I'm 8 months pregnant and one day. It's fucked up that they tell you that pregnancy is 9 months because in reality it's 10 months or it's the completion of nine total months. While I am 32 weeks and one day pregnant, I have another 8 weeks to go.
I'm definitely struggling physically. Keeping up with RB is getting more and more difficult with literally every single day that passes. We have a two-story house and typically I get him up in the morning, and bringing him downstairs is not as easy as it once was. Actually just lugging my bulbous body up those stairs on my own is not as easy as it once was. I go up the stairs multiple times a day because not only is that where the baby lives but also I work upstairs too. Oh, and our laundry room is up there. It's not an area I can easily avoid. It's good, though, that I've been forced to walk up the stairs for this whole pregnancy because I haven't really done much else in the way of physical fitness. When I was pregnant with RB, I walked for at least 30 minutes every day starting at the very end of my first trimester period I was religious about it. Happy went with me. I remember doing it towards the very end and having either what was painful Braxton Hicks contractions or the child who's now a toddler who terrorizes me was actively punching my pelvic bone while he was in my womb. That seems to be a genetic trait because that's one of his brother's favorite pastimes. I really am not able to do that as easily now. I mean, just between working and our very regimented schedule with this baby, I don't really have a lot of free time to go do that. I could do it in the morning, but RB is only really awake and at our house on the weekdays for about an hour and a half to 2 hours before he goes to school, and I hate to miss that. I could do it during work, but I often get caught up and don't even end up taking a lunch break let alone 30 minutes to go walk. I could do it in the evenings, but again, RB's only really home for about an hour and a half to 2 hours before he's off to bed and by the time he's off to bed I'm just a shell of my former self, and I have no energy to do anything. Well, I still have the energy to lay on the couch like a beached whale and watch a movie that for the most part my husband picks out. Oh, and I definitely still have the energy to eat all of the cookie cakes that my husband makes because he has recently taken up baking cookie cakes and I have recently taken up eating cookie cakes.
Ain't it funny how life changes? I also don't feel that I was this exhausted with RB. I'm just a whole another level of exhaustion. I don't even know how to describe it. I'm spicy and I'm just bone fucking tired. Definitely have pregnancy brain. Last night I was trying to recall Samuel L. Jackson's name. Beau listed too many other actors before I said "no, it's the guy from The Matrix", and he said "Forest Whitaker?" And I said "oh no, I mean Samuel L. Jackson." And Beau looked at me and said "...you do know he was not in The Matrix?" And, yeah, I recognize that now. I normally know every actor and I can recall weird tidbits about them or I know every song that plays and most the lyrics to them. Normally I have a pretty sharp brain. But no longer. Maybe I'll be smart again once I get this child out of my body and get through breastfeeding and child-rearing. So I guess check in with me when I'm in my 50s and we'll see how I'm feeling. I'm also having a lot of pressure every time I stand up in my pelvic area. It makes me wonder how my actual bones are fairing through all this. That may be TMI for you but this is a mom blog first and foremost just in case you forgotten.
Overall, I'm struggling to get up on my own, and it feels too early in my pregnancy for that to be happening (I say as though I am not more than 8 months into this journey). If I am laying on the floor, which I'm almost always laying on the floor because I actually really enjoy sitting or laying on the floor, getting up from that without the assistance of something to pull myself up on is nearing impossible for me. I know I didn't have this problem with RB. Well, I say that, but maybe I did, because towards the end of my pregnancy, Happy was laying on the floor in our bedroom in our house in Florida (which was L-shaped) and I laid on the floor to pet him and I could not get back up. But because of the way our house was shaped, I was hollering for Beau and he couldn't hear me. I didn't have my phone on me so I just laid there for like 10 minutes until he came looking for me and then he found me laying on the floor with the dog. So maybe I did have this problem. I stand by that I think it was later on, though.
I guess that's how people end up having multiple children. We just suppress the misery that is pregnancy, and with each pregnancy it's like "oh I probably didn't feel this way last time, right?" No, honey, you did. You've just buried that trauma. It's a coping mechanism.
Sleeping is also extremely difficult now. I know that it took a little longer into my pregnancy for sleeping to get this hard with RB. I feel like it was really the last month with RB that I struggled but with Hunter, sleeping issues have reared their ugly head in the last few weeks. I toss and turn all night. My hips fall asleep depending on what side I'm laying on so that wakes me up and then I have to flip my body like a giant fucking hamburger patty which takes mass amounts of effort. And apparently I've started audibly voicing my disgruntledness at this in my sleep because it's now waking Beau up. I don't think he has the heart to tell me but I know I'm groaning like a grown ass man.
2 days later
The irony of what I wrote two days ago and how I was struggling physically strikes me like a hot iron. I am 24 hours into a transformative stomach bug. I don't know if I wrote this above and I don't have the energy to go look, but RB was home Friday afternoon with a stomach bug. Now, God bless him, he only threw up like three times and he recovered pretty quickly so his experience was on the opposite end of the spectrum for mine. I was really worried it was going to be rough on him but he's tough and he did a great job fighting it with the immune system that he stole for me. As for me, my shit has been, how you say, absolutely wrecked by this experience.
