1. The super-nasal’s have kicked in. I remember this from last time. Of the 5 senses I think a heightened sense of smell is the only one that’s just not cool.

2. My brain is taking strain. I was adamant in my first pregnancy that the much spoken about pregnancy porridge brain was a myth. I felt I actually proved it was by holding down a full time job, changing job role and studying part time – graduating top of my class to boot – and only loosing my keys once. This time I don’t have the studies, but I do have a toddler and perhaps that swings the scale. I ran the washing machine last week with detergent, fabric softener and … No clothes. I left the basket of dirty clothes right next to the machine and walked away.

3. More sensory anomalies: I am so noise sensitive. I get riled up at the first hint of a repetitive sound and I can not tolerate 2 people talking at once. Both quite unavoidable circumstances with a 2 year old in the house.

All is well with our household though, our new house household (at last), and mom and baby are growing well. We are closing in on the last straight, 7 weeks to go from tomorrow, and I wish it were sooner, except for the part were nothing in the nursery is ready…

Not sure I have (m)any readers left, but those I do have are probably tired of my semi-melancholy pregnancy posts. I planned for this, prayed for this, got all frustrated when the universe didn’t oblige on command. And now here I am, 18 weeks pregnant with a healthy baby, no complications and I’m all miserable about the most superficial of things: How will I manage not to end up the fat blimp that I did last time.

To be fair, I seem to be in a general down in the dumps mood at the moment. A few things in addition to pregnancy hormones contribute to that, but I could stretch those out to another 3 posts, that – surprise – aren’t pregnancy related, so I will save those for now.

The beauty of a first time pregnancy, aside from all the worry, is the ignorance. I just didn’t know how my body would react to the weight gain, so it didn’t seem excessive. I had every reason to believe that my body would behave in the same manner it did to every other time I had picked up the odd couple of extra kg’s: watch what I eat for a bit, and it’d slip off. I also thought I would be back in the saddle after 6 weeks and back in competition after 3 months, easily taking up my 5-6 times a week horse-riding schedule again.

What I didn’t acknowledge is that 13 kg’s of fat is not a couple; my effortlessly trim figure probably had a big dependency on my horse-riding activities; and my horse riding activities would not resume their former schedule any time in my foreseeable future.

And a year carrying a fluctuating 7 – 10 extra kg’s killed my body image. It dipped my self confidence, changed my dress sense, stole my sexy and sowed the seeds of figure envy for every trim woman I meet, especially those with children.

And that’s what I am afraid of happening again. I know I can apply the logic that I did eventually loose most of the weight, but I didn’t lose it for long enough to be assured that I could keep it off, before I fell pregnant again.

 This time around, I’m worrying about losing the weight before I have even put it on. I’m on the scale every couple of days, I’m pre-resenting my decision to breastfeed because that means I won’t be able to start a diet the day the baby is born, I actively loathe the SA pregnancy magazine that always has the skinny pregnant women on the cover (even though it has the best pregnancy fashion bits) and I’m comparing myself to every other pregnant woman I see. And this is not right. This is not how a pregnancy should be.

But the knowledge I gained about my body in my last pregnancy doesn’t easily let me abandon all concerns during this one, and the fear of again becoming the green eyed monster when I realize I can’t fit into my working wardrobe after 4 months of maternity leave, well it scares me. I don’t like being that insecure that it makes me dislike people for no good reason.

There. Rant over. Now that I have told the world exactly how superficial I really am, maybe I can move on from this and start enjoying this pregnancy for the miracle that it is.

1. Less awe at baby’s development – we are no less amazed at the miracle growing inside me, but this time it isn’t like discovering a whole new thing. I was 12 weeks before I subscribed to a pregnancy calendar

2. Less fear of doing things wrong – I know this time that it’s difficult to break a baby. Not that I am taking unnecessary risks, but if something happens (Like catching myself several mouthfuls into the Biltong before remembering ‘Oh hay, this is dried raw beef’) I don’t beat myself up about it.

3. People treat you as less special. People swoon over first time pregnant women. Your second child? ‘Oh, that’s nice’

4. You treat yourself as less special. Let’s face it, there is a house to run, a job to do, and a toddler who wants your undivided attention. There is less time and energy to be spent on feeling and behaving pregnant. Because if hubby does meet you at the door, you’d rather he entertain the toddler for a few minutes than fret over him not carrying your bags like he did in the last pregnancy.

5. Less silly purchases – in baby stuff and in maternity clothes. By know you know what works for you.

6. No guilt free eating – last time I shoved my face full of everything I felt like, because of course I would be able to loose it all after. But 4 times as much fat as baby does NOT simply drop off when baby is born. And newborns put terrible constraints on your exercise times.

