heartburn

The Story

This Is A New Feeling

by Jill
written by Jill

When I was pregnant with both Kendall and Leyna, I never really felt that excitement and anticipation leading up to having them. Nope. Mostly I spent the entirety of my pregnancies with them scared out of my freaking mind.

It caused much guilt for me. I felt bad that I wasn’t giddy thinking about those fresh little bundles being placed into my arms. STAY IN. NOT READY. That’s where my head was.

This time around, I’m surprised to feel genuine happiness about this baby’s arrival. I’m looking forward to kicking labor in the ass. This is a very new feeling.

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I don’t know what it is, if I’m not remembering being this uncomfortable previously, or if this pregnancy actually is so much worse than the last two. Either way, I AM SO UNCOMFORTABLE. I’m irritable. I’m ragey. I don’t want anyone touching me. At. All.

The aversion to being touched is a big thing right now. Leyna is still a snuggle bug, and it’s all I can do to let her curl up next to me and twirl my hair around her fingers. I’m so touched out by the kids by the end of the day that my annoyance level with Scott merely brushing his feet against me when we sleep makes me want to scream. I’m sure you can imagine all the super fun implications of that scenario.

Yeah… Scott’s ready for this baby to get out of me, too.

The heartburn is out of control, even on 2 doses of Zantac a day and a healthy serving of Tums (and hands full of almonds, and lots of other natural remedies). The insomnia is making me worthless. The Pica is annoying as hell. I’m choking down iron as much as possible, keeping up with my prenatals. Still it persists.

The worst lately has been this feeling of bugs crawling all over my skin, and little twitches through my body, like tiny electric currents, just as I start to get sleepy. I lay in bed at night, scratching, tossing, turning… sometimes crying out of frustration. I wake up choking on my own stomach acid. I never feel refreshed in the mornings, more like hungover.

And I have at least 7.5 weeks left. With my track record of carrying babies 4 days past my due date, I’m looking at at least 8 weeks. OF COURSE I don’t actually want the baby to come out right now. I know the baby needs to bake for a long, long while, and I’m not taking drastic measures to shorten that.

But, for the first time in 3 pregnancies, I’m just really dang excited to have this kid. Scared of parenting 3? Nah. Bring it.

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PregnancyThe Story

My Body Keeps Having To Remind Me It’s Pregnant

by Jill
written by Jill

My body keeps having to remind me it’s pregnant. It’s quite inconvenient. I have stuff to do, yo. But, in the midst of this (nearly over) 2nd trimester energy surge, I tend to forget that I’m actually growing another living being inside me, and that that’s kind of a shitton of work.

So then my body is all, “WHOA. STOP THE TRAIN. Let’s sleep all day!” the day or 2 after a long weekend of non-stop madness, cleaning, home renovations (yes, more!), and child chasing. Like now. I’m totally wiped out right now. This typing of the keyboard is very exhausting. My fingers are crying.

Our house is FINALLY, mostly in order. The rooms are put back together after the carpet install, and all major biohazards (and even most of the laundry) are clean. We had a great weekend, full of baseball games…

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And a Nintendo Wii U party (more on that later this week).

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And now all I want to do is sleep ALL THE SLEEP in our doesn’t-look-like-a-frat-house bedroom (can’t wait to show the whole thing off to you all soon!).

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When my body isn’t telling me to pass out at that very moment, no matter where- TARGET AISLES ARE PERFECTLY FINE TO NAP IN < says my body- it’s reminding me I’m pregnant with incessant heartburn, mixed with nonstop hunger. That’s a cruel fucking joke.

“You need to eat, Jill! You are going to die of starvation! You can’t eat anything, Jill! It will all melt you from the inside!”

Oh, and then there’s still the Pica. I hope you know how much I love you to admit this out loud. I have actually had dreams where I’ve come across a bucket that has just enough sand in the bottom of it. In my dreams, I get SO excited because it’s a “reasonable” amount of sand. I could wash it and then eat it, and it would be just enough to satisfy my craving without going completely off the deep end and buying a bag of sand. Because when I am awake? I have this conversation with myself all the time. How crazy would I be to go buy a bag of sand from Home Depot, scoop some in some boiling water, rinse it off, all for a spoonful of wet sand? I MEAN, THAT’S TOTALLY NORMAL, RIGHT?

I WANT IT MORE THAN ANYTHING.

Literally salivating right now just typing that out.

(Yes, my iron is low. Yes, I’m taking more supplements. Yes, my midwife knows.)

