...A Pregnant Pause...
As you might expect, every pregnancy website that one logs onto during the 9-month haul likes to send out weekly email updates with things Good Moms should be doing during that particular week of gestation. So what, pray tell, are the Good Moms doing this week??? Journaling! I've got nothing better to do so...what the heck...I'll be a Good Mom and record my final thoughts on pregnancy because this will, in all likelihood and Please God, be my last blog post before the arrival of my little Sweetsie.
According to the "How to Be a Good Mom" email newsletters, the magic and special moments of pregnancy, infancy, and childhood are lost to the mind-clogging minutia of the every day, so you should record your thoughts and such in the moment, lest they be lost forever. I can see some of you rolling your eyes...you know who you are, you Big Fat Neg Bombs...and I probably would have been one of said Neg Bombs, oh, I don't know...about five or six years ago. But would you like to know something ironic? Of course you would. I can't tell you, in great detail, what my life was like on a day-to-day basis five or six years ago. I was in college. I loved life. I did a lot of fun things. I had a lot of fun friends. The end. Yes, that's right...the annoying Mommy emails are................correct. In the favored words of Keith Olbermann and many before him, "Time marches on," and it has a tendency to reduce all those beautiful life experiences that you swear you'll never forget into a ten-second snapshot in your ever-cluttered mind. It's sad really. I've never truly reconciled myself to the fact that we can't remember a great deal about our own lives. I mean, it's MY life; why can't I summon up small details about every memorable event I've ever experienced at will? It's one of life's cruelest ironies, really.
So...despite the scenester, artsy, college Christy who still lives somewhere deep inside my subconscious and her aversion for crap like this...I'm going to record my thoughts on my first pregnancy.
Let's first get the bad over with, shall we?
You know what has surprised me most about pregnancy and what I'm tired of? Seeing people post on Facebook about how tired they are of seeing things about marriage, babies, and children on Facebook. What's with this negativity!? Newsflash: That's what Facebook is: a place where people post things about their daily lives, and most people tend to grow up and get married and have babies. If you don't like seeing posts about my fetus, unfriend me, please. I've worked hard for this baby; I love this baby, and, by God, I will post forty-five 3D ultrasound pictures on my profile if I feel like it. SO THERE. No one cares about what bar you were in last night or what restaurant you ate at for lunch either, so suck it up and look at my adorable baby.
Now let's move on to the Warm Fuzzies.
If I were to be 100% honest, I would have to say that on a scale of 1-10 of awfulness, with 10 being the worst, most horrific thing ever and 1 being the best, most enjoyable thing ever, pregnancy (well, this one at least) is about a 3....maybe even a 2. Honestly. I've wanted a baby for so long that this has legitimately been kind of a cakewalk. Everyone always tells horror stories about her pregnancy, so I expected to turn into some sub-humanoid zombie woman, but it's been surprisingly smooth sailing.
Do I traipse around the house on Cloud 9 singing songs from Doris Day movies out of sheer joy? Well, no. Pregnancy is hard. You're tired, constipated, irritable, foggy, nauseated, swollen, fat, hungry, you've got to pee 24/7, you have indigestion, you smell everything within a four mile radius, you have to wear clothes you would probably otherwise not even deign to look at, and you can no longer control when and where you fart. But despite all this, you feel special. You're carrying a baby - a human being that you're solely responsible for. On days when I've felt absolutely rotten, all I have to do is feel my baby kick or imagine her sweet little face looking up at me, and I suck it up. This is such a gift that I would be remiss if I took it for granted or felt inconvenienced by it.
I have loved sharing this gift with my family already. My in-laws have a crib in their bedroom, and my mother has purchased her own Vera Bradley diaper bag. I gave Dad onesies with things like, "I Heart Grandpa" on them for his birthday, and he's got them sitting neatly folded on his dresser. Everyone is so excited for this little girl to get here. So what's a few dislocated ribs from the weight of my whale belly compressing my spine? A very small price to pay.
I love feeling my daughter kick and roll, and I smile when she gets the hiccups because it's just so friggin' adorable. I love picturing her in her precious outfits. I look over at the empty baby swing in our living room and picture her snoozing in it in just a few weeks (days?). I take her pink sock monkey and sit in the rocking chair with it, imagining how it will feel to finally hold her. I've organized her drawers and closet about three times already. I've got a playlist ready of songs to feed her to, to dance with her, to calm her down. I talk to her daily. I could go on....but I'll close with this:
The reality of what is and the promise of what will be is just too great to take for granted. Even though I cannot wait to give birth and meet my daughter, I am reminding myself to be patient and appreciate the moment while the moment is here because...the truth is...some of the best moments end up lost eventually.
