A new benchmark has been set.
The towels at the gym no longer fit around me.
I realized this while walking out of masters on Saturday. My bathing suit also no longer fits me either but I’ll be damned if I buy another swimsuit. I’m wearing it to the end no matter what hangs out. But when they were both hanging out I decided I should wear a bra top under my swimsuit or else risk getting kicked off the masters team.
I have reached 38 weeks of pregnancy. I’m like a baby time bomb right now. I could go off at any moment and until I do – the pressure keeps building, and building, and building until….
Baby bits, placenta and whatever else blows out the hole is all over the place.
The other day I was watching the Tour de France. In an effort to make me happy (read: shut me up), Chris ordered Versus. Turns out we were getting some economy cable package designed for old people. That explains all of the religious and shopping channels. As Versus listed the stats for Levi Leipheimer, I realized that I just might weight more than half the men in the Tour right now. Levi weighs in at 132 pounds. He is 5’7” tall. I weigh in at…I stopped checking. There is no reason to add more insult to late pregnancy.
And…would someone force feed Andy Schleck a bowl of ice cream? I’ll help, I’ll sit on him to hold him down. I think I have bigger biceps than him.
Every time I see someone they keep telling me how much bigger I am. Some guy at masters said:
Every time I see you, you keep getting bigger.
I’ve got to ask: is there a woman out there who actually gets smaller as pregnancy progresses? If so, can I sit on her too? I can imagine at this point there’s not much else to say to me than the obvious (like some woman in the store said the other day – wow, you are SERIOUSLY pregnant to which I thought no…I’m faking) and I hate to point out the obvious to everyone but…
I HAVE A LITTLE MAN IN MY BELLY. He keeps growing, I keep growing. There really is no way around it.
(and if you are/were one of those women who lost weight in the third trimester, best you keep your piehole shut or I’ll force me and my very pregnant friends on you, sit you in a car with us with the windows tightly shut, yeah, no one does gas like a pregnant woman, NO ONE, and according to my husband I’ve never heard your ass bark so much. Coming from a man, that is a huge compliment)
I feel different. All along I’ve felt different but now I feel really, really different. JH told me it is my body preparing for battle. I had 30 minute episode the other day where I saw flashing lights. I wondered if I was getting pre-eclampsia (you will convince yourself you have everything in pregnancy) or simply dying but learned that it’s just a side effect of the extra blood volume. My back hurts – a lot. Sometimes I get strange gripping pains up the entire side of my back. Other times I got sharp stinging pains in my pelvis.
At this point all you can think about is getting the baby out now. Telling yourself that you’ve covered 38 weeks and only have 2 left is not the same as telling yourself you’ve covered 124.4 miles and only have a marathon to go.
It’s still a marathon.
You’ll try anything just to make it end. I could last like this another two weeks, sure, but you get to the point where you just want the next phase to begin. You’re tired of waiting. You don’t know what else to do with yourself. You get desperate and plan your escape. I’ll do anything…
When I find myself looking for answers to the more complex issues in life, I turn to the internet. God bless it. What did we do without it? Wonder? Ask people? Use encyclopedias? Just not know? Anyways, I discovered some natural ways to induce childbirth; walking, jumping jacks, herbal tea, acupuncture, and talking to the baby. Some cultures believe that the baby only arrives when it feels welcome. Well, I’ve been talking to Max all along. Just the other day I had a serious conversation with him:
Come on, Max. Aren’t you bored of being in there? Don’t you want to see the world? There’s better things out here. Don’t you want to come out? Aren’t you tired of being on your head?
I’m sure he could sense my enthusiasm.
Then I read about the one that everyone swears by…sex.
After a few awkward moments of thinking about it (the words carnival act came to mind), it hit me: that is exactly what got me into this mess and exactly what could get me out of it! But a moment later it occurred to me that I might not even be equipped for that.
Haven’t seen that part of my body since week 25.
Monday was another turning point. Enter dull ache in my lower back. All day. You know that ache you get when you’ve run 20 miles? That ache. And then, it started – those gripping pains in my back. Every 10 to 15 minutes lasting over 1 minute.
Instantly, my mind started overworking, thinking this is it. You can’t prepare for this moment until you’re in it. Kind of like a mass swim start. You can simulate it so much in training but when someone is yanking at your feet, attempting to mount you in a wetsuit and pulling at your goggles – you just don’t know how you’ll react.
In that situation, it is best to increase your kick and swim right on top of them, which is what I did at Muncie in 2002 to only later learn that the person I mounted and swam over was my husband.
Some lunatic mounted me during the swim and swam right over me.
Guilty.
But when contracting, you start thinking a million crazy thoughts because there is nothing physically you can do to escape the pain. First thing I thought – I ate lamb chops for dinner. Is that a good enough pre-race dinner? Second thing I thought – if it hurts this bad now, dear god, WHERE is this pain going!?!? Then I thought about Boss. We can’t forget Boss! The other night he went missing until I opened the basement door and a 10 pound whir of fur bolted from the darkness. HOW LONG WAS HE DOWN THERE? Next thing I thought – the house is not clean enough. I wanted to jump up and clean the entire house, top to bottom to make it “good enough” for the baby to arrive. There’s a least 3 dust particles under the couch and the Tupperware needs to be reorganized.
I laid down in bed and it didn’t help. The pain came and went for over an hour. And then, it stopped. I fell asleep and woke up an hour later with more. Then it stopped again.
The next morning, I woke up. Still pregnant. Sigh. Chris greeted me with a rather typical marital good morning:
Leave the garbage cans in the garage.
Why?
They need to be cleaned.
I guess nesting is going around?
One of them is full of fruit flies and the other one has maggots.
OH MY GOD! Did you just say maggots!?! We live in squalor. SQUALOR!
Right then, I decided I had to put myself into high power nesting mode. After breakfast. So I made breakfast. Only to realize that I cooked my oatmeal for 3 minutes with 1 cup of blueberries but no water. Get yourself together, Fedofsky! Find your mind and FOCUS! I opened up my email and found a message from the hospital. Every week they sound out a new message to women having babies there. This one read:
Week 39: Pack Your Bags
I GET THE POINT ALREADY!
My bag is now packed. You could eat off the floor of my pantry. The bathroom cabinets have been wiped out to an impeccable level of cleanliness. The signs are all around me and within two weeks he will be here. I will be ready. I’m going to start sweet talking Max out of my belly once I wash the sheets, bathe the dog, reorganize the linen closet, vacuum the basement. And then tomorrow, if needed, I will do that all over again.
One can never be too prepared.
