Looking Big, Feeling Small

I would like to thank Bonefish Grill for making me feel like the fattest woman in the world.

Since we had never been, Steve and I decided to go the restaurant last Tuesday for dinner.
The hostess led us to the nearly empty dining area and the atmosphere felt surprisingly intimate for a chain restaurant. I’m so used to us hanging out in the bar or at home recently that I expected something a little closer to Red Lobster, but the low track lights and the decorative wall made it feel a little nicer. We both took our seats in the booth. The hostess handed us our menus and looked at me and said:

“Is this booth going to be ok or is it too tight for you?”

I went from feeling pretty good to feeling like the epitome of huge in 0.5 seconds. I’m approaching five months and have gained about ten pounds. Not a small amount of weight, but good enough for me at this point. And now I am being asked whether I can fit inside of a booth at a restaurant. 300 pound people go to restaurants every day and sit in booths. I know because I’ve seen them. Steve said she was just trying to be nice, which probably is true. But in my mind I still called her a skinny biatch and wished that she would eat a fat sandwich of death.

To tell the truth, it kind of hurt my feelings.

Later on I told Steve how I really didn’t feel sexy anymore. His Response:

“So what? You’re pregnant.”

A lot of times my husband knows just the right thing to say to make me feel my best on my worst day. This was not one of those times.

What he said: So what? You’re pregnant.
What I heard: So what, you’re really not a woman anymore anyway, just a carrier of sorts for the baby inside you. You are round, you can’t drink, ride a motorcycle, get in a hot tub or stay up past 9 pm. You struggle to get out of a chair, why would you even begin to think about being sexy?

He probably didn’t mean all of that, but that’s how I felt when he said it. Being able to bring a new life into this world is one of the most powerful things that a woman can do. So how come instead of feeling like Superwoman sometimes I feel like less of a woman than I did before? Do I equate womanliness with sexiness? Shouldn’t I feel honored that my hips, thighs, boobs, and belly now have something more important to do than be cute things to look at? And why is it that the larger I get, the more and more I feel invisible?

I’m sure I could spend hours trying to answer all of these questions and maybe I will in another post on another day. Right now I have naps to take and fat sandwiches of death to make (that’s right Bonefish hostess, if you’re reading this, watch out. I have one waiting for you…).

True Confessions! Scandalous! (17 weeks, 3 days)

So What If I Told You This:

I can’t stand one of my cats. I have seriously contemplated giving her away and pretending like she ran out the door. The only reason why I haven’t is that I know my husband wouldn’t believe me.

I think politics are boring and only kind of care whether Barack wins. I didn’t vote in the primary and felt bad and pretended like I did one time when the topic came up and I didn’t want to look bad in front of White people.

I had no “conscious” reason to have natural hair or wear locks. Its just what I felt like doing at the time and it was easier to maintain so I kept doing it.

I’m afraid to find out the sex of the baby because if they tell me it’s a girl I might cry (not happy tears)

Although I know that “living in sin” is wrong, I think that the year my husband and I lived together before we got married was the best thing we ever did.

I don’t understand ninety percent of the poetry that I read.

I don’t like neo soul music. Because I have natural hair people always want to tell me when India Arie/Alicia Keys/ Jill Scott are coming out with a new album and I feel like I should care but I don’t. Now when that Li’l Wayne album drops in June, I will be at Best Buy! ( or the bootleg man, whichever one I get to first)

Aaaah, that felt good. Just felt like one of those true confessions kind of days. Until Next Time….

Help, I feel great! (15 weeks, 6 days)

Disclaimer: If this blog doesn’t make any sense its because Steve is watching Deuce Bigelow as I’m writing this and the movie is too freaking stupid/hilarious for me to block it out completely.

I haven’t blogged in a while mostly because the last couple of weeks have been pretty uneventful. My morning sickness is gone, the dark circles under my eyes are slowly being replaced with that dewy pregnancy glow. I even had enough energy on Sunday to workout and vacuum my house all in the same day. The results of my most recent screening showed that I only had a one in 10,000 chance of giving birth to a baby with downs syndrome which is about as low as you can get. To top it all off, I’ve gained only about half the weight that I had at this point when I was pregnant with Kya. Things are going well and with the exception of feeling a little more tired than normal and some sinus issues, I feel pretty darn good.

And I can’t stand it.

Now by no means am I asking for the constant nausea and fatigue that seemed like it would never end a couple of weeks ago (Are you listening God?) But in some horribly sick and twisted way, feeling bad incessantly felt like my evidence that all was well inside. It sounds crazy, but feeling crappy to me just means that the baby, little parasite that it is, is sucking all of the life out of me and by doing so is ensuring his or her own success. Now that I’m feeling better, what evidence do I have that its doing ok in there?

