Fear of commitment.

As I write this I am 25 weeks 3 days pregnant. I weighed myself during the week, I still don’t know if that was a good idea or bad. I never weight myself in normal life, I just try on my skinny day jeans to see if I need to consider eating less. Unfortunately that doesn’t work anymore, those mock me when I try entice them past my knees. Anyway I appear to be 3 lbs up on the result given when searching for ‘weight gain at 25 weeks’ (I know I’m all for accurate, medically sound information). I’m not sure how I feel about those 3lbs – they seem irrelevant compared to the other XXX lbs I’ve gained (no I’m not ready to share with you) however I also feel those 3 lbs will be my nemesis post pregnancy when I try to fit back into my wardrobe, especially because those 3lbs are very likely to turn into XXX lbs (no I’ll never tell).

I actually don’t mind the weight gain or soft feeling of my body from lack of hard core exercise. I still feel sexy and enjoy my rounded stomach but I do see how pregnancy can be tough for people who care more about their physical appearance. It really isn’t a vanity thing I’ve decided, it’s more about confidence and self-identity than about appearing attractive to others. So yes basically I’m saying it’s not about you, it’s about meeee. Anyway there’s my tuppence worth on body image in pregnancy…what do you mean you didn’t ask for it?

The other thing I have realised this week is that I have a fear of commitment. Yes 25 weeks and 3 days pregnant is quite late to realise this however worry not – my fear of commitment is towards baby item shopping. I am in the head melting world of baby buggies, dear Jesus there are too many models and so expensive.  We’re planning to go second hand and so I have signed up for alerts when new travel systems are uploaded. I check my email, find the perfect one at a good price, nod my head, admire the bargain and then close the email. I can’t commit to anything yet. What if the Quinny isn’t as good as the Uppa Baby, better than the Joolz but non match the Bugaboo??  Do you even know what those words mean? For some reason because I had a successful fusion of egg and sperm I’m now meant to. It’s a terrifying and unpredictable world and I am among it without so much as an instruction manual (or bank balance to buy the Stokke which is so very pretty).

Amongst this fear of committing to buggies, baby clothes, nursery colours, drawers and cots I have realised a talent for committing to … blankets. Yes blankets. Possibly the least important item that is needed by a baby, (I mean you could put a towel on baby if you had to), however I have bought a blanket every time I’ve been meaning to buy a useful item on my list. I have blankets in grey, white, grey and white. Some are fluffy some are knitted, some are cute, some trendy. However all of them will fit and I’m almost certain I won’t regret purchasing any.

Blankets are safe, they are my friend, they are the accessory shopping on a day you feel fat. They don’t say anything about my ability to be a mother, they will lie there looking awesome and shan’t care what buggy there are seen in. One day I will drop one of these blankets, someone will pick it up and admire what a nice blanket I have. They will then see the glory of the child it is covering and I am entirely convinced won’t even notice that my buggy is a convenience shopping trolley. I guess what I’m saying is that it isn’t what’s on the inside that matters, but what you dress it up in.

It’s likely I have 4 – 19 more blankets to buy before I commit to any larger investment piece.

It’s all lies, featuring 24 weeks in one short blog post

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.

More gas and a hairy bush

We went to Spain for a week in February, I decided it would be factor 50 weather so packed every light summer item I possessed and no jacket….terrible decision. Turns out February really is still February in Spain, go figure. As well as packing light I decided to lighten up my personal load too. We were meeting a friend whose body fat percentage is less than the Victoria Secrets model at the moment they step on the runway. She’s fit and gorgeous and tight. Considering at 20 weeks I was unfit, passable and soft I decided the least I could do was defuzz so when standing next to her in the bikini (which we obviously didn’t wear – see February above) I didn’t also add spider legs to the list of differences we have.

I am not prudish and would happily walk around naked except for the risk of chilblains and upsetting other people’s lunch HOWEVER it turns out bikini waxing when pregnant is not for the faint hearted. Not to give too much away about the drapery, heavens forbid, but turns out red hair is the thickest of the hairs (wait, did I just give it all away there?). This coupled with me slacking off on my personal styling when bump had cast a shadow to ‘that area’ (it’s a dangerous place to bring a scissors to blind) meant that the beauty therapist had her work cut out.

She was wonderful and did not seem fazed by the task ahead; it was her job she told me. I don’t buy it though….I know she didn’t walk in to beauty school with hopes of one day waxing a pregnant woman’s ungroomed ginger bush, and, if she did, she needs higher hopes or lower hopes but most certainly different hopes.

So the wax; it was definitely more painful than usual and to her credit she was very, very thorough. We talked a lot which was helpful, it distracted the pain somewhat until of course she touched me and I wanted to immediately reverse my decision to have a child. Thankfully I now understand waxing is clearly more painful than childbirth so I’ll be fine. Anyway, the talking was dandy except that as time moved along I was anxious to remain silent in order to let me concentrate on the rather more urgent issue at hand.

Fellow people who have grown a child may sympathise with the slightly increased amount of errr windy pops that the body produces. Mainly these pop right out my delicate mouth which I can furiously apologise for while everyone laughs at the cute pregnant pops. Other times they do not pop out of my mouth but instead find other ways in which to escape free. (Thankfully this is usually when sleeping and my husband kindly does not let me know it has happened for fear of me breaking down in a mortified toddlers crying tantrum.) Quite quickly, while holding my knees to my pregnant and bloated stomach, I had a very real sense of danger to what could happen next.

Have you ever held your knees to your swollen boobs while another woman defuzzed your hootenanny? It’s not fun, it’s not mildly weird, it’s not even bearable. By the time she was finished I had 15 different apologies ready for the inevitable pop off that I was destined to allow escape while she was working. I was sure that holding my legs, talking about a holiday whilst sweating profusely meant that something would have to give and it was surely my digestive muscles.

Time dragged on, as I said she was thorough; I willed her to quit while she was ahead, get out while the going was good, SAVE YOURSELF SWEET GIRL. Eventually the magical words ‘we’re done’ arrived; she was going to step outside while I got dressed. I had done it! Success! I was smooth and still had some dignity left to lose in the delivery room. However friends, I tell you most sincerely I kept those legs up in the air until she was a safe distance away. God only knows how much of the universe I had been gathering during the wax and I was not about to release the lever of my legs to force it all back out while she stood in the room.

Long story short. Bikini wax felt great however every moment of it is seared into my brain forever more. Spain was wonderful, friend was even tighter than the last time I saw her and I spent a week in too little clothes unsuccessfully trying to do pregnant Chrissy Teigen on holidays.