When the decision is no longer yours…

Pregnancy for the most part is out of your control. You can do the numbers and make sure you get in some “special” time when you’re ovulating, and you can do all the exercises to keep you fit and strong, and you can research birth options and chose what you’d prefer. But at no stage can you control  if you’re going to fall pregnant, or prevent many pregnancy complications by staying fit, or ensure that the birth plan you’ve chosen will go according to plan. I guess there’s not much we can control, just hope things go the way we’ve planned.

Being the control freak I am, I like to have a plan for things, map things out if you will. So having a baby a year earlier than expected, being told it’s a girl instead of a boy (I thought I could just place an order?!) and then being told that she’ll most probably have to come out the sun roof, instead of the all natural route I had planned, has finally made me realise that I have no say! I’m not sure what made me think I had a say in the first place?! When I look back at all the defining moments in my life, I can honestly say that I didn’t choose many of them, or the choice I made was slightly different.

This realisation gives me more hope than you can imagine! I’ll admit, having my plans tossed aside definitely causes an increase in heart rate and minor perspiration, but on closer inspection and a little meditation, I realise that the plan that is unfolding is going to be so much better than the plan I had made myself. No, it’s not what I had wanted, and yes, having a caesarean isn’t my first choice, but I know it’s all here to teach me something. There is a plan at work here so much greater than my own, I just have to allow it to be, and welcome it! Maybe it’s a little pay back for all the opinionated things I had to say about caesareans before, or maybe it’s just teaching me to let go. But whatever it is, I know I am more than blessed to have grown a perfect, beautiful, healthy baby inside of me. Whatever else happens, that was the best decision anyone could have made!

The Hippo infested waters of Greenpoint

I really have been slack with writing blog posts recently! Work and deadlines seem to have run away with me and I’ve been neglecting the things I should be making time for.

Much has changed since my last post. As I write this, I’ve got my beautiful big baby bouncing away on my bladder (that hasn’t changed!), but her size definitely has, as has my exercise routine. No longer do I prance my way down the promenade in the mornings, instead, I bob up and down looking increasingly like a hippopotamus with the grannies of Greenpoint. There is even occasional grunting, leading you to believe that you could very well be on Safari in the middle of Africa! Quite a change from the sea view and fresh air, but it does give some relief to my crushed organs and distended pelvic floor muscles!

It’s not all bad. Working out with people over 60 makes me feel positively radiant with my ballooning mid rift and buoyant breasts! Just the ego boost I needed when I feel like a sack of potatoes the rest of the day. Add to the mix the extreme heat Cape Town has been having the past few months and you could say I’ve felt like a boiled bag of soggy, salty potatoes. Yummy! But this swimming thing really does have its merits, least of which is the fact that I feel fit, healthy and beautiful! Need I have anymore reasons to carry on?!

Nesting… the job of a bird or a human?!

I was under the misguided impression that birds made nests to lay their eggs. I am now finding out first hand however, that female humans too, make nests. Not to lay their eggs, but to lay their newly “hatched” babies. I laughed when I first heard tales of how women ran around cleaning the house and “getting it ready” for their almost new born. I’m not laughing now!

For the past few weeks, my mind has been completely occupied with what we ought to be decorating our Sprogs room with. What furniture we should be getting, what pram we should be getting, how much money we should be spending… it’s insane! If I had a full time job (like most women do) I think I would be the most unproductive person in the company!.. OK, except for maybe the guy in the corner who spends all his time surfing for porn and hiding his monitor from view! I just feel like I have no focus, and spend more time daydreaming than I do going to the loo (which is often)!!

I thought the idea of women making a “nest” would only kick into full swing once popping was imminent, but no sir! Sitting with the last trimester on my door step, I’m finding that until I have filled this urge to beautify and clean for my unborn baby, I’m not going to get anything productive done at all. So off to the shops I think to buy the necessary gear, so I can start to focus my mind on more important matters, like making money to support her once she’s here!

Peeeeeee… I need to pee!!!

Whilst running along the promenade the other morning, enjoying the beautiful sunrise, listening to the sea in one ear and some punk-rock in the other, the urgency of needing the bathroom began increasing with every leap and bound. Now this is normal, and has been going on for some time, but ever since Sproggie started gaining size at a rate of knots, she has taken to bouncing with more and more force on “her trampoline”… aka, my bladder!

