Updaterrific.
Well, that was a refreshing little post-NaBloPoMo break, but I am back now, and so hereby present you with what was intended to be a list of updates, but instead seems to be a list of things I have found irksome/disturbing in the time since I last posted:
—Somehow I had always assumed that my becoming attached to the babies as babies would happen when I began to feel secure in my pregnancy. Instead, what has happened is that my new attachment has catapulted me backwards into a state of anxiety and uncertainty not felt since the ultrasound-anticipating days of the early first trimester. After my last post (you know—the gushy one) I spent days worrying about The Evil Eye and wondering whether I ought to take down every entry from this pregnancy in which I dared to sound even moderately content. Then I curled up on the couch Googling preterm labor symptoms and hyperventilating into my hot chocolate. I think part of this is due to the fact that I am no longer as concerned about the babies just up and dropping dead (though don’t worry, I haven’t discounted the possibility entirely!), rather I have transitioned into the part of pregnancy that depends less upon the babies and more upon my body. And my body has displayed a pattern of insubordination and incompetence over the last 28 years that inspires many things (annoyance, despair, fear), none of them confidence. That this transition coincided with my realization that the fetii inside me are my real live actual children is unfortunate, as the combination creates a tortured swirl of paranoia and desire, pitting soft-focus imaginings of the babies alive and well in footed sleepers against dire, gruesome scenarios involving cervical incompetence and bottomless grief. It doesn’t help that after my trip to L&D I was given a list of symptoms to watch for, almost all of which I already had despite everything checking out as normal. So every day I wonder whether the pain I am feeling is the same pain I was feeling the day Everything Turned Out Fine, or different, imminent-delivery-and-demise type pain. And then I stand by the phone debating whether to call the nurses and counting the hours until my peri appointment. Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas!
—I not only watched but enjoyed the movie “Ice Princess” on the Disney Channel.
—After being briefly conquered in the early-ish second trimester, my pregnancy-related nausea and vomiting apparently regrouped, using its time off to grow stronger and more powerful in order to launch a devastating attack beginning just as I turned sixteen weeks. The difference seems to be that I am now sick in the mornings instead of the evenings, and this sickness seems more related to an empty stomach and less related to nausea in general. The other difference is that this new, second trimester sickness laughs in the face of medication: despite returning to my anti-nausea cocktail of 16+ mg Zofran, one Unisom, and a Pepcid, I have started a depressing number of days by regurgitating a bowl of cereal. My hearty breakfasts are a thing of the past, but on the other hand I am no longer queasy at night, so my formerly skimpy dinners have been replaced by vast, protein-heavy meals designed to keep me from being sick the next morning.
—My husband has informed me that we will not be having sex until the babies are born, because it is just “too weird.” Strangely, neither the sound of me vomiting, the sight of me carrying my large bottle of stool softeners from room to room like a security blanket, nor my loud discussion of the escalating breast leakiness has done anything to entice him into changing his mind.
—I seem to have entered precociously into the “large; whiny” stage of my gestational period. Several of my maternity shirts no longer cover my belly satisfactorily, as I discovered at work when I felt a suspicious draft as I walked along the hallway to a meeting. My ligaments ache, and I am still feeling a disturbing amount of pressure, which I have responded to by spending the evening with my hand between my legs, presumably to hold the babies in. At night, my hips go numb from supporting my sleeping bulk. Last night I woke myself up with a loud (and attractive!) snorfling sound to find Scott looking concerned. “I think you’re having trouble breathing,” he said (though I notice he didn’t look particularly ready to resuscitate me). I have developed a hatred of walking, because of the sensation it produces, the sensation of my pelvic girdle groaning under the weight of my midsection in a manner that causes me to fear that it will snap, sending pelvic bone shrapnel flying pointily into the eyes of bystanders. Is it so much to ask to be carried about on a litter all day? Getting up from a sitting position is no cakewalk, either. Also my vagina hurts.
—Last Sunday I had a long, long list of things I wanted to accomplish. It looked like this:
1. Clean kitchen
2. Clean bathroom
3. Put up tree (it is a smallish false tree that more or less requires nothing but being snapped together, plugged in, and draped with a stylish tree skirt)
4. Make CD of Christmas music
5. Decorate apartment
6. Go through boxes in Other Room
7. Study for CLEP
8. Bake
9. Put books on new bookshelves
10. Take bath
11. Sit at kitchen table with cup of hot chocolate and freshly baked cookie and do puzzle while listening to CD of Christmas music
Alas, I managed to complete only three of those items (Make CD of Christmas music, Put up tree, and Put books on new bookshelf), and doing so took me all day, with numerous breaks for goat cheese and olive sandwiches and episodes of Gilmore Girls. Isn’t the second trimester supposed to be all about energy and spryly accomplishing the things you were too unconscious to accomplish in the first trimester and will be too ungainly to accomplish in the third?
—I seem to have run out of money with over a week left until payday. I have no idea how this happened, which I suspect makes me a Bad Mother, because what if this had happened when the babies were here, and they needed…socks, or milk, or extra tiny hats, or whatever babies need, and I couldn’t provide it, and also Scott was killed by a runaway train (never coming back!) and couldn’t pick up the additional expenses? WHAT THEN?
—Yesterday I went to the bathroom and, upon pulling down my underwear, saw a fragment of…something sitting in the crotch, and of course I assumed it was FETAL TISSUE, and started shaking uncontrollably. Imagine my relief to find that it was instead a small piece of Saltine.
