1) I recognize that plenty of women are comfortable and embrace the weight gain that comes with being pregnant, and I am trying, but it’s rough. I’m only four months along and already I’ve got a wicked belly happening. Honest to Pete, this wouldn’t be a huge deal, but I’m already pretty thick in the middle, not to mention short in the torso, and you add in an ample backside, and it’s making dressing each day exhausting. I feel like a beach ball.
2) Speaking of clothing, I’ve figured out part of the problem: I hate shopping for clothes, and I’ve gotten the whole thing down to a science. I stick to a few brands I like, and styles that flatter me, and I rarely, if ever, pick up items that don’t fit – I barely bother to try things on, I hate the process that much. But now I don’t know how things are going to fit, and anything I see that’s maternity-related is so god-awful and twee, that I storm out, caring very little if I have to roam naked for the next several weeks. I’m assured that the Fall and Winter options are better, but in the meantime, ugh.
3) Today we moved floors at my office. This is the view from my new office. I feel a tremendous sense of gratefulness with this new arrangement, not the least of which is being able to see Millennium Park and Lake Michigan every day. I’ve thought a lot lately about how tough this pregnancy has been, and how blessed I am that I have a job that requires no manual labor. Sure, it’s stressful, and some days I wish I had a winning lottery ticket in my purse, but I have a comfortable working environment, supportive coworkers and bosses, and if I’m feeling particularly lousy, I have the option to work from home if needed. Plus? I can take doctor’s appointments when I need to, and don’t face the unforgiving wrath of a company who insists I only schedule doctor’s appointments during my off-hours, never mind that many doctors don’t accommodate such requests. There are so many women on this planet who don’t have this luxury, who spend their pregnancies on their feet, with unaccommodating bosses who could care less about their families and their needs. My company is absolutely tops where family is concerned. Also? See that view? From my own office? I feel like dancing.
4) Next week my friend, Steve, who designed our kitchen, is coming over to help us figure out how to handle the upstairs of our house. Right now, we’ve got a nightmare on the second floor. It’s all paneling, cracked plaster, saloon doors and stained, ratty carpeting. My bathroom is upstairs, and we use one of the rooms as an office, but that’s it. We’d hoped to add on a room (a dormer) to the upstairs, plus upgrade the bathroom to something more master bathroom-ish, but that’s not going to happen by Christmas. I don’t have the patience, and my track record with this pregnancy has not been great. We don’t need a full-scale remodel. So we’re going to do what we can by Christmas to upgrade and improve to make the second floor livable. The bathrooms can wait until next year. For now, it just needs to be livable. Steve is also going to help us design the nursery because I have yet to see anything I like in any catalog or Web site, at least anything that doesn’t make me want to hurl from the tweeness of it.
Seriously. Why is almost everything baby- and pregnant-related so wretched and precious? I don’t have the patience for a lick of it.
5) Foods I Miss The Most, In No Particular Order: lychee martinis, dirty martinis, well, every kind of martini, really; raw cheeses; tuna tartare; spicy tuna rolls; medium-rare steaks; vegetables as I don’t have the stomach for many of them yet.
6) I miss working out hard. I really do. The truth is that cleaning wears me out these days, and I’m trying to get back into my walking/train commute, which means that I can’t do much more exercising for the moment aside from those three miles of walking. I have moments of worry, whether it’ll all come back, but I push those worries aside. If I could, right now I most certainly would, and though I will have to work at getting back to athletic status, it’ll come. But I’d kill to be able to get through a spinning class without having heart palpitations.
7) I need a soup cookbook. Lynette gave me The Bread Bible a few months ago, and I have visions of making soup and bread this Fall. Not every weekend, mind you, but I figure I won’t be spending my Saturday nights drinking martinis and eating out downtown, so I might as well cook soup. And bread. Anyone have any good soup cookbooks to recommend?
8 ) Here’s what I want to say now, as I get into the pregnancy and motherhood thing: I kinda almost don’t want to hear it from anyone. I mean, I do, but I’m awfully nervous about opening up the Pandora’s Box that has become women and motherhood on the Internet. I have yet to see much evidence online where women are gracious and respectful to each other. It’s as if somehow by donning the title “Mom,” there is a large faction of women who feel it’s perfectly OK to openly and with much hostility, mock and criticize the parenting choice of others. And I’m not talking about the obvious, egregious parenting snafus wherein you ask why it is that we have licenses to have so many things and yet children? Almost any fool can do. No, I’m talking about the choices people make that are best for their families, that may be different from yours. Truth be told, I shake my head in wonder about the choices some folks make, but it’s not my place to share that opinion with them, and so I don’t. I cannot get over the chutzpah of some women, I really can’t. And what I can really do without is being told by total strangers that I’m putting my child in danger if I do/don’t do X-Y-Z, especially when I don’t even ask.
The beauty of feminism is that our mothers fought so we’d have a choice, not so we could berate our sisters for making choices different than our own. My friend, Leah, reTweeted something the other day that I loved, from a woman in Florida who goes by ProChoiceGal: “Being #prochoice for women who DON’T want their pregnancies is great, but it doesn’t mean a lot if you’re #antichoice for the others.”
I thought that was just brilliant, because I feel like it encapsulates a dilemma for women like me, those of us who fall into the liberal, stereotypical feminist. It’s often assumed that because we wave a particular flag, that we’re against those who wave another. For me, that couldn’t be further from the truth. We are no good if we aren’t supporting the choices of our fellow women – those who work, those who don’t. Those who co-sleep, those who follow a strict crib schedule. The moms who throw Pop-Tarts into the toaster each morning, those who make their own organic meals. If I believe in choice, and what that means, I believe that for everyone, and I support them in their efforts.
9) Pea-In-The-Pod has called me and sent me a hand-written thank-you card for the cash we threw down in there last week. Do I make an appointment or do I ignore them? I feel like I should, but bring my sister with me so I have someone who can remind me how very much I don’t need to spend $80 on a shirt. I could use some help, just the same.
10) It feels like Fall. Today I had the day off from work, and finally the humidity broke and loosened it’s grip just enough where I could pretend it was crisp and light and I had a day to spend in my living room, watching the sun set, about to light the pumpkin-scented candles, and be that much closer to having this baby.
