.

All body connection talk aside, I still get a bit freaked out when Pruin starts kicking and wriggling.  At times it literally takes my breath away.  Not in a TOP GUN kind of way but in a what-the-hell-is-that? kind of way.

What will happen after Pruin enters the world?  How important will my fitness be to me then?  I don't know. I hope it is still a priority.  My fitness levels directly affect my mood levels so I hope it becomes a priority again. But we shall see.


Until then, dear reader, I leave you with the following evidence that I have in fact started showing...something.

Starting point

Halfway point

(preggo bum & thigh cellulite mercifully cropped out)

Pregnancy brain

I'm still here and still pregnant.  Here are some of the more public-friendly thoughts I've had about being pregnant.

F-Y-I: catching the common cold or whichever flu virus is currently incubating in the London Underground is a bummer and annoying when you're not pregnant.  When you're pregnant it is the Black Plague and lasts for weeks on end.  On the up side, it gives you lots of opportunity to engage those pelvic floor muscles during a sneezing fit when you absolutely do no want to pee your pants in public.  Of course, that battle is frequently lost before it even begins.

Pram shopping is a bit like searching for the right rental.  Interpreting the lingo is the first step in assuring you aren't wasting your time fawning over a flat/pram that looks great at first blush but will cost you double in the end due to 'plumbed for oven/cooker/washer/shower' clause/additional mandatory accessories available.

Baby on board badge--smug fertile declaration or passive aggressive plea for a seat? Or, when viewed off public transport, permission to judge and remark loudly on pregnant woman's scandalous behaviour  such as partaking in a cup of over-boiled mulled wine at the Christmas fair or lunching on a scalding hot sausage sandwich?  Last weekend I left the badge at home so I could partake in a bit of mulled wine on my birthday while viewing the town center Christmas lights without fear of disapproving stares. I'm really living on the edge these days.

There is definitely something moving around in my lower abdomen and it's not gas.  But it sure as hell isn't 'butterflies' either.  The description of first movements as 'butterflies in the tummy' or 'flutters' hacks me right off.  First off, the movement is no where near my 'tummy'.  Let's get our anatomy straight.  There's no reason to continue with the dialogue of babies in bellies as we all know they are not popping out the stomach on a hinge like Pregnancy Barbie so many years ago.  Second, whenever I read this description it sounds like it's being said by some breathy hippie waxing lyrical on the beauty of life while high at a music festival.  Maybe I missed the initial 'flutters' while hacking up a lung for the past month or maybe I passed it off as gas.  Or maybe after 15 years of yoga and modern dance I am more attuned to my body than most so these 'flutters' feel more like burly Mexican wrestlers slinging themselves off the ropes that is my uterine wall.  Whatever the case, something is alive in there and it's freaking me out a little bit.

We had our mid-pregnancy scan this week.  I have to admit it was a bit anti-climactic.  However, the baby did flip us off very clearly when the sonographer attempted to catch a glimpse of its face.  So that's fun.  Baby also has a head on the large side.  Attitude and a big head.  Double fun.

The impossible dream

Can we talk about pregnancy fitness for a moment? (she asks while heating up three (yes, three) butter croissants in the oven)

Before I fell pregnant (a term I love as it was like falling sick) I declared, more than once, I would be a fit preggo woman.  I was determined to stay in my jeans and just use those button extenders/belly band things.  I would keep running and doing yoga and this would make the unimaginable pain of labour a bit easier (all things being relative, so I hear) and we would have a healthy kid before it was even born.  I would have to give up the half-marathon but, who are we kidding, I wasn't that into it anyway.

HA!!

I just spit part of my croissant across the room laughing at myself.

As I said, this was before I fell pregnant and was immediately leveled by mourning sickness and incredible bloating.  I naively assumed the body gently worked its way into pregnancy and I had time to get used to the idea of being inhabited by something eventually the size of a watermelon.

