By: Revanche

On the road to parenthood: notes from the third trimester

February 6, 2015

FYI: Not all of these LB-related posts will be in real time.

Full body rolls. Hellboy fists (knees?). Thrilla in Manila flurries of punching, kicking and flailing. Attempts to clamber up and excavate my ribs. Probes at the belly button like it’s a skylight and exit. This child had better be an athlete directly out of the womb.

There’s possibly nothing more convincing that I have next to no true control over this pregnancy and how it progresses aside from taking care of myself as best I can, as suddenly experiencing and watching a critter moving around inside me. I haven’t been steering any ship, I haven’t actively shepherded this growth situation. I’m almost just a person with a sidecar attached. It goes where I go and eats what I eat but otherwise …

And yet all this while, LB has been baking into an actual human with tiny limbs and opinions about which way we should be oriented, or what  the best thing to eat or drink is.  At each check up, the doctor says, approvingly, everything appears normal and we’re “measuring exactly right” and it feels like validation but I don’t know what that really means. I expect it doesn’t matter as long as LB continues to grow and move around.

It’s continually surprising that while I’m basically living life: working, cleaning, trying to drink a lot of water, eat healthily and be a little more active than usual, there is a micro-universe in my abdominal region.

Which begs the question, where the hell have my abs gone? Not in a “where’s my six pack?” way. Or not solely that anyway, but when I sneeze, or try to sit up, which should normally activate the core muscles, there’s just this scary half clenchy feeling like my abs took off and left a gone fishing note behind. It also takes on this creepy cone shape and frightens the hell out of witnesses.

I’d been mostly lucky: I passed the 3 hour gestational diabetes test with distinction, I gained weight slowly and responsibly so my doctor quit cautioning me about rate of gain.

Then again: there were other issues. The fatigue continually compounded, constant infections that the doctor chalked up to stress, getting a cold-plague three days after getting the flu shot, then follow that up with the rash from hell.

This endeavor remains one of the toughest marathon projects I’ve ever committed to.

Still, things tick along. I get bigger and slower and more tired (how? HOW is that possible?) with every passing week and some days PiC stops in his tracks with a “whoa. You grew again.” It’s true. I did.

There’s a strange smidgen of pride that this is really happening, even if I’m not having any fun, that my broken body stepped up to the plate instead of refusing to engage. I really had no control over that, we had no idea if we’d be able to conceive given all the health issues I face.  There’s also the occasional flutter of panic, born of my control for the sake of sanity personality, that things are about to undergo an upheaval the likes of which we’ve never experienced. There’s some curiosity about who this little person is and will become.

I catch myself mourning Doggle, again and again, that he’d never meet his human sibling. He loved the smell of babies and all baby things, he’d have been in heaven sniffing over all the baby gear.

There’s a strong sense of mingled anticipation and nerves as the last weeks of the pregnancy seem to fall away like autumn leaves.

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