Sorry to leave ya hanging

I know it's been a little while since my last post. But in my defense, it's been a little bit of a rough week for me. Oh nothing terribly dramatic - I'm just belly aching over here (yes, pun intended). I'm sure in a few months I'll look back at this time as the golden period of my pregnancy. But at the moment, I just feel like complaining!

For starters, ever since about two weeks before I learned I was expecting, my face has been broken out like a teenage McDonald's fry cook. I keep expecting it to pass. Everyone talks about how beautiful you look when you've got a baby on board - the "glow" of pregnancy. Baloney! More like the glow of cheese pizza. Seriously. It's bad.

As if that's not enough, I have recently come to understand that due to a dreadful habitual mistake I have made over the past two years in applying SPF 15 moisturizer every morning, I have developed a darkened area on my face. You see, in applying moisturizer I focused on the cheeks, the eyes, the forehead, the nose and the chin. I tragically overlooked the area just above the lip. So now I am sporting a freckle moustache. Very attractive. Now when I go into the grocery store I imagine people thinking, "Yeah that girl would be cute without all the zits and that moustache." Niiiice.

These complaints may just be vanities, but compouding those are new aches and pains that are starting to develop. The "experts" out there have certain rules about how one should sleep after one's fourth month of pregnancy that are wreaking havoc with my body. Apparently, once you're as far along as me, sleeping on your back is verboten. As the baby grows, you see, its pressure can cut off blood flow, depriving you and he/she/it of oxygen. Depriving your kid of oxygen definitely sounds like a bad thing, but I can't help wonder how the heck kids survived before these revered experts were ruining the sleeping patterns of moms like me. I'm pretty sure no one ever told my mom not to sleep on her back. I'll have to ask her though.

Anyway, since I'm not allowed to sleep on my back, I'm supposed to sleep on my side, preferably my left side because that supposedly maximizes blood flow to the baby. The problem with that is that by about 3 in the morning both of my hips are so sore they just can't take it any more. And my shoulders are ground into the bed, so that both my upper back and my lower back are in total agony. This morning when I extracted my achy body from bed, I had to immediately turn on an hour of a prenatal yoga tape just so I could feel whole again. And it's supposed to get a whole lot worse from here with the aches and pains! But I'm going to work on my configuration of pillows to see if I can rig up a bonafide Pillow System for myself.

The only other thing that has me a little bent out of shape is that even though I keep getting bigger - and lemme tell ya, right now I'm HUUUGE - I'm not gaining any weight. I haven't gained a single pound in 3 weeks. I don't get it. What the heck is in there that's taking up all that room and yet is apparently weightless? Helium? Naturally I'm watching what I eat and trying to make healthy choices. I will even admit to my habit of keeping a daily food pyramid chart with tic marks for each food group. But that's just to make sure I'm hitting all the different nutrients. Believe me, I'm not confining my diet to low-fat, low-calorie, low-carb options. My midwife suggested full fat milk, and I'm gulping it down happily. I indulge in the occasional BLT or hamburger. And yes, I will confess to a few covert runs to The Border. But I'm sure I'm worrying for nothing, and my body is working as it should. And I'm sure the peanut would send me running to the fridge if it wasn't getting what it needed.

Oh yeah, one last development. Arwen's guy friends who have tread before him in the path to fatherhood have all asked him at different times something along the lines of, "So.... has Heather started getting cranky yet?" And up till recently he's been able to sincerely say, "No, in fact I can't remember the last time I've seen so happy and content." We actually had the hubris to think maybe it wouldn't happen to us. Well guess what: that day has arrived. I try to keep the emotions in check and at least to hang on to some shred of rationality, but there have been times when I'm just not the calm, level-headed, open-minded person I'm accustomed to being. Arwen is really sweet. He generally tries to find some way to "fix" what I'm feeling. At least at this point I can be self-aware enough that I can say "I know it doesn't make any sense that I'm crying right now. I know that. But that's just what I have to do. And it's not your fault." So at least I've got that going for me.

So wah wah wah. Poor pregnant lady. Who am I kidding. Even with a few bumps in the road, I am still loving having this peanut on board. Sometimes I catch myself in the mirror and say to myself, "Wow, this is really happening to us!" We are so dang lucky.

I will post a new belly photo very soon.