La Belly.

It happened today.
Today was the day that it happened to me. August 26.
I always sort of knew it would happen...but i was always hoping against the odds, i would win this one...
The day started out the same...i heaved my belly out of bed with me (it comes everywhere with me these days), and jumped in the shower..(less jump, more awkwardly stepping into).
It was then that the mirror swore at me with my own image.
Im more emotionally damaged than physically, but overall i feel the devastation just the same.
The stretch marks. Right on my belly. Right in the front of it.
There was no lotion good enough to avoid these red angry marks on my poor overstretching skin.
Sigh.
Although, another little surprise was there too.
Linea Negra. That little dark line that grows from your pubic bone to top of your fundus (uterus) is appearing on my big round tummy. Its kind of neat. This line im okay with. Its horomonal and according to my nursing text books is "a positive sign of pregnancy", as if I could NOT know at this point that im with child.
I will take pictures of this, while trying to avoid the nasty red ones to the left of it later on.
THESE photos were taken at 26 weeks, so about two weeks ago, prior to the invasion of menace in the shape of red lines.
Im glad now that we took these. It makes me feel like there was a point that my belly was cool, but i seemed to have missed it....
again, enjoy, and feel good about your none swelling body during these photos..

Big, Fat, Crazy pregnant woman.

So, apparently I have lost my mind.

Well it feels like that anyways.  Im pretty used to being extremely efficient, nursing does that to a girl, you either manage 100 things a minute or you quit work, very sink or swim type of mentality. However, in the past week or so, i have noticed that my brain...well it’s foggy.

I put things down and forget ...not like oh yeah i do that too type deal, like I buy something in store, go to the next store, put the bag down to look at something and walk out without picking up the bag of things i had brought into the store. I left my purse at a restaurant, I left movie tickets in the machine thing that prints them, paid for them and left them there, I left my phone at shoppers on the counter,I had to go back to the grocery store 3 times yesterday to get another ingredient for the dinner i planned that morning and had made a list for, and finally, I got out of the shower today without rinsing the conditioner out of my hair.

Now this sounds like someone whos really distracted maybe, but unfortunately for me, im not.  I actually am more chill these days than most before i was pregnant. This is due to, I now know, the fact that i can remember to dwell on things, and cant remember what it was I used to think about all the time. Its pretty blank up there. Leading to things like having enough focus to listen to radio lyrics to a song about a little boy who wants to be like his dad...and sobbing uncontrollably in traffic. Turns out that logic has gone out the window, and emotions are full fledged in charge of this bus called pregnancy: the third trimester.

Although, its okay now that im so flaky/distracted/have the attention span of a goldfish, because now I look VERY pregnant, this lets me get away with almost anything.  This huge protrusion of  a belly that makes it difficult to roll in any direction or get out a car with any sort of finesse, has a magical power of allowing me to act like a complete weirdo, and people just laugh and say nice things to me. Its super.  Most I will get is a shake of a head, a sympathetic sigh and a pat on the belly. And i can be off to make some other stupid mistake, say something that makes no sense, or forget that i didn’t put a bra on that day. Again, without any repercussions.

Also, my credit card has been hit with the reality of this little peanuts arrival. I figured that since Im on board now, that it should also meet the reality of the little squash in my belly. It was a hard lesson for it to learn, but both me and peanut are SUPER excited about things we have now. Even women who aren’t pregnant, or even don’t want to ever BE pregnant, can get on board with baby clothes shopping. HOW CAN YOU NOT LOVE JEANS MADE FOR A NEWBORN BABY!?!?!

Jake also learned that nesting comes with a price....when he went to get his tab at a pub the other night and found that his credit card was declined....however, once i showed him the fleece winter suit with bear ears...he changed his tune.

Also, something wonderful happened to me last week. My loving friends in Calgary threw me a baby shower. It was the BEST thing about pregnancy so far. They had SO much food, and cupcakes, and pie, and cheeses and beautiful gifts and best of all ALL MY GIRLFRIENDS and love.  It was beautiful. I am surprised i made it through the night without bawling my eyes out like the over emotional fat lady that i am. There was a few times i thought about it...calmed myself down and moved on.  Again, this is proof that pregnancy demands having love of women around you. So far some of my favourite memories of pregnancy so far include women.  Pretty much all of them actually.