According to the "How to Be a Good Mom" email newsletters, the magic and special moments of pregnancy, infancy, and childhood are lost to the mind-clogging minutia of the every day, so you should record your thoughts and such in the moment, lest they be lost forever. I can see some of you rolling your eyes...you know who you are, you Big Fat Neg Bombs...and I probably would have been one of said Neg Bombs, oh, I don't know...about five or six years ago. But would you like to know something ironic? Of course you would. I can't tell you, in great detail, what my life was like on a day-to-day basis five or six years ago. I was in college. I loved life. I did a lot of fun things. I had a lot of fun friends. The end. Yes, that's right...the annoying Mommy emails are................correct. In the favored words of Keith Olbermann and many before him, "Time marches on," and it has a tendency to reduce all those beautiful life experiences that you swear you'll never forget into a ten-second snapshot in your ever-cluttered mind. It's sad really. I've never truly reconciled myself to the fact that we can't remember a great deal about our own lives. I mean, it's MY life; why can't I summon up small details about every memorable event I've ever experienced at will? It's one of life's cruelest ironies, really.
So...despite the scenester, artsy, college Christy who still lives somewhere deep inside my subconscious and her aversion for crap like this...I'm going to record my thoughts on my first pregnancy.
Let's first get the bad over with, shall we?
You know what has surprised me most about pregnancy and what I'm tired of? Seeing people post on Facebook about how tired they are of seeing things about marriage, babies, and children on Facebook. What's with this negativity!? Newsflash: That's what Facebook is: a place where people post things about their daily lives, and most people tend to grow up and get married and have babies. If you don't like seeing posts about my fetus, unfriend me, please. I've worked hard for this baby; I love this baby, and, by God, I will post forty-five 3D ultrasound pictures on my profile if I feel like it. SO THERE. No one cares about what bar you were in last night or what restaurant you ate at for lunch either, so suck it up and look at my adorable baby.
Now let's move on to the Warm Fuzzies.
If I were to be 100% honest, I would have to say that on a scale of 1-10 of awfulness, with 10 being the worst, most horrific thing ever and 1 being the best, most enjoyable thing ever, pregnancy (well, this one at least) is about a 3....maybe even a 2. Honestly. I've wanted a baby for so long that this has legitimately been kind of a cakewalk. Everyone always tells horror stories about her pregnancy, so I expected to turn into some sub-humanoid zombie woman, but it's been surprisingly smooth sailing.
Do I traipse around the house on Cloud 9 singing songs from Doris Day movies out of sheer joy? Well, no. Pregnancy is hard. You're tired, constipated, irritable, foggy, nauseated, swollen, fat, hungry, you've got to pee 24/7, you have indigestion, you smell everything within a four mile radius, you have to wear clothes you would probably otherwise not even deign to look at, and you can no longer control when and where you fart. But despite all this, you feel special. You're carrying a baby - a human being that you're solely responsible for. On days when I've felt absolutely rotten, all I have to do is feel my baby kick or imagine her sweet little face looking up at me, and I suck it up. This is such a gift that I would be remiss if I took it for granted or felt inconvenienced by it.
I have loved sharing this gift with my family already. My in-laws have a crib in their bedroom, and my mother has purchased her own Vera Bradley diaper bag. I gave Dad onesies with things like, "I Heart Grandpa" on them for his birthday, and he's got them sitting neatly folded on his dresser. Everyone is so excited for this little girl to get here. So what's a few dislocated ribs from the weight of my whale belly compressing my spine? A very small price to pay.
I love feeling my daughter kick and roll, and I smile when she gets the hiccups because it's just so friggin' adorable. I love picturing her in her precious outfits. I look over at the empty baby swing in our living room and picture her snoozing in it in just a few weeks (days?). I take her pink sock monkey and sit in the rocking chair with it, imagining how it will feel to finally hold her. I've organized her drawers and closet about three times already. I've got a playlist ready of songs to feed her to, to dance with her, to calm her down. I talk to her daily. I could go on....but I'll close with this:
The reality of what is and the promise of what will be is just too great to take for granted. Even though I cannot wait to give birth and meet my daughter, I am reminding myself to be patient and appreciate the moment while the moment is here because...the truth is...some of the best moments end up lost eventually.
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