What Pregnancy is via cartoon.

Pregnancy isnt for the mild hearted couple. If you plan on gettin involved in this mess of a game called growing a human with another person, then make sure you like that person ALOT, cause let me tell you...it aint pretty for most of the time. I have cartooned just some of the "beauty" of pregnancy to clarify why its important to love the person you are doing it with....cause if you were just "so so" before...its going to get messy...fast....both literally and metaphorically.

Here we are. Happy couple meet pregnancy.

Pregnancy: " Oh hi there, you two look like a lovely couple, why dont i join you for nine months?

Couple: "sure! then we get to have a baby at the end of it!"

Pregnancy: "Oh sorry, did i forget to mention that you still have to love her through endless days of vomitting?"

Boy: "oh....thats okay..."

Pregnancy: "Oh did i forget to tell you that her belly will become much much larger than a watermelon under her skin?
Boy: "oh...well thats okay! that just means theres a baby in there..."

Pregnancy: "Oh did i mention that that big baby belly is going to become marked up with red and purple lines because im making her grow too fast? "
Boy: "oh....well...those will fade...its all a part of the process..."

Pregnancy: "alas, i may not have told you that i am going to make her extremities swell also. They will probably twice the size, and having her put shoes on will be a really big effort"

Boy: "oh dear....well we can work on elevating them up..."

Pregnancy: " Whoops, also, because of everythign else that has gone on physically to her, she also will now become super emotional and horomonal throughout this whole process...so you may notice she cries more and throws mini tantrums for no reason.."

Boy: " I wish there was something i could do to help..."

Pregnancy: Oooooh, right...and you are going to see her in a very messy, very intimate way when that baby decides to come out...there will be bad words and some images you will wish you hadnt seen"

Boy: "Holy cow."

Pregnancy: " congratulations for making it through....now you get the prize."

Boy: "totally worth it."

So. Its a process. But people keep telling me its a worthwhile one :)

Whoopsies.

Dear Lower Extremities.

Unfortunately I had forgotten about you until just recently. Yes I knew you were there but to be honest, as long as you were getting gme up and out of bed, I didn’t remember I used to maintain you somewhat. So when I looked down last week and saw hair growing its own little forest on my neglected legs I was actually surprised. I also noticed that my skin was tight and dry. This is because I had been focusing so much on making sure my swelling, overstretched, hugely tight tummy was being greased up to prevent stretch marks which turned out to be a huge waste of time.  So I put it on my list of things to do: shave legs. I got into my tiny corner shower and attempted this.  You can imagine how bad that turned out. Since I can barely turn around in this shower, me attempting to lift a leg and then bend to shave it....there was cave man noises and alot of swear words. I got out and sat down for ten minutes to regain both my sanity and my breath.  Epic fail.

So I drew a bath for myself. Sounds nice. Warm water, nice smelling soaps, and a nice relaxing environment for my big pregnant body.   First of all, I don’t fit in this bathtub that well anymore either. I definitely don’t submerge even a little bit. Id actually go as far as to say I  can only submerge like 60% of my body now.  So I settled in, picked up my razor, and went to shave my legs. I now realise that when I attempt to bend over to put shoes on and its impossible so I quit...that its the same motion I make when I would be sitting straight legged and reaching for my calves. Either way, again, it was less that successful. So after LITERALLY 15 minutes of me maneuvering my legs and my hand to half ass shave the forest off my legs, I quit. It wasn’t perfect, ....it wasn’t even adequate, but It felt like a success.

Then moisturizer....well to be honest, at this point was just utterly defeated by this whole lower extremity p rocess so Jake puts lotion on my legs at night time now. Because I can lead against a wall and elevate my leg up. Pathetic I know, but these are the realities of a woman whos belly exceeds the realms of normal body proportions.

I also literally CANNOT breathe lately. I couldn’t breathe WELL before, but now its seriously the hugest effort. I yawn and my diaphragm hits my uterus and I flinch in pain and only get half the yawn out.  Its a sad process.

I also had a fun time last weekend....not. I apparently picked up some sor t of bug and it landed me in the hospital. Apparently vomiting and diarrhea for a prego is super bad news....well thats what my uterus started telling me around 4 am when it started contracting about every 20 minutes.  No shit.  Well actually lots of shit. Hahahaha, TMI I know.  So after I continued to vomit even pedialyte and water aggressively and with serious abdominal pain to the point that I couldn’t catch my breath,  Healthlink and my sister advised a quick trip into the hospital. 

Quick trip. Right. Apparently I was in kind of rough shape. Vital sign wise, heart rate was too high, blood pressure was low and I kept vomiting while they were trying to get some numbers on the watermelon in my tummy. Then those numbers came back not great either, poor little pumpkin had a heart racing way faster than a teenage girl who just met justin beieber.  SO, start the fluid resuscitation. Open IV lines into the arm and push as much volume as possible,  super super super shitty. Plus gravol and continous fetal monitoring, and apparently regular contractions.  Sigh. So I fall asleep and wake up with a fever. I knew what that meant. Fever=madi stays in hospital.  Boo urns.  So 18 hours, 5L of fluid, 3 blood draws, 5 doses of gravol, 10 hours of listening to the babies heart rate, and a very sore IV site and they let me leave.

Needless to say, I was exhausted, like beyond exhausted. I was a walking zombie....a walking very swollen and hole filled zombie mamma.  Its been 3 full days since I have been out and im finally able to do laundry and make myself meals without needing to  nap for 3 hours. Pregnancy makes everything magnified I have learned. But that makes sense I guess .I mean, normally, I could recooperate fine in a day or two, this wasn’t an even match up though. I had a baby growing in me too. So I had only half the toughness I usually do.  Sigh.  Either way though, we all pulled through just fine and I think the only real damage done was the emotional stress on poor Jake.

Now. I am beyond beyond swollen. I wake up and the side of the face ive been sleeping on is so swollen that my eye barely opens and my jaw is sore to move.  Then I get up and my feet and hands explode out .And I pee every  15 minutes now. Because the fluid is starting to come out...but my bladder cant take much more than like 50cc of fluid since the baby is on it...it makes for a challenging day.

Im going to post pictures of my huge feet...and my huge belly.