It will probably be another couple of weeks before I feel it move consistently. Sometimes I talk to it or poke myself in the stomach to try to get it to “make contact”. “If you are ok in there kick twice”. It doesn’t work. No sickness, no movement, no signs. And then the anxiety starts. I know, those crazy hormones.

But then again I know that this is not the only time that I’ve felt stressed because everything was going well. I know I’m not the only person that has had a perfect day, or an uneventful week, or just a stress free time in my life that made me feel like uh-oh, things are a little too great, followed by “something is about to go horribly wrong.” It doesn’t really make any sense, but sometimes knowing that something is happening feels better than not knowing anything at all.

Yesterday we heard the heartbeat for the first time. The little beats, that sound like a sped up washing machine, gave me some temporary reassurance that all is well. For today, at least, I’m trying to enjoy where I am now and just accept that everything is ok. I’m trying to save the anxiety for a time when I really need it.

But I still can’t wait to feel those kicks……

Raisin Licorice Juice (11 weeks, 3 days)

So it took me about a week to get a little happy. A couple more days to get really happy and then another couple of hours to become absolutely obsessed. In those first few days I told myself that I would start a blog since this is an experience that I plan to never have again (although we see how well my plans turn out) and that I wanted to record everything.

Unfortunately weeks six through eleven of this pregnancy have been what I can only describe as pure hell. All of my effort these past few weeks has gone toward staying awake until 6pm and having the food I eat travel in the right direction through my digestive system, both of which have been pretty unsuccessful most of the time. So blogging has been pretty far down on my list, somewhere after trying not to have my mouth taste like rusty pennies all day and peeing every 37 minutes.

I don't know if its just that none of these things happened when I was pregnant with Kya, if its just been too long (8.5 years) to remember them happening, or if I was just so traumatized by the horror that I mentally blocked it all out- but this all feels new to me.

• My theory is that the baby must need to take energy from my brain cells to build its own which is why I think I have totally and completely lost my mind. In the past few weeks I have: Cooked a frozen pizza with the cardboard still stuck on the bottom; put the fork/knife holder thing from the dishwasher in the refrigerator; poured shampoo into my loofah and washed my body with it; forgotten about a whole pan of cooked bbq chicken and left it in the oven for five days...I'm sure there have been more crazies but I don't have enough brain cells left to remember them all.

• Food has become my worst enemy and my best friend. Foods/Drinks that I never thought I could hate turn my stomach at the thought of them. Water, soda, chocolate, any type of pastry, ice cream, chicken and many others fall into this category. I dry heave at the sight of Olive Garden commercials. When I am craving something though, it is a major emergency. I almost caused an accident the other day because I was driving home and had to make a bee-line at the mall to get an Auntie Anne's pretzel. The worst part is that I occasionally imagine fictional foods and fantasize about how good they would taste. Ice cream and pastries make me sick, but the sound of an ice cream filled apple danish gave me tingles the other day. I have also been overcome by an intense craving for Raisin-Licorice juice.

I know, there is no such thing. But shouldn't there be? What could quench my thirst and give me just the right balance of sweet and soothing like raisins and black licorice? Never mind the fact that it might be impossible to get juice from a raisin and I absolutely hate black licorice under any other circumstance- with all the inventions out there, it has to exist somewhere, right? Not even at Whole Foods?

Even without my juice, today was a good day. I felt so energetic this evening that I decided I would take a yoga class. I put on my yoga outfit, went to my mother's to pick up her yoga mat that she couldn't find, ended up looking through my mail at her house, decided I was too late for yoga so I would just go to the gym and walk on the treadmill, realized that i didn't have the headphones to my ipod in my purse so went home to find them, couldn't find them so ended up eating a porkchop with gravy and writing this blog. Putting on my yoga outfit has to count for something though right?

Until Next Time....

P.S. I love love love my husband. Imagine if you had to put up with this type of crazy every day!

Catching Up

Because I actually started writing stuff down long before I started "publishing" my thoughts I figured I would start this blog at the beginning by posting what I actually wrote about a month ago. 2/10 was when everything changed......

The Difference a Day Makes (Sunday 2/10)

12 pm
I feel like crap. And I mean crap. No descriptive metaphor. Earlier today I went running/jogging/walking, training for my first 5k, so I knew I would be tired, but not like this. I come home and decide to make mini-quiche from a recipe. I’m doing big things in the kitchen, quiche, bacon, toast and coffee. I call my husband to see if he is done at his grandmother’s and if he wants to have breakfast. He’s at the bar. At noon. On a Sunday. He says he won’t be there long

I'm upset. I eat my breakfast alone and put his in the microwave.

