Because most philosophies that frown on reproduction don't survive.

Monday, January 09, 2017

Back to Life

It's second trimester here -- the website tells me that at 14 weeks, baby is 3.5 inches, from head to toe the size of an 8oz filet mignon -- and I'm alive again. Alive! My nausea has mostly vanished, and my energy has mostly returned. Yesterday I had moments where I could even forget that I was pregnant, if it weren't that clothes fit oddly. I'm in that brief sweet spot between morning sickness and when The Vein starts acting up. This means walking, leaving the house, stretching, as much exercise as I can manage -- any physical activity to counteract the two months I've just spent as a sedentary lump, atrophying and packing on the avoirdupois.

So far I am holding that avoirdupois barely below the Number of Dread. My goal, though this may be ambitious, is to try to stave off tipping the scale until the third trimester. This doesn't involve some dangerous diet plan. I'm trying to avoid sugar and other empty calories, sure, but my main goal is to Move. Even the the most basic quantity of exercise does measureable amounts of good. Anyway, I have a motivating factor -- to avoid bed rest as long as possible. The month I spent in bed with William was good for my blood pressure, I guess, but it had effects that lingered even three years later. God preserve me from round two.

I haven't felt kicks or flutters, but being a grand multipara, I know the feeling of barely shifting gravity and pressure in the midsection which means a tiny thing is swimming. Although most of my pretty obvious stomach is fat and the strange displacement of internal organs, there is a legitimate bulge of baby there. So I'm the good days of feeling okay and not just looking fat, and I'm trying not to waste my time.


8 comments:

bearing said...

Oh, reading that last paragraph made that memory return to the flesh. Much of the time, I think we forget the feeling of being pregnant (probably an evolutionary adaptation so that our first children get any siblings at all) but sometimes the right turn of phrase brings it back for a moment.

Usually just the good parts.

Jenny said...

14 weeks. That glorious time when you decide that maybe you aren't going to die after all.

Melanie Bettinelli said...

Yay! I do love that sweet spot. Feeling alive and not foggy is so very lovely.

Rebekka said...

What is The Vein??

MrsDarwin said...

Rebekka:
http://www.phlebolymphology.org/treatment-of-vulvar-and-perineal-varicose-veins/

It gets to the point where I can barely stand, and it's been worse with each successive pregnancy.

MrsDarwin said...

Lots of weird stuff one doesn't know about being female until one has to deal with it... Pregnancy really emphasizes just how ridiculous bodies are.

Unknown said...

So nice that you have the older girls so you can take off on a walk without worrying about the little ones.

Rebekka said...

The horror! As if pregnancy weren't undignified enough. (I had a coworker who was put on sick leave during pregnancy because of edema of the nether regions. Interesting conversation with our boss apparently.)