Pelvic pain, thy name is [unnamed baby]
Yesterday as I casually looked inside the dessert case at a local diner, the man standing in front of me waiting to pay his bill noticed my round form and made a HUGE fuss. “Get out of HER way!” he loudly joked to the uninterested teenage clerk at the register. “SHE’S on a MISSION!” He just laughed and laughed, even though my polite smile must have appeared obviously strained, and I barely acknowledged he was talking to me. Scratch that, not to me, about me. Which is only one of the reasons I take issue with this obnoxious relation people have to visible pregnancy.
In other news, I am fantastically huge. And experiencing discomfort. And I’m not so much intrigued by pregnancy at this point as FUCKING SICK OF IT.
Well, that’s not quite true. Friends and family generally ask me if “just want this baby out already.” Yes, I wake up feeling like I spent my night horseback riding. And by “wake up” I mean finally acknowledge that I’m not actually going to be able to get more than the three hours of semi-sleep that I’ve stretched out over the 6 or so I’ve been in bed. Yes, by 8 pm my back is shot, yes, I sometimes contemplate crying when I finally settle my fat ass on the couch, in a chair, in bed, etc., and remember that I forgot something in the other room and I have to go through the trauma of getting up. I wouldn’t mind some of those things being over. But let’s not go too far.
We don’t have a car seat. We don’t have a pediatrician. We don’t have a NAME for this baby. There are various things I want to get done, things I can do with him on the inside of me that will be difficult with him on the outside of me. And attached to my boob.
I might take this back in a few weeks, but he can go ahead and just keep on cooking. We’re only just approaching 34 weeks so we do have some time yet. But we are in countdown mode, which is awesome and scary and crazy.
I don’t have much of merit to say in this post, just this little update. He’s head down (which accounts for the horse-back-riding-pressure-feeling-and-embarrassing-waddling), and doesn’t seem to sleep either (and loves to kick my ribs, and gets the hiccups about 20 times a day). I’m uncomfortable but fine, I switched from an OB to a midwife two weeks ago for reasons I won’t go into right now but I’m happy about it, and there is some very happy financial/work news.
I’m not teaching any classes this coming semester; instead I am working solely as a writing tutor. My appointment is *just* enough to grant me health insurance and a tuition remission. My wonderful, beautiful, unbelievably amazing bosses at the writing center have worked it out so that I can get 5 weeks together of leave without losing any salary (despite the fact that paid maternity leave is NOT in my contract) plus 2 weeks of sick pay to extend that if necessary or to use as needed throughout the rest of the semester (if Baby X comes early/late or I need a c-section). I can’t believe that I won’t have to take unpaid parental leave and that I’m being so generously accommodated.
So things are going well. Now I’m going to go try to sleep in the shitty used recliner we picked up at a thrift store a few days ago.
