Just
a few hours before hoards of wonderful people were due to show up at our
house for the baby shower with friends, I was bawling my eyes out. My
friend Lucy who was organising the shower turned up shortly after my
hips had got me stuck in an awkward position and sorted me out (with
Codeine - sadly necessary). I had called for Murray to come help, but
he hadn't heard me as was outside*. I was in pain, exhausted, stressed
and felt helpless, and these feelings were no different than of any
other day last week.
Up
until last week I thought pregnancy was horrible but manageable. Now
it feels as though it's just horrible and I am secretly hoping that this
baby comes early to put an end to it (and is still magically perfectly healthy). It seemed
to happen all at once - I suddenly went from feeling a bit icky, to
super uncomfortable, like someone flipped a switch. Now it's
uncomfortable to stand up (pressure on bladder), to sit down for long
periods (back and hip pain), it’s very painful to lie down (worse than
sitting) and it's getting progressively more difficult to breathe. Due to
the time of year, and needing to use it to lift my (increasing) weight, my right wrist has packed up and is now in a brace. And now when the baby moves it feels even more like there is an alien inside me - I can
feel with my hand what position she's lying in, and although it's kinda
cool, it's outweighed by being mega creepy. It creeped me out so much
that when I felt her turn her foot on Saturday, I cried.
I
now usually sleep in one hour blocks (two if I’m lucky) as I have to
get up to pee that often. And getting into a position where it's
possible for me to sleep is so painful that I now putting off attempting
to sleep until I really have to. Getting into bed and getting onto the
toilet are the two things that make my hips lock up the most, so going to
bed is the most painful part of my day. Attempting to stay in bed is
also hard due to the amount of bathroom trips, so it means that I get up
as soon as I can - sometimes as early as 3am (like when I started
writing this) because it's just too sore to continue trying to sleep, which means I don’t sleep anyway! So now I am this horrible, sleep
deprived, grumpy mess - and I don't even have a baby yet!
This
has been aided by also catching a cold/flu bug thing which hasn’t
helped with the breathing and also means it's not smart to go swimming
(again). Swimming is currently one of my biggest motivators to get out
of the house now that standing up is uncomfortable. It's also the
thing that has been helping my hips and back, and the difference in the
state of my hips is quite evidently linked to how much I get to the
pool. This has been the week of crying every day, of feeling sick and sore, helpless and
overwhelmed.
Despite all good intentions, all my lists and plans, I have achieved very little in the last month. I didn't take into account how reliant I would be on my brain to get things done. Although my brain is slightly better than during the first trimester, it still can't create knitting patterns, format books, sort baby stuff or do anything beyond mundane, every-day tasks (like writing lists...). And despite having many life lessons in this area I am still not very good at asking for help, or trusting other people to help me in ways that don't create more work.
The good thing that happened this week is that I let a few people help me. The clutter in our house due to accumulation of ‘baby things’ (expectedly exacerbated by the baby shower last weekend) has contributed significantly to the crying, grumpy mess. Mum came over on Wednesday and helped me sort it out. We sorted all the clothes into sizes, and put the bigger things into storage (sorted and bagged in wardrobe) and made some shelves and filled them with other stuff. The smaller clothes are in the drawers and being washed in batches (something I can do with no brain) as I feel like it. And Thursday was Anzac Day, so Murray helped me sort out ALL the random stuff in our spare room. We threw out two rubbish sacks full of junk, culled a bunch of random appliances and got ruthless on my art collection (a necessary evil). I couldn't have done those things by myself.
Even though our house is now MORE of a state while we ‘rehome’ a few things from the spare room, I’m feeling more confident that within a week everything will look better than ever. And although I’m sure I’ll still feel like a grumpy, teary, painful heffalump at least in a week’s time, at least I (probably) won’t be sick. The most important things on my list will be done, and I’ll sadly have to let go of the more awesome things that require brain, and focus on more banal things, like re-watching bad 80's movies and marking off the days on my calendar - only 36 sleeps to go until I hit 'my' due date.
*
Murray has asked me to have my cel on me at all times as this isn't the
first time it's happened. Unfortunately when you are stuck in certain
positions even if your phone is nearby, you are unable to grab it. In
this instance my phone was on the charger less than 2 meters from my
hands. In this instance, Murray's phone was inside, so the location of my phone is irrelevant as he didn't have HIS phone.
Despite all good intentions, all my lists and plans, I have achieved very little in the last month. I didn't take into account how reliant I would be on my brain to get things done. Although my brain is slightly better than during the first trimester, it still can't create knitting patterns, format books, sort baby stuff or do anything beyond mundane, every-day tasks (like writing lists...). And despite having many life lessons in this area I am still not very good at asking for help, or trusting other people to help me in ways that don't create more work.
The good thing that happened this week is that I let a few people help me. The clutter in our house due to accumulation of ‘baby things’ (expectedly exacerbated by the baby shower last weekend) has contributed significantly to the crying, grumpy mess. Mum came over on Wednesday and helped me sort it out. We sorted all the clothes into sizes, and put the bigger things into storage (sorted and bagged in wardrobe) and made some shelves and filled them with other stuff. The smaller clothes are in the drawers and being washed in batches (something I can do with no brain) as I feel like it. And Thursday was Anzac Day, so Murray helped me sort out ALL the random stuff in our spare room. We threw out two rubbish sacks full of junk, culled a bunch of random appliances and got ruthless on my art collection (a necessary evil). I couldn't have done those things by myself.
Even though our house is now MORE of a state while we ‘rehome’ a few things from the spare room, I’m feeling more confident that within a week everything will look better than ever. And although I’m sure I’ll still feel like a grumpy, teary, painful heffalump at least in a week’s time, at least I (probably) won’t be sick. The most important things on my list will be done, and I’ll sadly have to let go of the more awesome things that require brain, and focus on more banal things, like re-watching bad 80's movies and marking off the days on my calendar - only 36 sleeps to go until I hit 'my' due date.