7. I have become painfully aware of how little weight some other pregnant women pick up – women who look fantastic 5 weeks, and 12 weeks post partum, and it took me 14 months and some drastic measures to get within short-sitedness of my pre-preg weight.

8. Enjoying my boys last few months of being a single child. He has no idea how life is going to change! And I can let him grow up without lamenting the loss of my baby boy, because he doesn’t need to be my baby anymore.

9. Knowing I will cope. I was a complete novice last time – no baby experience at all – it’s good not to be so worried about coping.

10. Where are my fantastic finger nails? My nails were the best they have ever been last pregnancy. This time they re their same old brittle splitting selves.

Continued from the previous post: Why I have joined the masses of people who don’t like hospitals…

I can be quite naive sometimes. Not having stayed in a hospital since in childhood to early to remember, I thought it would be quite novel. Stay in bed all day, have food brought to you, order it of those little mini menus, have visitors and flowers. Well now what’s so bad about that? Especially as I wasn’t going in because I was ill, this should have been quite fun in my opinion.

By 11 PM on the first night, I had changed my mind. Hospitals are noisy places, especially if they are as busy as the one I went to happened to be on that particular week. By my last night there they had amassed 18 babies, and it’s not a big hospital. I think that was capacity.

I also didn’t anticipate the loss of dignity of being prodded and checked all night long. Not the staff’s fault, they were just doing their job, but well, I just hadn’t expected it.

Summed up, the day staff were great, I met two very helpful nurses, and the rest of the ground staff were cheerful and friendly. The night staff: a little less so. I drew the card for the ‘first night on the job’ nurse who twice dropped my bed instead of lowering it gently, not going down well with the C-section. She then said “I’m sorry, it’s my first night on the job”, which, well, she shouldn’t have. I’d rather not have known. And the nursery staff were thin on the ground and not very sympathetic to a worried first time mom.

With 18 babies and 16 moms (2 sets of twins) the attendance alarms didn’t stop ringing. The hospital rooms had two beds each in them. Nights one and two I shared with a lovely friendly mom of twins. Her babies where in incubators due to being born a bit premature, so she didn’t have them rooming in with her. I felt a bit bad for her sharing a room with me because I had the crying infant who wasn’t feeding too well, and she could otherwise have been getting some sleep.

But then the final straw for my camel: on night three they moved my roommate to another room, maybe it was at her own request – I don’t know, and moved in a new mom fresh from theatre for her c-section. So she had the nurses in and out all night checking on her. Well, I hadn’t slept much the first two nights due to being check on (night one) and feeding problems with Aidan (night two) and now on night three I get awoken every time they check on my new roommate, because the night staff aren’t very subtle about doing their jobs. And the door creaked. Each time they left after checking on my roommate I’d get up and fix it so it didn’t creak, and then a few hours later the nurse would leave it in its creaking position again. Well, night three wasn’t a great one for sleep either.

Thankfully I have the most wonderful husband who was at the hospital by 7 AM each morning to hold his child while his mom stole a shower or an hour’s sleep because by the end of night two I felt so much animosity towards the nursery night staff I no longer wanted to take Aidan to the nursery at all.

I was ready and packed before the doctors did their rounds on my discharge day, so eager was I to flee my captivity. I think I would have had a serious melt down had the doc’s decided that either Aidan or I needed to stay in even a few hours more.

But they didn’t. And it’s never felt so good to be home as it did that Saturday.

Four weeks on we are doing well. Aidan isn’t the totally non fussy calm baby I had kinda hoped for, but he’s a great kid. He has some colicky / reflux symptoms, but It’ll just take some time for his digestive system to mature, and we’re weathering that storm okay for now.

And he’s just ever so gorgeous, see for yourself:

It’s been three weeks to the day since Aidan made his grand entrance, so I figured I best record that experience before I forget it all in a sleep deprived stupor. That and June’s been prodding me to post something

The worst part of the C-Section, as predicted by me and probably because I thought it would be, was the drip needle in my arm. I was doing great till they put that in. It hurt, and then I had a reminder in my left arm for the next 45 minutes or so that I was just about to go into theatre and get a giant needle stuck in my back and have my belly cut open. My coping strategy for these things is usually denial, so the reminder wasn’t appreciated.

Hunny had a blast though, running around in his green suit (surprise! They had a size to fit him, I think it was 3 XL) taking pictures of everything.