HA!! HA!!

Almost immediately after those lines showed up on those sticks (because I took more than one test, just to be sure, who doesn't?) I was sick and bloaty.  Now sure, I have in the past made myself sick purely through mental stress and anxiety (hello, PhD viva and almost any job interview) but I have never made myself, or even heard of, bloating caused by mental anxiety.  This was unbearable.   Only six, maybe seven, weeks gone and I can't fit into 90% of my trousers and jeans!!!!!

Needless to say, I wasn't running anymore.  If I could make it out of bed it was a good day and if I only had one conference call with the toilet it was a great day!

Cue everyone telling me to get some fresh air and take a walk.  It took all I had to not throw the nearest toilet roll at them.

I'm now 17 weeks gone and the sickness is gone and yoga is regular once again but those jeans aren't seeing the light of day again for a long, long time.  I can't torture myself, it's just too mean.  I've only 'gained' a few pounds but all the muscle in my thighs and bum is gone and the cellulite has returned.  So much for being a fit preggo lady.


Two nights ago I dreamt about a midwife/scan appointment.  It was drawn out and a lot was going on but the one 'test' I remember watching them perform was to suddenly poke a pregnant woman's bladder (from outside, just a short jab to the belly, you know, nothing invasive) and measure how much urine she released. Of course, they gave no warning of this test and I watched two women flood the floor before I woke up.


My fitness goal now is to not pee my pants when I sneeze.  Pie in the sky, I know, but it's all relative.


Pelvic Floor Muscles: 5  Sneeze: 2

Not too shabby but definite room for improvement.

of Greece, Gods and Salted Gold

Half-way through the month and a little over a third through the pregnancy.

Or as I like to call it, the habitation or invasion.

EDITOR'S NOTE:
Before I go on, I should warn my dear readers that I am not (thus far) of the glowy-happy preggo persuasion.  That probably goes without saying for my regular readers, but in case you're new to this corner I'm giving you fair warning.*


Yes, these past few months have felt more like being host to a parasite than making a cute baby, and I know parasites.  I drank the water in Turkey and ate the street food in Morocco.  I know parasites.

Here's a tip, to you from me, Pinky Lee, don't schedule a beach holiday in the middle of your first trimester. Especially if that holiday is in a country where you can't flush toilet paper so every toilet, public or otherwise, has an aroma which sends you dry-heaving even when you're not 8 weeks pregnant.

Two days after we moved, we left London for the sunny beaches of Greece.  We hadn't had a proper relaxing holiday in over a year (Morocco doesn't count, we were both sick twice and spent at least half the time in a crowded and hot SUV. I said relaxing holiday) so we were looking forward to a week of laying around and eating.

I did a lot of laying around.  Not so much eating.

attempting glowy-happy & failing

I spent four point five of the seven days rotating between the bed, the balcony and the toilet.  Eating was next to impossible   The buffet on offer turned my stomach before I even got close enough to see what I couldn't eat.  I was stockpiling apples in the room and the only things I could keep down were generic cocoa pop-like cereal in the morning and bland spaghetti in the afternoon and evening.  But even then it wasn't a safe bet.

Before I forget.  You know what's awesome when you're feeling like you are dying?  And I say this with complete sincerity, salted crisps.  Regular potato chips.  They are a gift from the gods.  Seriously, the mythic gods worshiped in the surrounding temples reached down from the heavens and delivered me crunchy, crispy, salted gold.

Of course that could have been Pete coming back from the local store.  He is olive skinned with dark curly hair and I was laying on the dark bathroom floor.  It's entirely possible I was hallucinating.



So preggo tip No. 1, no beachy holidays with plumbing that won't accept toilet paper and salted potato chips are AMAZING!!!!







*These experiences are completely my own and I pass no judgement on glowy-happy preggo women or mean to cause pain to those suffering through infertility.  

November

It’s the day after the US presidential election and I don’t feel like puking.*  

Seems as good a time as any to start things back up.

