Picnic By The Motorway

I just told Moata on Twitter that pregnancy is weird. And it is.

Hang on, has this just turned into a pregnancy blog? I mean, the latest three entries (this one included), have been all about being in the family way. Argh, I’m sorry, but being pregnant is a crazy new world that is full of strange things that are way more interesting than my usual day-to-day. Like this evening I discovered a little rash on my belly, and I’m all well that’s worth blogging about!

It isn’t, of course, but my normal sense of logic seems to have taken a leave of absence. Crazy pregnant lady in the house y’all. (See? I would never usually just drop a “y’all” in a blog post. Who am I?)

I won’t go into detail about the rash – but I do want to tell you that it had me googling “pregnant rash on belly”, and you guys, some of the things you find yourself googling when you are pregnant are just downright bizarre. And a word to the wise, think twice before image-searching anything to do with pregnancy.

 

**Note: 31, 400, 000 results. So nice to know there has been many a paranoid pregnant lady before me.

 

Aside from the morning sickness, which I’m not going to complain about again in this particular entry, your body starts doing some really strange stuff when you’re pregnant. I’m not even showing yet, but still I feel like the baby is already pulling rank and calling the shots. This seven centimetre (half a banana!) sergeant major is all “right, I’m in charge now, let’s give you a taste of things to come, time to stir things up!”.

Um, it feels weird to say this, but things are moving around in there. Well think about it, I’m not really any fatter yet, but the baby and all the carry-on it’s swimming around in has been getting bigger week by week. It is taking up the space where other parts of my insides have been residing quite happily for years. So those things are now on the move – upwards it seems. Being aware of my internal organs shifting north to make room for sergeant major is not a normal feeling, not normal at all. I can only imagine it gets worse, and I find it difficult to envisage myself ever getting used to the idea of my body parts relocating. I’ll keep you posted on that one.

I can’t tell you about a lot of the other weird stuff that happens when you are pregnant, because it’s too gross and quite frankly you’re better off not knowing. I am doing you a favour right now.

There’s no reason for me to be oversharing alone here. Please, tell us all about the times your body has given you a bit of a fright and started doing odd things that made you feel like you don’t even know yourself anymore…

Thank you all for saying such nice things about our news, you are all very sweet and I think the world of you.

Joel is taking everything in his stride, meanwhile I am having intermittent freak-outs about the whole thing, but that may just be because I’m growing a human being in my body. I have known for at least 26 years that this is the way life works, but now that it is happening to me I find it kinda crazy. There is a person living inside me. Cripes.

You see we had the scan on Friday, and there on the screen in front of us was the unmistakable image of a little human-shaped thing. Surprise! Up until then I had been thinking of the baby in terms of various sized seeds and small fruit (because that’s what the books and websites seem to like comparing the baby’s development to – seeds and fruit). Seeing that baby shape on the screen, albeit a somewhat grainy black and white version of our baby, has forced me to realise that I am not growing a lime inside me, but a human. Things are starting to hit home.

As well as having mini freak-outs here and there, I’m also feeling really down about this whole morning sickness carry-on. I think these last few days have been particularly hard as I’m now past twelve weeks, and I’d built up in my head that when I hit twelve weeks it would subside. Anyone who has suffered from morning sickness knows that as you move into your second trimester morning sickness is supposed to die down, making way for renewed energy and lust for life. Of course every pregnancy varies and morning sickness tapers off at different stages for different people, but I guess when you’re in the mire of feeling like absolute rubbish you need some hope to hold onto – so that’s what I did, held onto the twelve-week-hope.

I have stuff on this week. Big stuff for work – including the NZ Music Awards on Thursday night. I naively assumed I’d be fine by this stage of my pregnancy, that I’d be all glowy and healthy, but hey guess what! Still sick! No idea how I’m going to cope this week! Pants.

Sorry for being all complainy – I know I’m actually very lucky to have a healthy wee mite, but I hope you can appreciate that I’m just sharing my experience on this journey as it really is, and I’m not going to lie and say I feel wonderful because right now I feel revolting. Besides, I have been feeling crap for six weeks now and haven’t had a chance to moan about it on here until now, so I guess I’m just making up for lost time.