While he was having his fun, I was in a bed in the waiting area which looked surprisingly like a corridor, and I became a temporary display on the head nurses tour of the labour ward for prospective future patients “And then they’ll wheel you out here while you wait to go into theatre, just like this young lady”. I didn’t mind that though, she was a really nice.

And then things stated to happen, I was wheeled into a theatre that was smaller than I expected (not sure why I was expecting something huge, probably a TV misconception), in a room full of woman. One of the reasons I choose a hospital a bit too far out of our way was because I met the loveliest gynecologist there, and she was a she. An added bonus that I wasn’t expecting was that she arranged a theatre full of women too. The pediatrician, anesthetist and all 5 or 6 nurses (who knew they’d need that many?) were female. Hunny and later Aidan were the only males there. It made the experience just that bit more relaxed.

The spinal was a bit tricky; apparently my vertebrae are a tad close together, so the anesthetist had to try a new location after she couldn’t get the needle in at the first one. I had a fleeting fear that they may have to put me out all together, but the second spot did the trick. All this while my gynecologist was attempting to fold me double so the anesthetist could get a bit more room between the vertebrae. Bending double over my enormous stomach was a tad difficult.

The spinal was an interesting feeling. Kinda like I was wearing a really thick pair of denims and someone was tugging on them, while I knew it was actually my flesh that they were tugging on. Odd, but not entirely unpleasant.

Once the spinal had kicked in, everything just happened in a blur. My blood pressure shot up, Hunny tells me, but I didn’t notice that. The ladies got to work super quickly, and just a few minutes later my boy was born.

I spent pretty much the rest of the theatre time watching the nurse and pediatrician working with my boy while Hunny sat between us and held my hand and his.

Here’s our instant family, a few minutes old.

Then Hunny went with our little guy to the nursery for whatever else they do with babies in the nursery while the doc stitched me back up. Runaway was playing on the radio in the background. I loved that song when I was just a little kid and it was the theme song for the TV program Crime Story, I was all of seven years old when that show started. I’m pretty sure it was on way past my bed time, but my folks weren’t the strictest on that, or maybe they just liked to laugh at my efforts to sing along

We were reunited when Hunny brought Aidan back to me once I was back in my room, and we had a great bonding session. He was totally alert for hours after his birth, just checking everything out.

So that was Aidan making his way into this world. Quite pleasant even if not typical. It was only later that night when things started to go downhill…

But I’ll post that at another time.

We’ll be welcoming a Junior into our lives. Poor little sprite, 9 months of warm sloshy comfort, and then popped out into a whole big open world.

Well, I think comfort is relative concept now. He really doesn’t have much space in there anymore. I’ve been wondering if he’ll be born with impressions of seams across his face from maternity clothes that are straining to hold me in these days.

The last few weeks have been a flurry of activity, getting everything washed and ready. Well, except for the two days I ended up in hospital for tests and observation – high blood pressure – but nothing untoward was found and I was sent home again and told to take it easy. Which I did. Kinda. As much as the nesting would allow.

Friday I went for a haircut and a pampering session of facial, manicure, pedicure and wax. Yesterday I stocked the fridge with quick meals to add to the bulk cooking Hunny did last weekend. And tonight Hunny and I are going on our last date night as a two-person family. We’re as prepared as we can be now, wish us luck and maybe next time I post I’ll have a sleeping baby in my arms. Or maybe a screaming one. It remains to be seen

Argh! I thought things would get easier now that I had just the baby to focus on. Well, that and some things to wrap up for work. Junior decided he had other plans though.

So it’s Wednesday morning. The room isn’t ready, bags not packed, most stuff still isn’t washed … and I wake up with a terribly uncomfortable abdomen. I’ve had Braxton Hicks for a while now, but that’s usually a handful an hour, not every 4 – 5 minutes. And Junior has moved. He’s been head down and to the left for a while now, but yesterday he moved to the right where it seems there is less space, and turned his back on my belly button. Terribly uncomfortable, and much more difficult to feel his movements.

Concerned and uncomfortable, I spent most of my day counting contractions and trying to figure out with the help of Google how you know when Braxton’s turn into the real thing. By bed time I had decided that this couldn’t possibly be the reel thing because it had been going on all day with no baby dropping out. Still I packed what I had ready into a bag, and started washing the cot linens, just in case.

I went to bed hoping I could sleep it off, but awoke at 3.20 AM with really sore hips again (had that a few weeks back, but it went away) and contractions still on their 4 minutely schedule.

By then I’m thinking: I’m not that hardcore! I couldn’t possibly be in labour and not know it? This must be the false labour thingy that nurses around the world chuckle at, when first time moms and dads arrive at the hospital at 2 AM with bags ready, convinced that this is it! Only to be sent home and told to take a Panado or something.