The doctor told us at our last scan that she was about as low as she could possibly be, perched ever so comfortably on my straining bladder. Perfectly happy the doc assured us… but he was definitely taking her comfort level into consideration, not her mothers! Going to the loo every hour isn’t so bad, when you’re near one! But when running gleefully next to the sea, the continuous somersaults and round house kicks she’s performing on her gym apparatus, puts me in a bit of a predicament. Do I stop and squat behind a parked car or just let the little bit of fluid since the previous bathroom excursion trickle down my leg and blend in with my “once white before sneaky blue undies infiltrated the wash” socks?! Quite a quandary! I can assure you the later option will be avoided at all costs, but I am foreseeing the future here when I say that one day very soon there isn’t going to be much I can do about it!

On the particular day in question, I had to incorporate very many walk breaks into my normal exercise routine, thus avoiding any embarrassment, but causing Sprog to enjoy her daily bounce class slightly less. I’ll have to make it up to her by getting her a proper trampoline one day, one that doesn’t cause her mother to need to pee every few steps! Until that is a possibility however, I think my runs are going to rapidly turn into strolls with minimal bounce in the step!

Premature panic!… or on schedule!

One might be inclined to think that worrying about the birth of your baby at 24 weeks is premature, but I disagree! Being in the 25th week myself, I can tell you quite categorically that it is not too soon! I’m not entirely sure what brought about this panic, but recently I’ve just found myself shell shocked every time I see a picture of a mother after giving birth or a new born baby still covered in vernix. In fact, anything related to the act of giving birth at all seems to throw me over the edge. I end up staring in wonder and asking myself whether I’ll be able to “perform” when my time comes. Will I freeze up and cause Sprog to go into distress because I can’t relax? Will I get half way there and decide I can’t do it any more? Will I be in too much pain to remember what to do? It seems bazaar, but these are my worries! Not entirely groundless, but definitely spiced up to a more flavoursome level than they should be.

Why is it that women who have never had babies, thrive on reminding women who are pregnant, just how painful it’s going to be to deliver?! Like they think pregnant women are suddenly left brainless and unable to discern their head from their toes. I mean why would a pregnant women be aware of something like that?! And to be reminded regularly, how thoughtful!

It would just be nice if instead of spreading words of fear and dread, people encouraged women who wanted to give birth naturally and either shut up, or said something helpful! Most people don’t! Instead, they pick up the chili paste and add a little more heat to the already over spiced minds of women who are clearly too far in to turn back now!

Working Moms

Unfortunately for me, the timing of our little Sprog was somewhat off. We hadn’t exactly planned it, and it happened to arrive slap bang in the middle of my search for a new job! Now this wouldn’t have been so catastrophic if I was in a job at the time, but I wasn’t. I was, what’s the PC term?.. a Domestic Engineer! Not that I have anything against being at home and keeping the house in tip top shape, I enjoy it, we could just use the extra income. I now find myself in the predicament of not being able to start a new job in my current condition, not because there is anything wrong with me, simply because starting a new job for a few months and then packing it in for my ever increasing waistline isn’t exactly going to attract a lot of attention in the job market.

This leaves me at home during the day while my husband goes off to bring home the bacon. A position many women wish they were in, but take it from me, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be! Besides the guilt of knowing you’re not contributing financially, you try and fill as much of your day as possible to make sure you’re doing all you can at home. This leaves you far more exhausted than you would be otherwise and always trying to justify how you spent your day in a constructive manner! Can you say emotionally and physically drained?!

I’ve spent countless hours trying to think up solutions on how to get around this quandary. What could I possibly start now that wouldn’t fall apart once our Sprog arrives and I need the first few months to feed, clean and sleep, in an ongoing cycle? I have nothing against mothers who want to return to a full time job after 3 months, but I always promised myself that I wouldn’t put work before my children because I saw how it pulled apart so many other families. This said, I do still want to work. I want to feel like I’m contributing. And my husband wants the same thing from me. Although it’s unconventional, he’d like us to co-parent, in the sense that we both work half days and spend the alternating halves looking after Sprog. An idea I resisted initially, more out of fear for its being different than anything else I think, but now I embrace the idea wholeheartedly. It just leaves me in the pickle of sorting out what exactly I’m going to do to earn a decent income for half a day! I guess writing up and ruling out different options is all I can do until something jumps out at me as a viable option! I just wish it was a little easier to come by. Where are fairy godmothers these days?!

Prams… Prams… Prams…

Being 23 weeks into this and getting astronomically more excited everyday, we decided that it’s time for us to start choosing all Sprog’s goodies! Our first problem arose when we realised that choosing anything colour based would be a problem considering the doctor is still flip flopping between whether it’s a girl or a boy! But never the less, we were undeterred, and set off to select the big purchases like cots, drawers and PRAMS!! We figured it’s never too soon to be prepared for such a special event and we’d rather walk around shops now while I’m still able to carry myself like a relatively normal human being, instead of a waddling porpoise.