For the last two years November becomes the Thirty Days of Thanks in this space.  On the surface, this practice was in deference to my favourite holiday, Thanksgiving.  As I contemplated doing it again this year I realized that it is also a coping mechanism. 

The first year I was in a very, very dark place.  I had put on those post-wedding/post-PhD pounds and lost momentum in the job market.  But the real clue I was stumbling was finding myself on a week’s holiday to Paris, completely paid for by my husband’s work, hiding in a hotel room in the business district.  

I was in Paris! 

Not my favourite of cities but not my least favourite.  I had all day to myself and was one train stop away from the centre of this beautiful city (I mean I could see the Ferris Wheel in the Place de la Concorde from our hotel room) and I was hiding in the room watching BBC daytime programming (reality programming seeking out ‘cowboy builders’ and various ‘benefit cheats’).  The housekeeping staff felt so sorry for me they started delivering free macaroons to the room.  The situation is obvious in the posts I threw up in this space.  I was thankful for ‘stolen apples’ and ‘my headtorch.’  I was so far down my hole I couldn't see beyond my daily situation to find things to be thankful about.  

Shortly after that trip I joined Weight Watchers and started CBT therapy and by the time the next November rolled around I was feeling good.  

Really good.  

I was 30 pounds lighter and regularly running 6Ks.  We just returned from Morocco, a trip we dreamt about for years, and I started volunteering at a place I hoped would jump-start my working life.  I threw our first Halloween cocktail party and then headed back to Cleveland for a month.  

Last November I learned you can’t go home again.  It’s a cliché, but it’s true.  At least for me.  Going back to the US causes me all kinds of stress.  When I left the US six years ago I was flailing.  

I was going on my third year of flailing.  

To be honest, I was running away and trusting to another cliché (love conquers all) that everything would out.  The girl who left is not the woman that returns and Cleveland is slow to catch on.  Or maybe we both are playing catch-up.  I was counting the days until I got to go home, my home, the home I had built with my person.  Once again, November’s Days of Thanks became painful and difficult to write and turned into a kind of therapy.  


Which brings us to this year.  

Following the pattern, I find myself with a need to cope but for completely different reasons.  In September my world changed drastically (and I guess that’s where this long-winded post is going).  
In September we moved into our very own house.  A few months earlier we made a concrete decision for our future. Finally stepping away from some abstract, what-if, if-where, future shaped by the demands of our families.  This was for us.  Just us and everyone else would have to deal.  

Two weeks before we moved we found out we were pregnant.  












That’s what happened to us as well.  A double-take and a long HOLY SH*T-type pause.  


Shortly after the move, the year-long volunteering gig I hoped would jump-start my working life ended leaving me with a lot of ‘experience’ but still tragically underemployed.  

Prior to all this change I was blocked.  I had the words, but I couldn't get them out on a page. I write best when ‘improving’ the truth of my day to day circumstances and I had become a bit of a bore. So the universe served up the perfect writing prompt: 


new mortgage, knocked up and unemployed.


Is this my life or a sitcom premise? 

This is all to say that the Days of Thanks will most likely take a backseat to new house/preggo anecdotes.  

I hope you’ll stick around.




*see what I did there? 

In the Meantime III

So...

September happened.  I assume September happened because the calendar now says October and I am sitting in my new house, but that might be my only proof. 

The few scattered memories of the past weeks aren't much help. 


Sleeping on a mattress on the floor of our Fingal Street flat and crying about leaving a space that felt more like home than any space before.  I remember returning to the empty flat a few days later to clean and walking into an empty bedroom that smelled like our bedroom and crying.  

My skin can still feel the raging wind on the beach, described as a light breeze, whipping away any relaxation I hoped to gain sitting in the sun on a spit of land called Greece but serviced by Turkish cell service.

The anxiety and disappointment of a long-awaited interview, bookended by a very sad (figuratively and literally) shower.

