Rant of a Beached Whale

This is what I feel like when I lie in bed these days at 32 weeks.

It is increasingly hard to find a comfortable position to sleep in where I do not feel the weight of Gaby and my uterus suffocating me or causing backaches.

I had a rather sleepless night last night with both Lionel and Gaby kneeing me through the night. And I believe Gaby broke her first hicupping record. Her hicupping spasms at 3am lasted almost a good 10 minutes! So by the time she was done, I was wide awake.

While Lionel cannot wait to manufacture number 2, I need a break from this whole labour of  childbearing. The thing about pregnancy, as I have come to realised, is that it really eats a whole year of your physical freedom away. Of course there is the lifetime of parenthood, but at least physically, I am so tightly bound to this little creature and the societal expectations of what I should and what I cannot do while with child.

First begins the vulnerable first trimester where the chances of miscarriage are extremely high and I am obliged to really take care of myself. No fitness classes or massage spas would take you in before your first trimester is over. And do not forget morning sickness, bloatedness, nausea, reactions to strong smells -- and hell, not automatically being able to justify the paunch-like bulk just yet.

Then the second trimester -- the supposedly heavenly one -- where I really start growing out of my clothes and go through puberty again, scouring for bras that fit, and resigning to the fact that Triumph would spare me no feelings in labeling me an XL in the underwear department. And while most of decent society would allow you to resume watered down fitness regimes, my changing centre of gravity dictates that I be more careful not to trip or slip. It is an arduous concentration exercise walking down a flight of stairs to ensure I do not miss a step.

And then there's the third trimester of being humongous and beached. In a few more weeks, it will be a waiting game. Will she come early at 37-38 weeks as I have heard many babies do? Will she come before my mother arrives? Has Lionel made all the arrangements for emergency transport and parking? Will I be able to do a natural birth? Are there going to be medical students looking on in horror at my labour? Will the nurse with me speak and understand my English? Have we really gotten everything ready?

And in the fourth quarter of the pregnancy year after the baby pops, that is when I am confined to 2-3 hour cycles and regiments of breastfeeding and diaper changing. No long trips out, no long dinner events...

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I am surprised I have not ballooned all over. The voluminous growth has largely been visibly confined to the belly area, although my sister-in-law would beg to differ. She insisted she could tell I'm pregnant from the expansion of my previously-also-not-very-humble rear. Well, at least I have a credible counterweight to the rear now -- so, come to think of it, I should effectively have a more stable centre of gravity with pregnancy. 

And while the marginal growth has been substantial in the mammary department (considering that I started out with a negative value), the visible final outcome is, well, still pretty modest.

At 31 weeks (last week)

Although I have been fortunate not to be inflicted with the common banes of pregnancy -- swollen feet, backaches and regular leg cramps -- my below-the-navel tummy has nonetheless succumbed to stretchmarks. Soon after I entered the third trimester, they started out inconspicuously as a little bruise like mark. Lionel spotted it first and we thought it was a bruise from my clumsy bumpings around the house and opening of fridge doors into my belly. 

But after a quiet embryonic stage that lasted but just a few days, it grew with great vehemence, spreading  its dark red streaks out, upwards like insidious roots claiming territory. And I thought being a young mother would spare me the physical tribulations of pregnancy. Alas, I have not been blessed with my own mother's good genes, who despite delivering us well into her late thirties, does not have a single stretchmark as evidence of childbearing.

I was just mentioning to my sister in an e-mail how I enjoy the part about growing up and adulthood where one stops caring so much about what people think. I am still confidently donning a bikini (because maternal swimwear is ridiculously overpriced and really, bikinis are the staple for any sort of age and figure here) when I go swimming. It may be that some of my confidence and oblivion stems from the fact that I cannot see my own stretchmarks from where my eyes sit, now that my belly is a huge sphere and I cannot see whatever is south of the protruding naval equator.

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And here ends my 837-word rant of a beached whale. (There isn't enough social interaction here for me to finish my weekly word quota. And I can't let Lionel bear all of it, can I? So here you are, dear faithful friends and readers to share the load. Thank you for following my blog.)