Heavy

At this moment in time, I seem to lack the self-examination skills to determine whether what I am about to write is a giant whine. If it is, please feel free to change the channel, pausing only to whack me upside the head. The reason I think it very well might be a whine is that I am pretty sure I just heard the world's tiniest violin do its thing somewhere in my vicinity as I made disgruntled faces at the piece of cake that signified the blessed end to the three day torture known around these parts as carbing up for the three hour glucose tolerance test. For which I am to present myself to the lovely gentleman at my OB's office whom I would call the lab vampire if he wasn't so lovely tomorrow morning at 7:30am sharp.

I failed that one hour test last week, and since I am trying to do everything by the book this time, I am taking the three hour tomorrow. The prep protocol calls for eating what for me seems like inordinate amounts of extra carbs for three days, and while I sort of thought I might enjoy some of this, it had instead knocked me on my ass. It seems I just can't handle this much sugar. It makes me miserable, exhausted, completely wiped out. It has been so bad that I have been bitching about it to several people.

I haven't written much about how the pregnancy is going physically, nor do I tend to talk about it much in my daily life, mostly because it is a rather boring recitation of small indignancies and minor inconveniences. I am not trying to look heroic with that last statement-- my outlook has genuinely shifted. In A's pregnancy, when the pelvic pain showed up, it nearly knocked me over. I was already feeling physically pretty crappy, and this felt like it might be that last straw. I used heat pads and water bottles and felt a bit defeated to be dealing with this thing too. In this pregnancy, it showed up earlier than last time, and yet, I am deeply philosophical about it. I wince, once in a while. I even groan, and, on occasion, when JD had done something that he should've known was a bad idea because it was likely to, and did indeed result in aggravation of that pain, I got grouchy. (I just re-read that sentense and realized that it sounds a bit single-track there. Sorry to disappoint, but you will have to get your mind out of the gutter. What he did was let Monkey crawl into our bed in the middle of the night, leaving much less room for me than I require not to wake up more sore than I went to sleep.) I have, though, been perceiving this and all the other physical stuff as merely temporary inconveniences, and so not worth griping about. I know for a fact that this pain ends.

Yesterday someone asked me how I was doing with the pregnancy. I said it was hard. "Of course, the heat," she said. And she seemed genuinely surprised when I said that it wasn't the heat at all. She wanted to know what it was, and, feeling honest for some reason, I told her that it was scary. She didn't even fully get it then, talking about how she remembers being for some reason afraid when she was pregnant and her husband was away, just laying there in their bed and being afraid. Um, no... Not exactly.

The topic of what it takes to decide you are ready to try again is in the air in deadbabyland. Some bloggers have been pregnant for months now, some have just announced, and a few are struggling with whether they are ready to try, and what that actually means. Someone said those of us who gave it another go are brave. I don't feel brave. Last year, when we were just starting to try, I wrote about not feeling brave on account of not feeling like I have a choice.

What I said there still holds, it is all still true. But now, from where I sit (and as I hear that violin tuning up again) there is something else that is pretty clear to me-- I jumped in with no real idea of what I was getting myself into. Oh, I knew it was going to be hard, like I theoretically know that running a marathon is tough. But I had no real frame of reference for how hard this really is. How much emotional reserves it takes. How vigilant it makes me, and how much that takes out of me-- feeling responsible for keeping track of movements, doing the doppler dance (the record so far stands at six times in one day, one particularly bad day).

I am a bit of a freak, I think, because I also worry about being too forceful in trying to get the baby to kick. I think my general style of parenting is so hands-off that I don't feel entitled to perturbing the situation too much just to assuage my paranoia. But with anterior placenta and the baby who is apparently very happy to keep hanging out transverse breach (with his head over my bladder, facing up) my situation seems to resemble nothing so much as being up a hard to navigate body of water without an implement that is meant to make that navigation possible.

This next thing I want to say isn't just an obligatory disclaimer. I really wouldn't trade being where I am right now-- 27 weeks 2 days, in the third trimester or on its cuff no matter how you draw the borders between those. No, I wouldn't trade it for anything. Yes, I am hopelessly attached to this new boy already, and yes, the mathematical likelihood of a positive outcome, an outcome, which, by the way, I am having great trouble visualizing even now, is so much higher now than when we just started. But more practically, now I know. Now I know how hard it is to get here, how scary even with having a great doctor at a great hospital and with everything going pretty much well. Now I know. Now the idea of going through a pregnancy is no longer theoretical. If when we were deciding to try again I knew what I know now, I think I would hesitate a lot more. There was no bravery in that decision for me. It was pure, reckless drive. And for that I am grateful.

I know, too, that if that outcome I can't visualize does actually come true, if we walk away with a real live take home baby, every little bit will be worth it. Even that last piece of cake, heavy and carb loaded as it was.