Now, i am in the third trimester in..like a week. I am finishing off trimester two, and I must say, its gone pretty well. ..MUCH better than trimester one. I am one of those people that always loved school because i loved being graded, having end and start dates, and knowing when those ends were in sight. SO: 

Trimester one was: March 7^th ish- May 17^th ish

Grade:  C

Although there was significant effort throughout this trimester, I was worked over like none other. I made it through it tooth and nail. It wasn’t ideal. But it was a pass.

Trimester 2: May 20^th ish- August 30^th-ish

Grade: B

Less effort in, but more positive returns out.  Found out sex of baby, narrowed down baby names, bought a crib, and a stroller,  and survived working. Negatively, hips have been bad news bears, slowing down my work efforts, but still none the less, improvement for sure.

Trimester 3: Im expecting big things. Here are the projects for trimester three:

Paint nursery

Set up Nursery

Get fatter

Get the amount of hours needed for EI

Rest before baby comes and make lots of muffins to freeze.

PUSH OUT BABY.

Now, this last project will the trickiest, but i figure that since that will make this entire trimester seem like an A++, since I will have a baby come the end of this trimester...so i will try not to let the birth be a part of of this trimester, it will stand alone for grading.

BIRTH: again. High expectations.  Hard to say how it goes. But im expecting at least an A for effort. And a bottle of expensive wine.

Okay, so theres 9 months laid out. Afterwards I will grade entire pregnancy by averaging.

So far the trend is up, so lets hope that keeps up. However, if i keep forgetting things, trimester three could be significantly hindered by incidents like leaving a bath running and ruining the house. Its all a waiting game.

So back to being pregnant, fat and crazy.

Post Push Party.

So many perspectives on pregnancy, the joys, the flaws, the ups, the downs, the emotional mess and the physical mess, and its always interesting to hear what other people think of their pregnancies and their experiences, especially when some woman tells you” Oh yeah, that happened to me too” deeeep exhale of relief since you accidentally just told her about that time you farted and blamed it on a patient who was close to unconscious to the doctor who obviously smells it.

Its also such a blessing to hear other women say, yeah pregnancy sucks, but its SO worth it once you get to meet your little baby thats been living in there. Side note: that baby literally was living in your belly, it wakes up and goes to sleep, beats around on your organs doing his daily exercises and yawns and gets the hiccups....is this NOT freaking anyone else out? Also, how lame would it be to live in someone’s tummy....i  guess though, that they like it since they don’t know what else is out there.....I’m distracted...i was saying something else.

Oh right, Im looking forward to being able to tell another woman one day, listen lady, its totally worth it....check out how cute my baby is.

Now. Chatting with a friend today, i realised how many things i want to do when this wonderful little thing is out of my body. There’s a few. So i have decided, that post push, i am going to throw myself a “Get it in you cause you can” party and you can all come. This is how the night will look:

I will get dressed up in HEELS. (even though i walk like an idiot in them)

I will wear a dress that wouldn’t have fit over my belly, or would have, but would have looked like I was one of those trashy pregnant women that is pregnant but also trying to pick up a daddy for said soon to come baby. Boobs out and all.

I will start this party late at night, since I will be awake still...since i wont be sharing my body, and be ten times more exhausted because he is using up all the good stuff and leaving me with what I can only assume is cast off vitamins...

I will put out normal books and fun trashy magazines out in the house, because I will no longer need books on how to push a ten pounder out from my special area, or books on what food will get me through the next 12 weeks of said pregnancy...

There will be an array of food such as:

Sushi: all raw mostly.

Fruit: mostly unwashed.

SO MUCH GOAT CHEESE ITS NOT EVEN FUNNY.

Honey to put on anything and everything and its going to be very unpasteurized.

Shark (since apparently I cant eat that, even though I never have, Im going to have it at the party)

Energy Drinks full of caffeine

Coffee

Coffee cake

Coffee beans in chocolate

Cookie dough and other things with raw eggs.

You get the idea.

So if you are pregnant you may not want to come.

Also.

We will be serving ZERO water at this party. It will be only wine, and things that have been soaked in wine.

There will be beer, and champagne and shots. And blended beautiful drinks too, like the ones they couldn’t really recreate virgin, like a bellini...