I’m also wondering what it does to your client relationship if your pregnant business analyst’s waters break in the middle of the review session at the client’s offices.

I go to the meeting anyway. Doc is only in the office from 9.00 AM. Client review session is at 9.00 AM, so I may as well go to that and decide to phone the doc if still feeling crappy at lunchtime. The meeting is quick an uneventful, and by the end of it, Junior has arranged himself back into his old spot and I feel much more comfortable. I still stop at Baby City on my way back to the office and pick up the rest of the stuff I need.

So this is where I sit now. Thinking I was overreacting, but wondering if maybe I wasn’t. Adding to my dilemma is that I’m squeezed into a narrow window of availability with my Gynae. She’s away next week, back the week after (my C date) and then away the week after that also. And she’s not exactly close to home. Man I’ll be pissed if I’ve been driving all that way for 8 months to end up on the table under a different doctor’s knife. Then I may as well have gone to my local hospital! Kid, just stay put for now please?! You’re too little to be out here on your own right now anyway.

So, here’s my promised list of things I’ll miss when I’m no longer pregnant

• No-one looks at you funny if you eat a packet of chocolate chuckles on your own
• No-one looks at you funny if you eat a packet of chocolate chuckles on your own for breakfast
• In fact no-one makes any comments on your eating habits at all (except maybe your mother)
• Hunny is at my car door waiting to carry my bags in as soon as I pull into the garage
• He clears away the dinner plates before I can think of getting out of the chair to do it
• Junior’s movements. Those are pretty cool
• Having a ready excuse for a sleep-in in the morning or afternoon nap
• Having a ready excuse to take the lift up 2 floors
• Having a ready excuse to take the lift down 2 floors

Yup, that’s about it

It is finished

Finish lectures – check
Finish work project – check
Write exam – check
Finish ante-natal classes – check
Submit final assignment – check

Have baby – getting there

If you’ve been wondering where I have been the last few weeks, there has been snow in Joburg in autumn. Not widespread snow I might had, just enough to keep me weighed down and working. But that’s all done now, yippee! I handed in my final assignment at 10:00 today and ended what has been one of my most busy times ever. I’m going to go home and celebrate with a non-alcoholic beer.

I’m not usually a beer drinker, but I’ve been craving a drink the last couple weeks, and this is the only think I could find that tastes like alcohol without being alcohol. I feel rebellious drinking it, so it serves its purpose.

Three weeks to the day till Junior makes his entrance, and that’ll be my next task: get room, wardrobe and self ready for that. I don’t even know what goes in the bag, never mind having it packed! I’ve been worried for the last couple of weeks that he might make an early arrival, and then my lecturers would need to score me the draft version of my final assignment that I submitted 2 weeks ago. And well, ‘draft’ was a generous way to describe what I submitted. I would certainly have failed had a lecturer marked that! But Junior behaved himself and stayed put, so all’s well that ends well

I lost my last vestige of femininity a few weeks back when my ankles disappeared. I always had skinny ankles and I was very sad to see them go. I’ve never felt as unattractive as the morning I woke up and they were gone. It’s a funny thing to think, but yeah. The lost ankles were what finally made me feel too large to still be pretty.

No more weird encounters with strangers wielding pee sticks in supermarkets, but I did have a fellow classmate tell me that you don’t bond as well with the baby if you have a C-section. She’s had both, and she didn’t bond as well with the C-section baby. Of course it couldn’t have been that she didn’t bond as well with her second child as she did with her first, or she that she didn’t bond as well with her daughter as she did with her son. It had to be because one was a C-section…

But before I give you all my news at once, I’m going to preserve some topics for another day and leave you with this little list of things I’m looking forward to about not being pregnant anymore

• Getting my ankles back
• Not being in a permanent state of overheating
• Being able to wear my rings again
• A chilled glass of red
• Getting back on my horse (eventually)
• Having two functioning nostrils at least most of the time
• No more nosebleeds
• Not feeling like I need to pee every time I walk up stairs
• Walking up stairs without loosing my breath
• Being able to pick things up of the floor without looking (and feeling) like an idiot
• Pants that don’t slide down off the bump all the time – the bump is bigger than the hips now
• Actually meeting the little guy I’ve been bonding with for the last 8 months

(I’ll do the ‘things I’ll miss about being pregnant’ list next time)

Well I do right at this moment, anyway. Junior has discovered that he can stretch all four limbs in different directions at once. The result is a decidedly square looking tummy.

