Category: Family

Those not inter­ested in preg­nancy-related mus­ings should skip this post…

I’m recov­er­ing well from the birth, and my feet are finally back to their nor­mal size. So I thought I’d bore every­one who has­n’t been, or isn’t likely to become, preg­nant mut­ter­ing about vari­ous preg­nancy-related ail­ments and how I tried to cope. Not that I’m com­plain­ing about hav­ing been preg­nant, of course, since hav­ing a baby makes it all worth­while, but some of the symp­toms are less than pleasant.

Unlike when I was preg­nant with my first child, I had no morn­ing sick­ness. One or two days of feel­ing vaguely queasy, but that was it! So much for the old wives’ tale about hav­ing more morn­ing sick­ness with girls than boys; I had 5 months with my son and had to take dic­lectin to stop los­ing weight and not one day with my daughter.

To make up for that, in the third tri­mester I had reflux. At first diet kept it under con­trol, then I took Gav­is­con, by the end of the preg­nancy I was on Zantac 75 every day and still hav­ing to watch what I ate and sleep with my head propped up on mul­tiple pil­lows. For­tu­nately Zantac is com­pletely safe (at least in late preg­nancy). The reflux dis­ap­peared imme­di­ately after the birth.

As in the first preg­nancy, I had edema. At least this time it was­n’t related to pre-eclamp­sia. I man­aged to keep the swell­ing more or less under con­trol with pren­at­al mas­sage and keep­ing my feet up when pos­sible until about week 36 when things went hay­wire. First the feet, then the ankles, swelled up, no mat­ter how much I res­ted. By the time I had the baby, the swell­ing had reached my back, and was mak­ing walk­ing dif­fi­cult. I tried the vari­ous sug­ges­tions I found on the web (tak­ing flax­seed, soak­ing the feet, drink­ing lots of water), but none of them worked. It took almost two weeks after the baby was born to lose all that flu­id again.

And, of course, the big belly. I tend to stick straight out in front when I’m preg­nant ( pho­to­graph­ic evid­ence), and giv­en the size of this baby (9.5 lb) I stuck out an awful lot. Since I’ve been doing Pil­ates for a couple of years, my back and stom­ach muscles are much stronger than before and I had no more than a couple of twinges of lower back pain. I did find that wrap­ping a strong cloth around the belly to sup­port it helped, as did rest­ing (a lot!). I also had to be care­ful walk­ing down stairs since my centre of grav­ity shif­ted so much and I had a tend­ency to tip for­ward. The Pil­ates stu­dio I attend (up till about week 35, when I got too tired and could­n’t do more than half my sim­pli­fied pro­gram) helped a lot with my pos­ture, help­ing me fig­ure out how to stand and sit to min­im­ize the strain on vari­ous muscles and avoid over-com­pens­at­ing. I’d recom­mend doing Pil­ates to any­one think­ing of get­ting pregnant.

Those were my major con­cerns; I had a very healthy preg­nancy in all and these issues were minor com­pared to what a lot of oth­er women go through. Now the baby is here, and all of this will shortly be for­got­ten in the dim mists of sleep-depriva­tion. Nature is some­times kind.

As Tim pos­ted, our baby daugh­ter was born on Thursday June 8, and today I finally had the energy to pick up my laptop and post this. It’s amaz­ing how intensely a squirm­ing squeal­ing bundle can rule your life; right now she’s burbling in the bassin­et, threat­en­ing to wake up [and did, so it took a while to actu­ally fin­ish this short piece].

First off, thanks to all who sent Tim and me con­grat­u­la­tions on the birth. We both appre­ci­ate it and have saved all the emails to share with her when she’s old enough to appre­ci­ate them.

The sense of relief that she is finally here, healthy, pink, and strong, is over­whelm­ing. We’re start­ing to settle in to the new regime and got a reas­on­able amount of sleep last night; by no means enough of course, but bet­ter than it’s been. We’re not think­ing about wheth­er the same will hap­pen tonight or any oth­er night in the near future – we’ll have to see what hap­pens when the time comes. Life has slowed down right now, we’re enjoy­ing each moment of peace (wheth­er she’s awake or asleep or feed­ing, which is a twi­light state some­where in between), and endur­ing each moment of cry­ing and frus­tra­tion. It’s a cliché to say that each child changes your life; the non-cliché part is that you nev­er know how until they’re there.

Reg­u­lar-style post­ings will recom­mence at some stage, with some­what more reg­u­lar­ity than in the last few months. That’s the plan any­way, although it’s sure to be derailed, either occa­sion­ally or often, by the new­est mem­ber of the household.

You’re in the home stretch now, people keep telling me. One month to go, and even though Tim says I could­n’t pos­sibly get any big­ger than I already am, I know I can and I shall. The bulge in front, that is, rather than the rest of me. Although someone at Pil­ates told me of a woman she knew who grew a couple of cen­ti­meters due to the lig­a­ments stretch­ing in late preg­nancy, and she kept that height gain even after the baby was born.

Time does­n’t seem to be going fast for me though, it’s drag­ging rather than fly­ing. Prob­ably much like run­ning a mara­thon, where the last few miles or kilo­met­ers seem to be much longer than the first few (from what I’ve read, I’ve nev­er run a mara­thon myself). There’s still lots to do before the baby arrives, but the neces­sary stuff has been done (get the old baby clothes out of the stor­age lock­er, get a car seat to bring her home from the hos­pit­al, get the basic child care organ­ised for our son). Unlike soft­ware pro­jects, which often (or indeed usu­ally) take longer than planned, the biggest danger in this pro­ject is that the baby decides to come earli­er than expec­ted. Get­ting all the neces­sary items sor­ted out gives a sense of relief, if she does come next week (no, please not next week, not while Tim’s at JavaOne) we have the basics in order. 

So now I wait, and grow, and wait some more, and tackle oth­er items on the todo list in the meantime.