I also will be handing out Advil at this party. And cold medicine, since i couldn’t have that either.  Advil and a glass of wine is literally all i have wanted for the past 6 weeks of back pain and nursing work...and damn it its going to be at the party.

You all may bring presents, but if they are baby related, they will deferred to a later party, since this party only accepts wine and other forms of alcohol as gifts.

There will no talk of babies, or vaginas or vomiting or smelly gas at this party, it will be strictly gossip, men, movie star romances and all the fun things going on in your lives...even if you don’t have much going on, invent some stories because thats all we have to go on. Invent some summer romance now, or imagine a big  promotion that you COULD get in a few years and pretend its now. We will need some meat for the conversations.

We are going to dance. Hard. Just be prepared, and there will be no 4 lb baby slowing me down this time. The only muscles im going to be stretching out and aching are the ones needed for my  Britney spears moves, and that will be next day.

Once I am thoroughly full of raw meats, soft cheeses, and at least 8 bottles of wine, i will then proceed to sing karaoke, and pass out ON MY STOMACH to sleep. And i wont be up to be even once. Much less 5 times to pee.

Obviously Jake has the wee baby during this time.  Since I think he will be much to young to hear his mothers karaoke talent at that time.

Anyways, i will be sending out invitations to said  party via this website once baby boy lockhart is welcomed into the world and has a bit of some footing. Then its on like donkey kong. Prepare yourselves, because that girl that you used to know that you used to work to keep up with on the drinking end and the karaoke end and the dance floor....shes coming back full force once this party gets kicked off.

Beauty of Baby

For most of this pregnancy, I have found that for the most part, its a tough job, and its hard to not focus on how hard it really can be, especially when you’re just trying to work an everyday 12 job where your blood pressure on a good day is well above average. .. Pregnancy really is a self involved job. Its hard to not be superbly  consumed with your own aches and pains, your own personal fails and little victories in a day to get you through another day to a another month to the day you get to finally meet the little piece of joy that has been making life so difficult for the past nine months.

However, driving home last night from work, aching, and paining over the idea of having to go back to another 12 hour shift in a day or two, where i would again obviously end up in so much pain that even sitting wouldn’t fix ...i started to see the beauty that is pregnancy. Pregnancy, for the pregnant woman, isn’t , DEFINATELY isn’t always beautiful. Its uncomfortable, its strenuous, and it can almost always be exhausting sharing your body with someone else 24/7. However, pregnancy is one of those miraculous things in life that brings out the very, very best in humanity, in the people and the world around you. While you may be suffering through your day, someone somewhere is watching you smiling, thinking about how absolutely wonderful it is that you are pregnant, not like your mom, but like strangers, people who don’t even know you, or who barely know you, are thoroughly and entirely happy and excited for you.  Its a rare and wonderful thing to have people who don’t know you feel joy for you.  That in itself is what got me through the drive home last night, because when i looked back on my day, there were so many leniencies that were handed my way because of the softness people have for a woman growing a baby in her belly. Other nurses were asking what else they could do to make my day easier,  they were doing lifts for me, offering to give me the first break and bending over backwards to make sure that when my stress levels were getting really high, they were at least there to pat me on the back and tell me that they knew how much harder those days can be when you’re pregnant on top of it all. Again, the warmth another woman can give to a pregnant woman, is truly a gift.

My patients were excited to meet me, not because i could give them morphine and tell them what was going on in their broken bodies, but because my belly was obviously in the way of their assessments and that meant they could ask me the exciting question of when the baby was going to be a part of the world we all live in. They were sympathetic to the fact that I was on my feet for 12 hours, and they were almost as excited for the clock to hit 7pm as I was so i could go home and relax  after a long LONG day. Patients that don’t appreciate what a nurse does in her job in a day even the really obnoxious ones, can appreciate the effort that must go into a day like that when you’re pregnant. And they show it by not being jerks, and by saying the thank yous that are often forgotten when you’re sick in the hospital.  And this, is something that I can definitely be grateful to the little papaya in my belly for.

