Prioritizing Pregnancy

I often forget that I’m pregnant. I have a naturally busy mind and throw myself into my work. Right now, while I’m taking a hiatus from active birthwork, my days are spent balancing 18 credits of coursework as I finish my degree, planning curriculums for childbirth education and other classes, writing for pleasure, creating materials and handouts for clients, answering work emails, succumbing to my Nurse Jackie obsession, and painting the baby’s room. (My husband would note here that curiously, my day does not include doing laundry or dishes).

With my days spent constantly working on projects of personal and professional nature, I just… forget that I’m pregnant. I noticed this a few days ago while my stomach growled mildly, and I looked up from my computer to realize that it was 11am. I hadn’t even eaten breakfast yet. This is a problem.

As a doula, one of my biggest messages to pregnant women is to practice good self-care. This is a concept I’ve struggled with personally, even before I was pregnant- but now I simply have no choice: I have to take good care of myself, so I can take the best care of my child. It seems that I’m going to have to literally schedule this time in order to make my pregnancy my top priority.

Once I found out I was pregnant, I became the most important person in the world, because I was carrying the most important person in the world. I kicked myself for not taking vitamins when I knew there was a chance I could get pregnant, I kicked myself for drinking too much wine that week, I kicked myself for not seeing a dentist in an eternity. I vowed to do yoga, which I don’t particularly enjoy sans actual group class, every day in my living room. I would eat the finest meals of the highest quality. I would stay hydrated at all times, get 8 hours of sleep a night, and wake with the sun.

Then the reality of morning sickness kicked in, hard, and all of my wishful thinking went out the window. Yoga? I couldn’t even fathom getting up to go to the bathroom half the time. EAT FOOD? DRINK WATER? Surely you jest. I did get plenty of sleep, but it was most definitely not on my terms, as pregnancy fatigue ruled my world for the first 3 months.

Now at 20 weeks, I find myself wondering if I’m taking this pregnancy for granted. Here I am so crazy blessed with energy and an appetite, and yet 99% of my time is spent in activities that have nothing to do with my pregnancy. When my daughter kicks, I smile and talk to her, and usually glance at the clock as I believe she’s starting to establish a sleep/wake pattern. It’s also a reminder for me to eat. She and I most definitely have an understanding.

She’ll be here before we know it, and as much as I need to spend time working and focusing on school, I do not want to look back at this pregnancy and feel that she and I did not have the chance to fully connect because Mama just didn’t have the time. I’m committing to being there for my daughter when she needs me, and she needs me now. We will only be this close for this very short window of time, and I don’t want to miss a single second!

20 Weeks & A Lesson Learned

Somehow, I am 20 weeks pregnant. That’s 5 whole months. Even though I’m only halfway through pregnancy, I’ve begun “feeling” very pregnant within the past week:

• I now know where my bladder is located, at all times. I know this because I constantly feel like I have to pee. I don’t have to pee- my bladder is simply being pressed on all day, every day.
• Sometimes I find it hard to breathe. Not ever gasping for breath, or anything, just feel a tightness sometimes.
• I feel sore inside. Like my organs are taking a beating. I suppose they are, in a way.
• My daughter is developing a sleep/wake/Enter the Dragon routine.
• I’m tired. And hungry.
• Insomnia has kicked in a few nights a week- why do you think I started this blog? I even made a newsletter for my small business and caught up on some schoolwork. If it didn’t make me so unbelievably exhausted, I’d say mild insomnia is pretty neat. I just pray this does not continue after the baby is born.

When I first found out I was pregnant, 20 weeks seemed like an eternity away. I wondered what I would look like at this point, what pregnancy would feel like. 20 weeks was a definite milestone in my mind, and now that I’ve arrived, I’ve been doing some heavy reflecting on this magical mystery tour of the past few months.

One thing I learned during my miserable first trimester, is that pregnancy is a training guide for parenting. The lessons I’ve been learning will most certainly serve me well in labor, the postpartum, and in motherhood. One of those big lessons is: Take it one day at a time.

Such a simple phrase, and so cliche. Seems easy enough, right? I never fully understood the full magnitude of this concept until I was somewhere near the middle point of my first trimester, drowning in misery.

This is a loose remembrance of my first trimester schedule:

• Monday: 24/7 nausea. Food is the enemy. Water is the enemy. Seltzer is okay, in small amounts.
• Tuesday: Same. Noticing couch is starting to sag on “my” side.
• Wednesday: Same. My bastard husband cooked peppers and onions, throwing me into a tailspin of dry-heaving. Locked myself in our bedroom to get away from the smells.
• Thursday: Same, minus onions and peppers. Starting to become afraid… is this real life? Will everyday be like this, forever? No end in sight. In a very dark place.
• Friday: Same. Not understanding how any woman feels well enough to raise a child. I open the refrigerator door and just cry. I hate food. How does anyone enjoy being pregnant? Puke in the bathtub.
• Saturday: So many tears. And so sick. I am so hungry, so very hungry. But I can’t eat anything. I thought I felt well enough to make toast, but then I smelled the bread toasting, and threw up, and I now I just want to die.

• Sunday: Oh my god… I got out of bed and didn’t immediately have to run to the bathroom and spend 8 minutes heaving up nothing! I think I can tolerate an english muffin. Had a mid-day heaving session, but otherwise feel pretty okay! I can get actual work done today! I’m going to take a shower and have enough energy to actually use soap! This must be the end of the morning sickness… YES, I have reached the end. Ha ha! Oh, I feel so terrible for other women that are sick throughout their ENTIRE pregnancy. I feel so lucky, so blessed… I’m like a BRAND NEW HUMAN BEING! Honey! Let’s order Chinese and watch a MOVIE! Let’s take a walk! Let’s GO somewhere and DO something! I’m never sitting on this couch again, I’m free, I’m freeeeeeeeee

• Monday: 24/7 nausea. Food is the enemy. Water is the enemy. Seltzer is okay, in small amounts.

Oh boy, those first few months were a mind-trip. It took me quite awhile to grasp the concept that just because I had one “good day,” that every day following wasn’t necessarily also going to be “good.” Every time I felt even a smidgen better, my hopes would soar, and I would convince myself that the worst was over, and almost every time, that was just not the case. It took me the entire first trimester to understand that in order to survive anything, I was going to have to take things one day at a time.

And now, looking back through the rosy glasses of hindsight, what a beautiful lesson to learn before our daughter (I’ll just call her … Babby)- what a a beautiful lesson to learn before Babby enters our lives in a very real way. During labor, my doula and my husband will remind me to breathe, one contraction at a time. During the postpartum, we will live one feeding at a time, one changing at a time, one 5-minute sleeping spell at a time. And when we inevitably encounter struggle, or hardship, or grief, we will as a family take things one day at a time. Is there any other way?