—I have been informed that the babies are starting to be able to hear sounds from outside the womb, which I have taken to mean that soon they will respond to bribery and veiled threats. I still haven’t felt them move, you see. So last night I was telling them how in some cultures Baby is a delicacy, and how with two babies—a matched set, if you will—I was in the enviable position of being able to demand a high price. I may have suggested that some noticeable movement would dissuade me from selling them for meat, the production of Baby Oil (produced from the oil-rich glandular tissue of babies who do not listen to their mothers), or into White Slavery. No response as of yet, but I am hopeful.
22 Comments
Well, that 1-11 was an ambitious list even for those of us who aren’t nauseated with two babies in our uteri.
The thing about the Saltine in your underwear…oh my heck, I just laughed until I snorted. Not only is that hilarious, I also admire your chutzpah in being willing to admit that you have crackers in your underpants to the entire internet.
How did you manage to get a Saltine in your underwear? Hahaha! It totally reminds me of something I once found in my underwear, which I should write about some time.
Great update, entertaining as always.
Particularly enjoyed the observations about the effect of science babies + stool softeners + leaky boobies on Fun Times,
J
MY GOD but you are hysterical. I heart you, Alexa.
I am so sorry that the anxiety has returned. AND the nausea. AND your husband has banned himself from your lady parts. Although since your vagina hurts that might not be a horrible turn of events? Is he not even open to alternative methods? Too much information I am asking for I think.
Anyway. I hope this is all a VERY short-lived new stage of your miraculous pregnancy. I remain absolutely convinced on your behalf that you are going to be an amazing, fantastic mom to these twin babies for the rest of your life.
UGH…returned nausea! That just blows! I hope that maybe it’s a fluke and it goes away again. You are such a great, entertaining writer. I just love your posts more and more. Thank you for this!
Yes, thanks for a good laugh! I’m so glad I save you for last tonight! LOVED the saltines.
Hope the nausea abates and your hubby reconsiders about your lonely lady bits. :)
This fear for babies’ health, lack of ability to finish the tasks on your to-do list, fear for providing for babies, and lack of sex. Umm. Well, that continues once the babies are gurgling contentedly in the next room. So, I think you’re doing a great job getting ready for motherhood.
Although, theoretically, sex can improve, one is often so tired (and tired of holding someone) that it seems less appealing. Though one’s husband may dispute this. Not that I’m speaking from personal experience.
Oh, I cannot even tell you how much I am enjoying your blog these days. Hang in there!
Sucks about the nausea returning. I kept crackers by my bed and scarfed a couple before I got out of bed.
Sucks about the “No Sex” order issued by your husband, too. Hopefully he’ll change his mind.
Good luck.
I have to wonder how you managed to get a saltine past your belly and into your underwear, but perhaps that is a story for another day.
I’m sorry you’re back to being worried, and also that you’re back to upchucking. I really hope that this second wave doesn’t last long!
I did advise you against the vaginal insertion of Saltines after the first semester, but obviously someone wasn’t listening!
Too funny!
I’m impressed that you got food all the way down to your underwear. I usually get my food stuck in my bra.
r.e. the breathing, when I was about as far along as you were, my husband one night delicately suggested, “Perhaps you should look into those Breathe Right strips.”
Oh, I am so with you on that first thing. I worry constantly which drives my husband nuts. He asked me when I would stop worrying, and I replied, “You really don’t know how this being a parent thing works, do you?”
Also, thanks for the laughs. I had the same kind of shaky, “something in underwear” freakout last week - it was just a bit of toilet paper. Thank goodness!
How did a cracker get in your underpants? Not that I’m judging you; I’m just curious.
As for having trouble walking, there’s no shame in using those little riding carts when you go to Target.
Do you know yet if you’re having boys, girls or both?
Sorry the nausea has returned. A small bit of assvice: check your breakfast cereal. I, too was feeling better about 16ish weeks, except in the morning, when I invariably threw up an hour or so after breakfast. Apparently iron and dairy at the same time can make you nauseous, so milk over iron-fortified breakfast cereal is not a good combination. Once I switched to a cereal without extra iron things improved dramatically
Yes, just like candlesticks, a baby without a matching partner calls for a much lower price point :)
You poor, poor darling. I spent my last pregnancy literally prostrate with fear of, well, EVERYTHING. I remember it so vividly that I am not sure that even if I could have another baby, that I would.
I can’t handle all that stress.
So I feel you, dear, I so feel you.
Although you make light of your symptoms for our amusement, I still feel for you. I do hope it gets better for you very soon. I think it’s pretty amazing when women carry more than one baby in the womb.
From this point on, you will never be as productive as you were previously. If you can come to terms with that fact now, life will be less stressful.
Sometime during my third trimester, sex got to be too weird for my husband also. He could only imagine bumping heads with the baby and it freaked him out.
Echoing the sentiment of finding even greater delight in your blog these days! Two little nuggets, feel free to toss them aside like errant bits of cracker in your underwear - drinking anything with meals (Which I think makes soup and cereal sort of a meal with a drink) has never been accepted by my pregnant stomach, second I thought it was hooey, but something by the bed, Fig Newtons, crackers, whatever, do help, if only to remind you that “Hey, what the hell, I don’t have to get out of bed yet, there’s food right her.”
Sex is weird…starts to seem like the cat or dog is in bed with you.