So apparently my little blueberry is now a raspberry. Noticed this with some delight when I checked into my WTE pregnancy ap this morning. Yep. There’s an ap for that.
Survived my dinner meeting, even felt almost normal after eating the food. I feel like someone with an eating disorder – dreading going out to eat or eating in front of people, taking tiny little bites, rearranging the food on my plate so no one will notice I’m not eating, fending off accusations of “what’s the matter, don’t you like it?” It’s so weird. For someone who loves food and loves nothing more to indulge in a big restaurant meal with friends, this is a whole new territory for me. Broke my heart to leave my delicious “Macro Bowl” half uneaten. But it did feel really good to eat nice clean macrobiotic food, let me tell you.
Felt pretty decent today, but still don’t have the gumption to get back to my Friday or Monday yoga classes, which I miss dearly. I just don’t feel well enough, and after weeks of lying around on the couch I can only imagine what condition my muscle tone is in. I may actually cancel, or temporarily suspend, my YMCA membership. Why pay $50 a month for something I may not be able to use for two years (they only offer child care for kids 1 year and up)? What I should do is get myself a maternity yoga DVD and do it at home. I will do this…if everything works out. I have no intention of turning into a complete slob due to pregnancy…unless of course I continue to feel this nauseated for the duration. In which case you really can’t blame me for not wanting to exert myself physically. Even going down the stairs to get my mail every day feels like a major effort. Looking forward to having my health and energy back.
Been having twingy crampy feelings on the right side of my abdomen for a couple of days now…which is similar to how I felt last time I miscarried, but last time I had a lot for an hour or so, and then began to bleed. This has been days and very mild with no spotting at all. It could be the uterus stretching or any number of other completely normal causes. Not trying to read too much into it. It comes and goes, like the sickness.
I will say that despite all of this I still don’t feel comfortable settling into being pregnant. Even now I feel like I have to put quotations around the word, because it’s not real until I’m out of the woods, which isn’t for a long while yet, although Tuesday’s ob appointment will hopefully put some of my fears to rest. I am afraid to make plans or tell people or think about birthing or parenting. I think all of this is normal, though. Reading posts online of other people at this phase of pregnancy just reminds me how normal I am – everyone is afraid, everyone is paranoid, everyone doesn’t want to celebrate too early. We’re all in the same boat. I never knew how fraught with fear pregnancy really is – I always naively thought just achieving the pregnancy was pretty much the whole battle. I think we spend our whole lives being taught getting pregnant would be the worst thing to ever happen to you, so when it finally happens when you want it to happen, there’s this fear it will be taken away. Especially when that’s already happened once.
So if I think back to my first trimester some day, I can honestly say what I’ll remember is horrible sickness, isolation, and fear. That sounds terrible, doesn’t it? It doesn’t feel terrible, but those are certainly the overriding emotions. But I think it’s ok to call things as they are and not as we wish they’d be – this is what it’s like. The joy, the excitement – there’s plenty of time for that later. Right now it’s just very tenuous, and that’s ok. I was reading a fellow blogger’s birth experience, and she admitted it wasn’t at all this amazing spiritual experience she had hoped for, but that it actually really sucked and wasn’t at all how she wanted it to be. And you know what? I applaud her for saying that, because it’s real. I have no illusions about childbirth. Sure, I’d love to have an “amazing” experience that I’ll always treasure, who wouldn’t? But I accept that it will probably just be painful, long, scary, and probably a little frustrating. It probably won’t go the way I want, and any medical directives will be thrown out the window, and I’ll end up with some bitchy uncompassionate nurse (there seem to be a lot of those in labor wards for some reason). A lot of people who said they’d be there for me probably won’t for a variety of reasons, and I’m sure I’ll question my sanity at undertaking single parenthood at all. I’m sure I’ll be like Meryl Streep in “Heart Burn”, saying, “I don’t want to do it, can’t I get someone else to do it?”
Low expectations. That’s the secret to happiness, I’m convinced of it.
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