Virtual friends becoming real friends. 

Tomatoes!!!

I am plagued by a constant feeling of being lost.  I lose things in the house constantly, I don't know the foibles of the house yet, I haven't hit on a routine in the house just yet, I don't know my neighbourhood yet.  We moved less than a mile from the flat but in a city where amenities are set up by walking radius we have all new services to find. 



And now it's October.  Back to School.  It will always feel like the beginning for me instead of the natural winding down.  Although that feeling is there as well.  How can it be helped when the sunlight is slowly disappearing and soon it will be dark at 3pm.  The long winter rain cloud arrived and is making itself at home.  Thankfully the new house is actually insulated and I can almost forget about the damp upholstery of the Fingal flat. 

As I look out the office window at the primary school across the street, I find myself missing my Fingal neighbours.  I didn't know them really but I was very familiar with their daily habits and goings on and I find myself wondering about the lesbian couple across the street, has the brother moved out yet? The gay couple next to them, is he still opening the blinds wearing nothing but tight briefs or has he switched to boxers? The crazy, loud, obnoxious family next door, what stage is the teenage daughter going through now?  The foul-mouths behind the garden, have they trained that dog or broken the tire swing yet?  

I'll never know now.  It's like your favourite show being cancelled after the cliff-hanger.  But unlike the TV show, life is continuing on Fingal Street.  Our sitcom moved location and there will inevitably be a whole new round of mishaps as we get comfortable.  I should state that the majority of mishaps we deal with are entirely my fault.  I'm a menace.  The most recent...almost gassing us because I don't know how to use the grill on our new cooker.  Oops.

We may be attempting a DIY/circus-rig fix of the sad shower which I can almost guarantee will be laughable.

   

It's going to be fun, people.  Stay tuned.  

What I've been doing other than writing here...

Now that all the paperwork is FINALLY done, I can tell you that we bought a house.  

Crazy grown-up shit, right?!  We can't really believe it either, except when we look at our bank account.  Then it becomes real as a punch in the face.  And that is what it felt like sometimes as well.  Ugh.  

Because we like to cram big events together into the most inopportune times*, we decided to buy a house in an Olympic borough, during preparations for the Olympics.  Needless to say, it took a bit longer than expected as no-one in the city was at their desk or if they were they were too busy watching the action to file some paperwork for little 'ole us.  

But it's done now and in a few weeks we will be settling into our third home together, but this time it is well and truly ours.  No crazy landlords refusing to fix burst pipes.  Now we will have sole responsibility for said burst pipes.  FABULOUS!!

But seriously, we are excited to have a space of our own to do with as we wish (with council approval, of course).  There are a few choice decor items that I know you are dying to see, for instance the bathroom wallpapered in imitation cork with beautiful, truly vintage, avocado bath, sink and toilet.  But that will have to wait for a bit.  


Meanwhile, while we *patiently* waited for paperwork, etc. we poured all our energy into nurturing another baby. 

GOTCHA!!!  Meet our little babies.  Tomas and Tommy.  We love them.  

We picked these guys up as seedlings.  During one of our walks through the 'new' neighborhood, we noticed someone had put out some tomato seedlings that needed new homes.  we scooped up two and they lived in the shower for two weeks before moving to their new home.  We have urged bees to visit and actively removed snails and slugs.  They are flourishing with our attention and we think they make a great addition to the family.  

I've also been sewing like a madwoman.  Last week I spent two days creating havoc in the living room as I burned through the t-shirt quilt.  An eight-hour run followed by a twelve-hour run have left me with almost complete quilt top and bottom.  You can read about the process over at Squaring Up.  

So that's me.  Not as exciting as you hoped, I know, but not everyday can be spent in the medina or recording petulant baking and laundry woes.  

What have you been up to these last few weeks?  

*see completing my PhD, international wedding and job change in June of 2010.