I learn that the last month of trimester is not defined by… shall we say, ease. There are pains all over my body, and I’d rather not tell you about the details. Suffice to say that conventional medicine’s responses are neither attractive nor reliable, so I’m trying some alternate therapies. Alternate therapies work slowly. So I am in medium discomfort all the freaking time right now.
Grrrrrr…
Thanks to Becky for making the stick-ons and acting as photographer.
My belly grew a top shelf overnight. All of a sudden, Amelia is pushing up against my stomach, my lungs and my boobs – and as my womb expands, I can feel her movements much more dramatically.
There’s a whole entire human being inside of my body! Can you imagine?
If you have never been pregnant, I bet you’ve never even thought about nursing bras. Well, maybe you have. I’ve never been a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition, but I’ve thought about the Iron Maiden and the rack. I’ve never been incarcerated at Guantanamo, but I’ve thought about waterboarding. So maybe you have thought about them, but I bet you don’t (and would rather not) know just how torturous they are. If the parenthesis is true for you, skip this post and read this hilarious treatise on a 19-year marriage at Derfwad Manor.
My ex-husband the film buff used to call me his Russ Meyer woman, if that gives you an idea of the normal size of my breastimazation area. I discovered through the miracle of Wikipedia that ole Russ used to cast women in the first trimester of pregnancy to make sure their mammaries were maximized.
What is a Russ Meyer woman, you ask?
Mine started growing in the first trimester and have ballooned more and more, as boobies will when their uterus is full – let’s just describe them as bursting with pride. One is told, by all the books and such, that rather than buying a new bra for one’s bigger girls while pregnant, one should buy a nursing bra. This way, you’ll be able to use the garment longer and thus save money and reduce consumerism.
What no one tells you is that the nursing bra is only second to the 50s-era girdle on the list of Cruel Things Women Attach To Their Bodies. This item consists of two layers of fabric, the top your typical cup and the bottom a bizarre fabric boobie frame. The two layers are sure to eventually separate on top, leaving one with a strangely repulsive peek-a-boo cleavage situation. You better hope you’ve graduated to all of your high neckline preggo tops by the time you strap one of these monsters on, because of the queer requirement that a nursing bra must come up to your sternum – especially if you choose a nursing bra with an underwire. Oh, and they itch.
I admit that I hate spending money on undergarments, so it may be that the nursing bras that I have shopped for/unfortunately purchased are so frightful because I bought them at Target. However, I am told that nothing will de-sexualize the knockers quite so efficiently as breastfeeding, and if that is true then the neuterizing of the ta-tas is certain to start from the outside, in.
I need to whine a little:
My pelvis, which is expanding so as to Make Room For Baby, is just killing me. I don’t mind it getting bigger (though honestly I can’t imagine needing wider hips than Nature already gave me), but does it freaking have to hurt all the stupid time? Grsch.
Also, I can’t seem to eat enough. I’ll have lunch and then an hour later I’m starving, so I have a snack of cottage cheese or yogurt (and I’m talking a substantial-sized bowl of either) and 90 minutes later I’m starving again. It’s ridiculous.
OK, now I need to brag:
Charlotte is finishing our Kick-Ass Mural today, and I can’t wait to get home to see the results! We also hired her to paint the whole nursery, which she did on Saturday, and help Tom with some heavy lifting. I’m thinking I need to cut back on the heavy stuff, as my sciatic nerve has been chirping at me. And now all of the furniture we didn’t want is out of the house!
Tom tiled the laundry closet, which required moving the small fridge and stacked washer/dryer out of it. Before and after pics below.
He also plumbed in the portable dishwasher – yes they still make those – to the laundry closet, so now we have a working dishwasher again (when we put a new faucet in the kitchen, the little water hookup thing wouldn’t attach). Hopefully, now that our water system is using LCRA water instead of well water, the dishwasher will work better than it did.
Now our entire kitchen floor is tiled, and we’re all set up to wash diapers and bottles with impunity! All extraneous furniture has been banished from the premises! By the end of the day, the nursery will be completely painted and sporting a Work Of Art especially created for Miss Amelia! Progress, my dear reader, is not to be scoffed at.
We’re set up to do a shitload of work at the house this weekend.
We’ve arranged for a friend to come over and help Tom move a whole bunch of heavy furniture around, and then paint the nursery and paint a mural in the nursery. I don’t want to spoil the theme of the mural, because I want to unveil it to the internet in a grand gesture, but here’s a teaser: our mural will feature a juxtaposition of fantasy and technology. Hmmm? Intruigued?
I’m showing off my belly today, wearing a tight top. I really never do this at work, but today I just figured what the hell. So many maternity tops make me feel like I’m wearing drapes… but anyway.
The kid’s growth spurt persists, and I am invariably hungry every 2 hours on the hour. Luckily I have a friend who’s a Luna Chick, and I have a whole office drawer of Luna Bar samples to get me through those 20 vital minutes between “I’m starving!” and “I’m eating!” I swear I think I’ve gone through two 24 oz. containers of cottage cheese and three 24 oz tubs of nonfat plain yogurt in the last 5 days. I may be the one person keeping the entire nonfat dairy industry afloat in these difficult financial times – everyone be ready to pick up the slack in January!
My friend Becky is part of Team in Training this year, a fundraising group for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. She is raising $4000 for the group this year, and one of her fundraisers with her friend Kerri McLaughlin was to have Kerri’s husband Dave, crack professional photographer, offer photo shoots for $50 per 20-minute session.
Dave’s excellent photography can be found at his blog, but here are some of my favorite shots he did for us:
I guess this is the time – in the sixth month – that your skin really gets started with the serious stretching. Thus, I itch. Not everywhere, but in all the places that are… engorged.
It doesn’t seem to matter how often I moisturize with, or what. I’ve got cocoa butter, shea butter, lanolin oil, regular lotion… all the sassy products I know of to allow my skin to accommodate all this additional blood and the growing body inside of mine. Yet I continue scratching away.
Blech. Dumb old epidermis.
I think it’s interesting how women mostly notice my mid-sized belly whereas men are mostly oblivious. Really, I wear the big tent-like maternity tops from time to time that I think make me look like I’m due (what an odd term, “due,” as if I am a term paper) next week, and men still don’t seem to see me as pregnant.
What brings this to mind is a visit I made yesterday afternoon to an old workplace that I left for my current workplace about 6 months ago. The women all already knew I was knocked up, so it wasn’t truly fair, but two guys that I worked really closely with for over a year completely failed to notice my (to me) bulging belly. Until I made reference to having the kid in December and ran my hand down my stomach, evidently they just assumed I had been drinking a lot of beer?
It’s positively adolescent the way my changing silhouette makes me self-conscious like this. I cut much of my hair off last weekend, too, and the guys also failed to notice that. Perhaps I am behaving like A Big Silly.