After I finish eating and read a book I take a nap. The wind, slamming against my doors and windows like someone trying to break in is scary while I’m awake, but somehow soothing in my sleep.

3:50 pm
When I wake up, there are no numbers on the clock. The house is quiet. I try to turn on the television and get an empty click.

No electricity.

I call him to let him know. Still at the bar. Doesn’t know what time he is coming home because he is playing pool.

“Are you drunk already?”
“No.”
Yes. I don’t need to ask. I can hear it in his voice.

I’m pissed. Too pissed. Sitting on the couch, looking at, listening to nothing, I feel angrier than I should. My breasts hurt. My back hurts. I feel nauseous and light headed. PMS is a bitch.

But then I realize that PMS is not normally this bitchy. And then the panic begins.

I have this moment of panic probably every other month. I think I’m pregnant and have no reason to. I’ve been on the birth control ring for more than a year now. Leave it in for three weeks. Take it out for one. Put it back in and start over. Its not like having to take a pill every day, there’s not much room for error.

I know that I’m not pregnant so I go to the dollar store to buy the test. In my last moment of panic I found out from a friend that they sold dollar store tests. No use spending $7 on a test that I already know will be negative. Since they are only a dollar I buy two.

4:45 pm
Back at home. I still have no lights and its getting darker outside. Nice. I’ll have to pee in the tiny cup that comes with the test in the dark. Except the dollar store test doesn’t come with a cup, you have to provide your own. Luckily we have paper cups.

Four drops on the test. Two lines pop up… quickly. The test is wrong because it’s from the dollar store. I open the second test. 4 drops, two lines again.

Its not true. I wrap up the two little lies in a paper towel and put them under the sink. I call my mother to tell her I’m coming over for a little while because my electricity is out. As I’m putting on my coat, the lights come back on.

5:30 pm
I am waiting for Kya to get ready so that we can leave my mother’s house. I want to lie down. I don’t want another baby. I’m thinking about all of the things that were easy that will now be hard. I have a birthday party planned in a couple of weeks and now I can’t even have a drink. We’re going away for the weekend in March where everyone will be drinking…except me. Vegas in May? Who feels like running around the strip with a big belly? I’m trying to finish school. We were going to take trips and be married for three years, have a chance to enjoy each other, and now this. I had planned to be happy the next time. I had planned to plan it the next time. And I did. And my plan still went wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.

6:30 pm
I’m tired of dealing with this by myself now. I call him. Still at the bar. By now he has put in almost an entire workday at the bar. I need him to come home. I ask him if I should plan for him to come home for dinner. His voice is frustrated. He’ll be home in an hour.

I hang up on him. I’ve had enough. I send him a text message.

Im so **bleeping** upset all u want 2 do is go 2 champs and get *bleep!** up obviously I need u to come the *bleep!* home!

He calls, asking me what is wrong. Asking me not to hang up on him. I hate him right now. He’s drunk, more than drunk, and I need someone strong, someone sober. He continues to ask me. I don’t want to tell him over the phone. If he cares he will come home. It shouldn’t matter why I need him. Only that I do. He yells, frustrated, then hangs up in my ear.

6:50 pm
I’m lying in bed on the verge of tears. Kya is downstairs watching something on the Disney Channel. I’m surprised to hear his key click in the door. He comes into the bedroom words slurring.
“Whats wrong with you.”
I hate him even more. I had imagined being excited, telling my husband over dinner or with some really cute, well crafted plan. But I am upset and he is standing, barely standing in front of me, drunk as ever.

“ I didn’t want to tell you like this but I’m pregnant.”

“Uh-uh.” He says. But he is smiling. His face is lighting up. Its true, I tell him. I go and get the little wrapped up tests from the cabinet and show them to him. He tells me he doesn’t know what he’s looking at. I tell him he needs to go get another test. Those came from the dollar store and could be wrong. “Go get a high-tech one” I say.

The one he comes back with has words. It flashes with an hourglasss like a computer screen while I wait. No double lines here. This one spells it out- pregnant, in bold letters.

I take it out and show it to him. “No mistaking this one” I say. Now he is hugging me, tackling me, all over me. Excited.

I’m happy and I’m miserable. I’m laughing hard and I’m crying like a baby. I’m hugging him back and pushing him away, loving him, hating him, blessed and cursed, excited for the future but wishing that the future was just a little bit further away.