Thankfully he doesn’t do it all the time; here is a pick of me in all my round glory:

Any time I spent small and petite in early pregnancy I am making up for now. People can’t stop commenting on how big my mid section is. That part isn’t so fun.

Pregnancy is such a visible affair and it brings out tactlessness in so many people. I’m feeling more and more defined by my bump these days. Not from my close friends and family, they still recognize that I’m Alex first and then pregnant, hmm I dunno, maybe third or fourth. But to strangers and acquaintances it seems I am just a pregnant belly with some limbs attached.

I think this has been the most frustrating thing about my pregnancy so far. Just this morning I was singled out four times in a ‘congratulations on your promotion and where to from here’ meeting as having to make big decisions about work, career and work-life balance. There were several other people in the room with children and time consuming social pursuits but they weren’t pregnant, so they weren’t Mr. Managers on the fly case study. It took a lot of restraint not to say to tell the man that I’m not asking for any favors so to leave my personal life to me and just judge me on my work please!

Later that morning when I was stopping in at my nearest woolies for some cake to offer my colleagues ( It’s my birthday today ) I was stopped in the isles by a stranger who whipped out a home pregnancy test from her bag, showed it to me, and asked me if I thought she was pregnant! No seriously folks, I’m not making this up, this actually happened! I was totally amazed. And she had a toddler in her trolley! Surely she would know how to read these things as well I? The test had a rather feint second line, so I mumbled something about yeah, it could be, but do another test in a couple of days time and then bolted for the check-out line.

In other alarming news, I got hacked. Well, my blog did, but it doesn’t seem like they were very good at it. Read Hunny’s post about it here. It would seem that this is what has been wrong with my RSS feed, and I apologize if anyone was subjected to Viagra advertising through my site, though it doesn’t seem like the hack attempt managed to do anything.

Well, that’s me for today. I spent most of my birthday working or at lectures or doing some more work from home. Poor me. I plan to do something more worthy of my last twenty-something birthday on the weekend. Like sleep in or something, because partying isn’t much fun when you keep bumping your stomach into people and you can’t have a drink.

I shouldn’t complain, I’ve had a great pregnancy so far, but there are a couple things that I wasn’t expecting pregnancy to bring, things that no-one warned me about. The things no-one tells you about pregnancy until you are already pregnant.

Pregnancy rhinitis. A lucky few pregnant ladies will have such bad sinus problems that breathing through their noses becomes an impossibility without the kind of nasal spray that fries your poor sensitive nasal membranes. But the sprays do work, and thankfully are something you are allowed to take during pregnancy, unlike most other medication.

Hemorrhoids. Not that I’ve had the misfortune to experience this one myself yet, but my reliable pregnancy spam emails tell me that this is something that affects many pregnant women. But don’t worry, they should go away after birth. Like that’s a consolation.

Muscles that try to detach themselves from their attachment points. My poor tummy muscles are barely holding on as it is. I’m not sure how they will cope with an additional 2 kg’s of Junior. Apparently detachment does happen to some women. Hopefully I’ll manage to bypass that one.

Personal Space Invasion. Total strangers think that they are entitled to touch your stomach uninvited, just because it’s protruding and round. These same people who wouldn’t dare touch a non-pregnant woman’s stomach. They also wouldn’t dream of making public comments about your size and weight gain, skin condition or diet if you weren’t pregnant, but this kind of information is now considered part of the public domain.

Opinions, opinions and more opinions. Although I was warned about this one, I’m still amazed at how many people think it’s suddenly okay to pass judgment on my personal decisions of how I intend to give birth and what I intend to do about work afterwards. No-one has given me their opinion on the feeding topic yet, but I’m sure that’s coming. Frankly, I think it’s none of your business what I do with my breasts.

We’re 29.5 weeks now and the end is in sight. Albeit obscured sight, I have so much on my plate between now and October. New work, studies and ante-natal classes.

Oh, and for the record, I don’t believe you need to succumb to the pregnancy brain theory. With maybe a list or two, you can stay ahead of the game and maintain your mental cognizance. You see, I don’t think this is a real condition at all. There is nothing wrong with our brains, it’s just that pregnant women have a whole stack of extra things to think about and remember. Gynae appointments, ante-natal classes, maternity leave to sort out, keeping your wardrobe ahead of your every expanding waistline, a nursery to stock and decorate? No wonder we forget a few things. Not to mention bonding about the new life growing inside us, and once big enough for you to feel it’s movements, it’s ability to physically distract you from your work. We don’t get dumb we just have so much more on our minds than we did before. So write things down and you’ll be fine.