People open doors, and wait for you to waddle up to get there, the girl at the coffee shop asks if you’re okay when sh e sees you wince in pain from sciatica, and the people around you start creating games about your birth and the names for your baby, because to them, this pregnancy is beautiful and amazing and honestly exciting.  And if that isn’t enough to make you appreciate pregnancy then nothing is. To be honest, I  have found that while, yes, feeling the baby moving around in my belly has been pretty surreal and humbling to the magic that is going on in there, the most moved Ive been by my pregnancy is by the reaction and love from complete strangers around me simply because I am pregnant. Seeing that the human race , no matter how bad days can get, can get behind the awesomeness that is a woman literally growing another human inside her, is really the most gratifying part of pregnancy for me. I love seeing the good in people come out, which is why I have always loved the hospital, sick people are always the ones that get their realities in line, appreciate life for what it is, and appreciate the help they get from everyone in every way.  The same is said for pregnancy, no matter how crazy your day is, seeing a pregnant woman walking across a parking lot really levels you out, it brings you back to basics, even though your car got scratched in a parking lot, people can GROW babies inside them.  The bigger picture hits you in the face again.

I told jake the other night that I saw a lady and her husband smiling and pointing out my belly at the restaurant we were at and Jake said “well, Madi, people think its pretty special”. That’s what made me start to notice all the love that is out there for us many often suffering pregnant women.  We may be uncomfortable and sweaty, painful and disorganized, but there’s something pretty special about a lady with a baby in her tummy. And that makes this all just a little more beautiful.

That being said, Im still uncomfortably gassy....so I bet one of those people wouldn’t want to sit in a car with me....even if they do think Im “glowing”.

Worked over body=trophy baby.

I have decided that in my own opinion, women deserve medals for doing what we do. And that is carrying the human race inside our ever huge bellies.

My belly is getting increasingly awkward. And my back is suffering for that same “gift”. SURPRISINGLY 12 hour shifts running off your feet, lifting people off the floors, and off their beds, and off each other, leaning to do dressings that take half an hour a piece and bending over every 45 seconds to pick up something else you and your giant belly have knocked to the floor in a patients room, isn’t actually ideal behaviour for a pregnant woman. The best position is sitting. This is now becoming apparently obvious,  the pain that shoots through my entire lower body when i even attempt to discontinue sitting, is an excruciating, and damning reason to not try to move

In my bed also, is a world that has never been seen before unless you are pregnant and attempting to support the hugeness that is the baby in your belly. I have 4 pillows that cushion my rest...one for my head, one for my arms, one for under my belly and another for between my legs. Needless to say, turning over is a task in its own. Luckily i have training in heavy lifting and turning. Although i bet jake thinks all the grunting is unnecessary.

I also eat like an elephant now. I know the doctor told me not to believe the whole “eating for two “ bit....but its not that i believe it...its that any excuse to have another bowl of cereal or dessert or a second dinner is really all I need. And its helpful that i have Jake beside me, loving my now robust belly telling me i deserve it. ...It could get messy. Post pregnancy boot camp here i come....but for now, im doing this my way.

And then....there’s birth. Now to be fair, I have yet to experience this joy/nightmare. B|ut i have seen it, and i do have friends that have done it. And let me tell you, there is nothing that makes you more pro woman,  more confidant  in your strength as a woman, and more sure of the female awesomeness that makes up you, as birth. The way your body kicks into gear to get a job done, to prove its divine superiority over the penis (sorry men), is truly the most amazing thing ive ever seen, and while in the midst of it i really doubt I will be focusing on the positives of my wicked tough uterus,  I hope that this will truly be the icing on the cake at the end of a very long nine months. Yes, not looking forward to the stretching of the lady bits, but lets be honest, seeing a baby come out of those bits? Pretty effing awesome.

Recovery of it not so much...what with the balloon cushions , the swelling, and the fear of pooping.  But at that point, you have a baby so....im hoping it balances out.

Now. After all this....wheres the glory? Like medal wise?  Wheres the glory?  I guess the baby is ultimately your trophy, you get to carry it around, show it off, and people congratulate you on your successful baking/delivery of said trophy. So that’s okay then.  But seriously, I want to just metaphorically high five every woman who is or has or wants to go through all this.  You deserve it.  Your stomach, your forgotten comfort levels, your back, your hips, your belly, your boobs, your modesty, your sleep cycles, your dignity  (at times), your bladder and your heart TRULY deserve a  huge high five for what they go through to reproduce the fruit of your loins.

Again, this baby better be super cute. Or come out prepared to high five me for real. We both are toughing this out for the next four months...