Let me preface this post by first saying how immensely grateful we are to reach 34 weeks. Can you feel it? The gratitude, I mean? Good. Because now that that’s out of the way I have some complainin’ to do.
Internets, 34 weeks is the week that it happened. It sort of snuck up on me, and it took me a while to figure out what was going on but last night in the middle of a no-good rotten terrible mood, I realized: I’m kind of done being pregnant.
Yeah.
Remember a few weeks ago, when I was all “I keep waiting for it to get unbearable, but it just keeps getting more awesome!” yeah, I don’t feel that way anymore.
It’s not unbearable by any means but it’s also definitely not getting any more awesome. Not feeling the awesome lately. The awesome has plateaued.
The reasons are nothing exciting, in fact I imagine that they’re fairly typical of a woman in late-stage pregnancy: I feel gigantic and unwieldy. I have constant heartburn. I pee a million times an hour and am going bankrupt from buying toilet paper. I’m tired of counting carbs and timing my meals and I just want to eat what I want god dammit.
I am getting increasingly emotional: I cried while singing along to Oasis Wonderwall because of the line “and I don’t believe that anybody/ feels the way I do /about you now”.
I cried while folding impossibly tiny baby socks into my hospital bag.
I cried when Adam told me a horrific story about a woman he met the other night who had five birds tattooed on her arm. They were chatting and he happened to compliment her on the tattoo, and then she told him that each one of the five sparrows was in memory of one of her miscarriages. (I bawled for about ten minutes after that one.)
Things in the ole uterus are getting a bit cramped so the baby movements have transitioned from me calling Adam over excitedly exclaiming “Oh my god, can you feel that? It’s so cute!” to “Adam your child is trying to forcibly kick its way out of my bellybutton can you DO something, please?”
(What I’m expecting him to do in this situation, I have no idea. I think I just want to remind him that I am carrying his child and said child stretching and rolling around is getting a wee bit painful)
I feel so horrible writing this, because although I’m kind of over being pregnant, I do NOT want this baby out yet. (Oh look at me! Pregnant lady full of contradictions! I’m such an enigma!)
What I mean is that given our situation, I am acutely aware of how valuable each day is. Other women with placenta previa have compared it to feeling like a ticking time bomb, because you can just start bleeding at any point and at this stage in the game that would probably mean an emergency c-section. So while I am getting uncomfortable and restless and a bit tired, I simultaneously wish I could bake this little demon the full 40 weeks. I am so uncomfortable with the idea of it being forced out early – it just seems rude somehow. An unnecessarily abrupt eviction.
But despite all of that, despite how grateful I am for each day that passes and we get closer and closer to full term, the feeling pervades. And it’s not just me! Adam is impatient too but his impatience is because he just really wants to meet his child. He’s now convinced that it’s a girl and he has expressed numerous times over the past few weeks that he’s ready.He wants to be able to hold her and interact with her and put her in little hooded towels after a bath.
I just want to go back to being one person. (With a baby! A healthy, happy, strong baby.)
A large part of me feels guilty even giving voice to these thoughts, because what if I jinx it?What if twenty minutes after I hit “publish”, something happens and then BOOM the baby is delivered tonight? And, given the story of the woman with the 5 sparrows, the five losses, what kind of a dick am I to complain? But I wanted these weekly updates to reflect my honest emotional state, and if that makes me a dick, then 34 weeks was the week I became a dick I guess.
Nothing physical has changed to precipitate this, I’m still sleeping well, I’ve lost a pound or so, and aside from my tripping over a curb last weekend and essentially ripping off the top of my big toe, I feel good.
But it seems like every other day is a doctors appointment, either Nephrologist or Midwife or obstetrician or ultrasound, many of these involve a 2 hour round trip to the city, and they just keep multiplying. It’s gotten to the point where Adam and I are trying to talk our way out of a lot of them, “I mean, do you think we really need to meet the doctor doing the c-section?” he asked last night. And I didn’t even have the energy to argue, I just lay there eating Tums and was like “Whatever. Someone’s got to cut me open. I don’t really care who it is.”
THAT’s where I’m at right now.
So, Past-Madeleine, you were wondering when you would feel done? When that “I wish I could be pregnant forever” feeling would dissipate?
The answer my dear, is 34 weeks.
