The week I lost my belly button
Last week I watched as my belly button slowly disappeared, so please indulge me while I complain about it.
This pregnancy feels so different from Nathan’s.
With Nathan I was pregnant for the first time, had no expectations, and was also in the big Christmas production that is The Christmas Revels for the first time (because that was good planning…) so I just sort of muddled / wandered my way through / enjoyed both. Aside from bouts of extreme nausea that came and went in the first trimester (along with the inability to even think about moving vehicles without being sick) and a few episodes of acid reflux that felt like a heart attack, my memory is that it all went fairly smoothly. At least until it stopped being a pregnancy and became preterm labor and birth. Nathan wasn’t a big mover, I had a few maternity clothes, but I didn’t really have to deal with the realities of my changing shape until the second week of shows, about 22 weeks in, when we started having to adjust my costume each night to accommodate a growing belly. Somewhere in those late 20s we went skiing, and it it wasn’t until I hit 6 months, 28 weeks, that I got offered a seat on the T. And then at 29 weeks Nathan was born.
I tried not to have expectation this time around, but I did sort of assume my body would follow the same schedule and end up the same shape (and then some, since, you know, I’ve got an extra 11 weeks of pregnancy and growing this time), but no. This is turning out to be a much more medicated, much more body / clothes challenging experience.
Prenatal vitamins are a given, but real, ongoing, please give me a pill to make it stop, heartburn? And the daily sinus pain management? We’re up to five pills a day. Ridiculous! And now we’re 4 weeks into progesterone shots, which aren’t great fun, but at least we sort of knew would be part of the “high risk” pregnancy package. Sigh. The wonders of modern medicine meet the low key, nobody panic world of midwifery that we’ve been trying to stay in.
But I think I could handle the meds and lack of energy and overall, this is not quite what I expected from my body, of it all if only I could figure out how to dress myself. Getting dressed in the morning has been one of the most frustrating parts of this pregnancy so far.
For a number of reasons, I held off sharing the news at work until I was 4 + months pregnant, which meant 5 days a week, getting dressed in the morning was focused solely around trying to not look pregnant. Which should not have been so hard! I mean, who’s really showing that early? Well, I guess second time moms or those of us with lame-o abs that gave up as soon as the kid started growing. Tim went from telling me that “that looks great” or “maybe don’t wear stripes” to “you just look like you’ve put on a bit of weight” and in the end we were joking about my “late night snacking habit” - I swear it was taking up to an hour to get dressed in the morning, but maybe it only felt that way because of the half dozen failed outfits on the bed.
Sharing the news and feeling like I could look pregnant 24/7 should have been the answer to all my getting dressed problem, but no. All of a sudden the shirts I’d been putting off wearing - because they made me look pregnant - and was excited to pull out again no longer fit. My own pants, even with those stretchy pregnancy band things, no longer fit. But my maternity clothes were still too big. UGH. Getting dressed did not get easier. The complaining about getting dressed did not end. (Just ask Tim.)
I have this round pregnant body (which means the sides of my belly feel stretched and sore - also new and unexpected and worthy of a complaint) that I just don’t know how to dress. But at least the maternity clothes are, in the last week or so, starting to fit well and I have parents who, to save Tim’s sanity perhaps?, have spent lots of time with Nathan in the past two weeks so that I can (among other things) get a handle on my clothes and back to getting dressed in a reasonable amount of time. And the weather’s getting nicer, which makes me hopeful that somehow, as the weather becomes easier on us, getting dressed will also become easier (just don’t remind me that I’ll keep getting bigger…or about summer heat). This morning I had an outfit together in a matter of minutes. And then I got breakfast on my pants. But we’re making progress!
Okay, that’s the end of my complaining. If I need to complain again I’ll just share what I’ve started saying to Tim when I’m grumpy - “Complain, complain, complain; I’m sure I have something to complain about.”