I started feeling icky yesterday at around 3:00. I went to get RB around 5:00 like I normally do and the ickiness grew to a serious concern that I was going to vomit profusely in a second. I got home with RB and Beau was plating his dinner, and I somehow managed to hold out until that very moment and that's when I got horribly ill. Now I will say, by the grace of the powers that be, I threw up that one time and then rallied to get through bedtime. Not that bedtime wasn't rough, but when is it not? After RB was asleep, that's in my systems really began to recognize what was happening. I was so cold, so so cold, so Beau ran me a hot bath, or as hot as I'm allowed to take because pregnancy. I said in that bath for an hour and contemplated everything I've ever done to get me to this point because I was feeling so shitty. After the bath I went to bed. Or I at least laid on our bed, and this was at about 8:00. Now that we're parents, I do go to bed around 10:30 every night. Before we were parents I could stay up until midnight and I was fine, everything was fine. Now if I see 11:00 I know that the next day is going to be a rough one. I'm just saying that's to convey that 8:00 is still pretty dang early for me.
I spent the following 12 hours up and down out of bed, and I'm pretty sure I didn't lay flat for longer than 45 minutes at a time. My intestines are now clean and empty and it was, uh, a horrific experience. RB got up this morning at 7:30, as per usual, and I was still too sick to help with waking him up which I normally do every morning and normally I find a lot of joy in it. God bless my husband because he got the baby up, got him dressed, got him fed, and out the door to school. Just about the time they were going to leave for school Beau started feeling funny in his tummy so we knew that he was in the clutches of the monster that currently held me.
The next day
Thankfully the stomach bug didn't hit Beau like it hit me. It did hit him, it was just less severe. This has now passed through everyone in our house and I'm hopeful we will never see this particular norovirus again.
I'm on day two of recovery, really day 1.5 because I was still sick half of yesterday. It's been rough. I really haven't had anything to eat, not anything significant at least since Sunday. I did force myself to consume a half a sandwich yesterday and some crackers, and today I had some rice and chicken and the other half of my sandwich. I think it's so ironic that after you are sick eating is such a chore. Like your body is sending you signals that you need calories but like the act of physically taking those calories in is, at least to me, just fucking repulsive. Like, no, I'm not really interested in eating after I just purged for longer than any person should ever have to. And honestly if I wasn't pregnant I probably wouldn't have eaten this much during my recovery but I'm recognizing that I'm not the only person in this body and really I'm eating just for Hunter. If he wasn't hanging out in there, I would still be living off of crackers. That said, that boy needs calories so calories he gets.
There's also dehydration. I've really been trying to put down liquids without putting down too much that it makes me once again lose my marbles and I think I'm getting to a pretty good place in terms of being almost hydrated again. I am physically and mentally so exhausted though. I really don't think I've been this tired since RB was a newborn. I mean obviously this is very different because RB being a newborn lasted a lot longer than this will but I'm just saying like the no sleep, body in shambles, fight for survival combo is rough.
I feel the need to acknowledge that other people are definitely fighting harder battles than I am. I had a stomach bug, it moved through my system in 24 hours, and now I'm on the recovery side of it. I am just dramatic and I like to bitch. When the universe gives me a solid reason to bitch, I am going to take that and run with it. It is literally in my blood. This is the song of my people.
I think I lost like 5lb during this whole experience, and honestly I think that is a conservative estimate. I look like I've gone back in time a whole trimester. Now rest assured, Hunter is well and active in there. That dude moves all day long. I never have to question how he's doing. I'm sure he's a little shell shocked from his experience of being squeezed repeatedly by my abdominal muscles but he's tough. We have an appointment on Friday to go check in on him because now we're at the point in pregnancy where we see the OB every two weeks instead of once a month. Time really is flying by.
I'm really hopeful that tomorrow I will be back in the swing of things. I know the recovery is required after a sickness like this but I really struggle with the actual act of recovery. I just lay around and think about all the things that I need to be doing that I don't have the energy to do but that I really should get up and do. Probably a toxic way to be but nothing that anyone else but me has to deal with so there's that. Well, me and my husband, and I do think sometimes it drives him crazy that I won't just sit down and relax. I do sit down and relax, but only when everything that I had planned to get done is done.
The next day
It's taken me an extra day than I wanted, but I'm feeling the most human I have since Monday afternoon (pre-event). I have eaten a little more and drank lots of liquids. I also bought a pregnancy pillow, which will hopefully yield better sleep.
I would not recommend a violent stomach bug at 8 months pregnant. It was not enjoyable for anyone involved. It did, however, help to shift my perspective on just how able-bodied I am. I felt differently when I started this entry. Funny, huh? The universe gives what you need. Apparently I needed to do both cleansed and humbled. Well, to that I say thank you, Universe. Lesson heard and lesson learned. I am grateful to be feeling as good as I am and will do my best to remember just that.
For those worried about Hunter, Beau and I just got home from our now bimonthly checkup and the doctor confirmed Hunter is looking A-Okay. I haven't really gained any weight this pregnancy. Actually my last appointment I had finally gained 4lb and I confirmed today that I did immediately lost those 4lb to this illness. I only have a couple of weeks to put on some weight and I know I need to do so because I plan to breastfeed and if I don't have extra weight to support that, it'll be a tougher journey than it was the first time around.
Over the next few weeks, I'll be focusing on hydration and eating, and trying to enjoy our last few weeks as a family of three. I've already started the eating part because immediately after leaving our appointment this morning, I asked Beau to get me a cheeseburger because I finally was feeling hungry and I was finally craving one of my favorite foods. He immediately pulled in to a Burger King and got me something to eat. Right now, I'm happy, full, and thankful.
This is me, Monday morning. So naïve. So green. Sweet summer child.
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