The little things

A friend recently sent me an email using the phrase, "I'm sorry - I suck at life right now." This has been ringing in my mind because lately for me this has been kind of true, for obvious reasons. I feel like all I do is complain. And for that, gentle readers, I apologize. I'm really not as miserable as I sound. Believe it or not I still get out of bed with gusto each day, interact with my child whether I feel like it or not, and take decent care of myself even when it's a pain in the ass (I so often wish I could just not shower or take my iron or keep my teeth clean...but these things all have to happen, so I do them).

But here are some things that are getting super old:

Always feeling like I have a medicine ball made out of cement in my belly. I am just so heavy and uncomfortable all of the time. Sitting is agony, as is standing, lying down, walking, basically everything. How on earth do women with sciatica, back problems, etc, survive this??? Last time I remember a lot of tailbone pain and awful carpal tunnel pain in my wrists. None of that is happening this time - in fact other than an overall sense of "ugh" I don't have any pain per se. Which means I'm really getting off easy.

The constantly plugged up nose can go fuck itself. I blow my nose all day long, and then every night at about 9 PM my nose clogs up completely and I have to attempt to sleep breathing through my mouth, which is not only almost impossible for me but leaves me with a raw, dried out throat, mouth, and lips. This and, again, trying to sleep rotating around my medicine ball of a stomach which at this point only allows for direct side sleeping - no back, no stomach. Ah, good times.

I do believe the baby has now dropped, which brings the advantage of less heartburn (yay) and better ease of breathing...but also brings the unpleasantness of constantly, and I mean constantly, having to pee. It causes tremendous anxiety about being out of the house - I have had several full on accidents of the pee streaming down my legs variety, which makes me want to drink less, which causes all of these health issues - swelling, blood pressure (?), possibly the protein in urine, too. So it's imperative to drink mountains of water right now, but there's a real conflict there when that means constantly needing immediate access to a bathroom, which is difficult when your kid is playing somewhere, and you're always in places with no nearby bathrooms, or driving, or when you do get home you have to climb three flights of stairs and your kid takes a million years to do this and keeps sitting on each step wanting to play, also constantly stopping to fill your water bottle and drink isn't so convenient when in the two seconds it takes to do this your kid has turned on all the burners on the stove, pulled down all your curtain rods, emptied the garbage all over the floor that you now have to get on your hands and knees and pick up, all while simultaneously desperately needing to pee...yeah. This is why I'm none too keen on chugging gallons of water at this point even though I know I absolutely must unless I want to not be allowed to leave my next OB appointment. It's a conundrum.

I am attempting to drink a lot of water, protein load, and eat pretty clean this week in hopes of getting a better checkup on Thursday. It's kind of a science experiment. I didn't go to Krispy Kreme today as much as I so wanted to, which I consider a personal triumph. Sometimes you just have to take pride in the little things.