We began this adventure into the children’s department with glee, expecting to either love or hate the prams on offer and therefore know instinctively which one was the best to go for. How wrong we were! After looking in roughly 5 different shops (and returning to some more than once), we still didn’t have a clue. They ranged in price from about R3000 to R10 000 and all came with different gadgets and ways of folding and packing and carrying and pushing… it was exhausting! There was choice, but nothing jumped out at me as wonderful. Back to the drawing board!

Countless hours of computer research later (because walking around the shops is too tiring on my pansy feet!) and a couple of days rest in between, and I felt ready to re-look at the pram story. Off to the shops, again, but this time we were able to crack the list down to 4 pack favourites. Finally! We have our leaders. The only problem is that one of the leaders is currently unavailable, so other than looking at pretty pictures on-line, we still haven’t felt it or seen how it actually operates. Gosh!

I always assumed choosing these things would be fun and easy, a walk in the… well, shops! How I wish we had a fairy godmother to tell us what the best thing to buy is, what we’re actually going to need and what will be a complete waste of money! Give me a year and I’ll be that fairy godmother. Until then, hacking in the dark it is!

Already sleep deprived and no baby yet!

As if the thought of having little to no sleep in 4 months time isn’t enough… I’m already loosing sleep!

Months 1 through 5 have been sprinkled with the odd bathroom visit, oh, say on average 3 times a night, and approximately every hour during the day! And now months 3 through 5 have been fraught with the aggravatingly urgent need to move my legs when I’m tired, or as is the latest case, when I’m trying to sleep! You can imagine this somewhat hinders the ability to obtain a good solid night’s sleep!

If I was alone in bed it wouldn’t be so bad, I could handle the irritation, but my poor sleep deprived husband, after countless bathroom escapades of mine now has to put up with incessant leg twitching. Now I know what you’re thinking, in the greater scheme of things this isn’t very tough going for a pregnant lady, other people have it a lot worse, and I agree with you, but it’s still disconcerting that in the last few months of peace and quiet, I am sabotaging our last nights of rest with stupid leg antics! …(Restless leg syndrome for those who are actually interested).

Apparently this is one of those things which just seems to occur in pregnant women, so at least now I can say I haven’t had it completely easy (so we can slightly adjust the previous post)! I do think however, that this is the body’s way of getting us pregnant women ready for sleepless nights in our near future. The 2 to 3 hourly wake up calls for the first few months are similarly spaced to my bathroom visits. I somehow don’t think this is a coincidence. Someone planned this out very well indeed!

Keeping Healthy (and counting my blessings!)

While bending into Upward Facing Dog during my yoga class this morning, it struck me how lucky I am that I am still able to participate in all of my pre-pregnancy exercise routines. I must admit, I am by no means the fittest girl in Cape Town, but I do like to raise the old heart rate and get these muscles working (OK, not such an old heart! It just feels like it sometimes). I worried that once I was a few months pregnant I wouldn’t be able to bend and stretch and hold any yoga poses, but I’ve found that so far that’s not the case at all! Sure, some things require a bit more energy than I have, or more flexibility in the torso than my Sprog is willing to hand over, but all in all I’m feeling pretty good.

In fact, I was discussing with my husband this week the fact that I, as yet, haven’t fallen victim to the many trials and tribulations that face pregnant women on a daily basis. My bowels are working as well as ever, my muscles are strong and supple, and I have yet to complain about reflux, aside from the one incident where I decided to go gardening and hunch of a Petunia pot straight after lunch! Needless to say it was the wrong position to assume after devouring a stack of tuna biscuits! Now, I might just be speaking too soon, so we’ll have to wait and see how the rest of the pregnancy plays out, but so far I’m going to consider myself extremely lucky that I am fit and healthy, and attribute my (so far) easy pregnancy to my good state of health. (I may come crawling back in a month or two and rethink this last post, but in the mean time I’m going to keep my chin up and keep thanking those who deal the cards!)

I felt her!!

I must admit, until now, it has been somewhat hard to imagine that there was a little life growing away inside me. I have thought I’ve felt little kicks, but weren’t sure if it was my last meal gurgling its way through me, or if it was a pocket of gas working its way to the door. But after sitting down this morning and taking a quiet moment, the gentle stomach flips, or bumps into the wall, were unmistakable! I felt her!!

Now, not only can i look at the scan and marvel over how that is inside me, but i can feel the gentle squirming and really know she is there. It’s suddenly becoming so real!