God I’m useless at blogging BUT I think I am going to get
better so I wanted to do a quick update, a recap if you will, and bring everyone
up to date on me, my pregnancy and the lies that are told.
I will be 24 weeks tomorrow which I thought was 6 months but
now I think that 6 months is 25 weeks. It’s all very confusing and yet it
probably isn’t but math was never my strong subject. We had our big scan (the
scan is the same size as a regular scan however I feel I must use the
terminology that has been shared with me) at 22 weeks.
Scans still scare me since we found out about our
miscarriage during our first scan, however this time the big difference was
that baby had been kicking and somersaulting for a couple of weeks and so I
knew it was alive. Of course I didn’t know if everything was ok and I had a
very quiet voice of fear accompany me on the day. The sonographer was lovely,
she took us through each part of our gorgeous baby and I gasped every 4 seconds
including when we saw the kidneys which truly are just grey blobs on a screen. BUT
THEY ARE OUR BABIES GREY BLOBS. She let us hear the heart beat and persevered
to get a profile pic when it seemed inevitable that baby would not move it’s gorgeous
hand from its perfect face.
The scan finished with her telling us that everything looked
normal. Isn’t that just the most wonderful word when looking at a scan of your
baby? Normal! Ahh bliss. I let out a deep sigh of relief and then read about
counting movements and immediately found something new to worry about!
I’m feeling good these days. I’m not as tired, not as bloated,
not as nauseous and not as worried. However as the pregnancy progresses I have
encountered a number of lies that have been sold me to by this maternity world,
ones that I would like debunk now.
The lies, myths & inconsistencies
The 12 weeks myth
–such were the promises of wellbeing at the 12 week mark that I woke up on the
morning of it ready to start marathon training. I was sold tales of ‘bursts of
energy’,’ no more sickness’, ‘easing of symptoms’. Hurrah I thought, life will be
back to normal. I will stay up late and watch movies. I will high five people
on the street and drag a comb through my hair looking into the mirror. Then my
old foe, 2 o’clock, arrived on day 1 of week 13 and the feeling returned. I was
miserable, I was tired and I was bloated. How
could this be I cried? They promised
I lamented. THEY LIED. It took until week 16 to start to feel better, week 18
to really feel better. Screw you week 12; you were but a mirage in a dry desert
of despair.
You won’t even miss
alcohol – oh how you make me laugh. I remember speaking to friends about
how to survive without a weekend glass of wine, ‘you don’t even miss it’ I was
told. THEY LIED. Sometimes, when I’m all alone, I sit and think of the
condensation on a bottle of chilled New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. I hear the
sounds of the cap opening, or the pop of the cork, and the glug of the liquid as
it pours into the glass. I feel the glass between my fingers and the first rush
of flavour as it hits. And then I realise the best I can hope for is a non-alcoholic
Erdinger which is mostly head or a glass of orange juice whose only winning quality
is that it isn’t water. I miss wine every damn day.
You’re gorgeous –
look I’m not saying you’re not gorgeous but it takes many months for that bump
to develop and until then you will be obsessed with trying to round off
whatever fat has been deposited on your stomach. My bump is getting there now
at 24 weeks, until this point it looked kinda fat, as did my bum, my love
handles and my arms. I only recently passed the milestone of having my bump
bigger than my bum.
Choose a healthy
diet- personally I could not choose
any diet. For the first 16 weeks my appetite was such that it went from
ravenous and needing to eat all the carbs, to ravenous and not being able to
deal with life let alone eating. When you are tired, bloated, emotional and
need to eat every 2 hours it’s hard to keep going for the carrot sticks. One
of my snacks was always fruit or veg but the one 2 hours later and 2 hours
before was most definitely carbs. Your body is no longer your own and you must
learn to feed the animal (albeit a really cute cuddly one) inside.
Body confidence is
not technically yours either – so I am curvy, always have been and will be
etc. I have days I feel crap but usually I’m pretty confident. Pregnancy has
been interesting…I really promised myself I would not look at skinny pregnant women and wish I was them…celebs included…and I kept that promise right until I
looked at a skinny pregnant woman and wished I was them. Again most days I
feel good and am really embracing my belly, however I do feel different. I have
given my body to a greater purpose and it isn’t as easy as I haughtily thought
it would be.
Babies don’t come
cheap – I feel like I’m back in the
world of wedding planning except this time I’m only getting bigger and the
party I have to look forward to involves sleep deprivation, vomit and must be
tolerated alcohol free (see alcohol point above) Everything is expensive AND
even if, like me, you are anti-establishment and plan to go second hand e’erythang
you will be terrified of not buying new just incase something happens, and your
recycled buggy flops in on itself in the middle of the sanitary towel aisle in
Tesco. The point is when you add baby or maternity to a product the price is
ridiculous yet you will feel the shame of not being able to afford the best
even though you have fought against that feeling your whole life.
Needless to say pregnancy is also wonderful and joyous etc etc but watch out for those sneaky lies and the sense of shame that they can create.
I may add to this list as they occur to me. I shall be the
debunker of myths, the remover of hope, the renewer of misery. Or something
like that.
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