It’s a weird thing because of course I’ve known about the phenomenon that is morning sickness, but until you actually experience it – trust me, you have no idea. I am in awe of every woman who has ever had a baby. Here are some interesting things I’ve learnt about morning sickness over the last six weeks:

• The fridge is a no-go zone. Everything edible pretty much smells like poop.
• If I do not eat something just before going to sleep, I will wake up in the night wanting to rip my stomach out (not the baby, just the stomach)
• If I do not eat something first thing in the morning before getting out of bed my stomach will host a revolt and protest my very existence.
• There is no answer to Joel’s question “what do you feel like for dinner?”
• I am constantly hungry but can barely stomach food. There is a fundamental flaw with this arrangement. Who invented morning sickness anyway?
• Ginger is a great remedy for morning sickness for many people… but not me.
• Anti-nausea acupressure bands, worn like skinny little sweat bands on the wrist,  do very little except scream to everyone at your workplace “I AM PREGNANT” before you had any intention of them knowing.
• Fresh water tastes like stale water
• It doesn’t matter what time of day or night it is, whether I’ve just eaten or just brushed my teeth, my mouth tastes completely disgusting
• Speaking of brushing teeth – doing so too vigorously will secure your face an urgent appointment with toilet bowl
• And toothpaste tastes pants.

Look, honestly I could go on. Things aren’t pretty around our place at the moment. There is a bed in the lounge so I can live out my pitiful existence in front of the telly, there is a collection of dust on every surface like you wouldn’t believe, a huge backlog of other household chores that Joel is doing his level best to keep on top of, and the dog is being neglected (as is any semblance of a beauty routine). General colour of my face and lips? Grey.

Dear God, please take away this morning sickness so I can start enjoying this ride. Thank you. Amen.

PS: Please don’t tell me stories of how your/your sister’s/Sara Tetro’s morning sickness lasted the whole nine months, because those are not the sorts of stories that are going to cheer me up right now.

Right, so here’s the deal. You’ll have noticed I’ve been playing truant from the blog for some time now. Part of the idea of packing in The Girls’ Guide over at Stuff was to alleviate the pressure a bit, because updating three times a week was getting a touch stressful and it was starting to interfere with my ability to feed and bathe myself properly.

When I told you all I would be continuing to blog over here at PBTM, I warned you that you probably wouldn’t hear from me quite as often (because I am the boss of me round these parts) but at least you’d know that any entry I posted would be there because I wanted to write, not because I had to. Still, neither you nor I expected me to fall off the wagon quite as specatcularly as I have lately…

So please now allow me to explain. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to write, it’s more that I really couldn’t bring myself to write. There’s been stuff going on that I haven’t felt comfortable blurting out to the world, and sure, I could have just avoided the topic altogether, but the idea of blabbering on about other stuff when this ONE thing was occupying so much of my brainspace just didn’t sit right. I felt like it would be lying to you a bit.

Oh my, this all sounds very dramatic and serious doesn’t it? Perhaps I should cut to a commercial break so you can go for a wee or grab yourself a cuppa.

Okay, cliffhanger over. The truth is… I’ve been sick. It’s been a kind of sickness like I’ve never known. My energy levels have dropped to an all-time low, I haven’t left the house except to go to work (and even then some days I haven’t even managed that), I’ve made several trips to the doctor’s, spent hours lying awake clutching my stomach and I’ve cried buckets of tears.

You guys. I am pregnant. This is big, right? Wooo! Yay! We’re having a baby! And HOLY SHIT morning sickness sucks big time. Huge time. I-never-thought-it-could-be-this-bad time.

Now as you can imagine, it’s been pretty hard not to share this news with you since we found out at the beginning of September that we were expecting a brand new little person. We were very excited, and then we got really scared by all the nasty statistics, and then I got really sick and that didn’t go away (and still hasn’t I might add), and all that time this teensy wee collection of cells has been at the top of my mind but I haven’t been able to say anything to you about it. Basically, this baby has been ruling my life already and it was just too weird to try and blog about other things.

Plus, the sickness. Oh my. I can’t even tell you what morning (haha, morning, yeah right) sickness does to your will to live, let alone your will to communicate with the outside world. The only reason I have the energy and presence of mind to tippity-tap out this entry right now is because we had the all-important twelve-week scan today and all is looking as it should, so I guess I’m on a bit of a high. Don’t worry, that pesky morning sickness will knock me off my perch again any minute now, I guarantee it.

I can’t promise you I won’t talk a lot about this whole pregnancy malarkey (still cracks me up a bit to be honest) and I’ll probably talk a lot about the actual baby when it comes along too. I don’t think I’ll be able to help it, because it’s kind of a big deal. I’m stoked I can finally share this news with you guys.

It better be cute.