I’ve felt for a long while that this baby is probably a boy, even before I felt like my ultrasound techs possibly spilled the beans. Now, though, I’m not sure. This pregnancy, from the (non-food) cravings, to the insane heartburn, to the way I’m carrying are all like a carbon copy of my pregnancy with Leyna. It’s definitely keeping things interesting.

This morning I was bemoaning not having anything funny or creative to share with you all today, but then I figured, well, you haven’t heard me whine about pregnancy lately. So there. My gift to you. And a belly shot. 26ish weeks. This was taken at the end of the day, while helping Leyna wash up for bed.

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 I keep meaning to do more selfies with my nice camera, but then my body keeps reminding me just how freaking tired I am. I’m listening, body! 2nd nap, here I come!

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PregnancyThe Story

Hello old friend!

by Jill
written by Jill

Okay. I’m sorry. I’m a slacker. I’m lazy. I’m overwhelmed. I’m tired. I’m bitchy. I’m cranky. I constantly think I have to pee only to discover that I really don’t have to pee even though I feel like I’m about to piss my pants. That last part mainly happens at night in the middle of really good dreams and deep sleep, which I think contributes greatly to the cranky and bitchy part. So there…there are my excuses for not blogging in so long. The crazy thing about this blog is I feel like it’s a friend I haven’t talked on the phone to in so long that I keep putting off the next phone conversation, not because I don’t miss them and have tons to tell them, but because I don’t have the energy to tell them all that stuff since it’s been so long. You know what I mean? So I’m going to try to get as much out in the most concise manner possible in this entry. These are all things I’ve thought I should write about in depth on here over the last month. Here’s the Cliff’s Notes version:

1. Maternity clothes continue to suck ass and should really be disposable. I am now back to grandpa butt syndrome because my belly has become too big to hold up these elastic waists comfortably. I must say I would prefer that all my pants have waists that come up to my boobs to avoid this, but since I thought that was oh so uncool when I went on my early maternity clothes shopping sprees, I am stuck with all these under the belly or mid belly styles that do nothing but cut off circulation to my crotch or sag off my butt so bad it looks like I just dropped a load….or delivered the baby in my underwear.

I am also constantly walking around with giant grease stains on the front of whatever shirt I choose to wear. It seems I am a walking pregnancy cliche. I can not eat ANYTHING without spilling or dribbling it all down the front of me. It inevitably always stains and makes me grateful that most of my maternity tops were $12 at Target….about as close to disposable as you can get. Let me know, please, if you see any plastic toss-away maternity tops. Or perhaps I should just invest in a very large bib. I’m sure I could find one with a Lobster on it at some local dive of a surf and turf shack.

2. The state of my boobs – dismal. I can’t even express to you how weird my nipples look. They are huge. As of this morning, I guess they’ve started practicing production because I woke up with a perfect circle of wetness right over my right nipple. If only I could believe that that was a strategically placed drop of drool. It is also very weird to feel your boobs and the top of your belly touch. I now have boob cleavage in three places.

3. Stretchmarks, I haz them. Luckily most of them have appeared on my boobs, which surprisingly didn’t upset me that much – those babies are shot anyway. However, I have noticed the beginnings of at least two on my lower stomach recently and have gone from a girl who thought, “Who the hell needs to rub cream all over their stomach. If you’re going to get them, you’re going to get them. What can you do?” To a girl who ran out to CVS to buy a special $11 bottle of oil that claims to be made specifically to reduce and eliminate the appearance of stretchmarks and have been feverishly applying it twice a day, praying it’s my miracle.

4. My son is developing quite nicely. He is probably close to 4 lbs or more now, and he is definitely getting stronger. So strong that he is finally able to penetrate my anterior placenta with his kicks and bumps. I’m finally able to feel movement outside of my stomach and by my belly button in addition to the kicks and jabs I always felt up top and way down low. Another sign he’s right on track is I can feel hiccups! Yup. Apparently babies practice hiccuping. I can not tell you why. All I know is the other night I was wondering why my ass was pulsating. I thought I must be sitting on a giant, throbbing vein. Turns out…not a pulsating vein in my ass…it was my kid’s hiccups. It’s actually very good news to have butt hiccups. That means he is head down! Which leads me to…

5. The baby, as of my last appointment, is in great position. He is head down, butt under my ribs, feet pointed toward my hips. Lock and load, baby! This pleases me greatly and I hope he decides that’s a comfortable enough position to stay in until his grand exit into the world. See, as much as I had an irrational fear of conehead babies and still do think that c-section babies have the most beautiful round precious heads, I do not want a round headed c-section baby. I want a smooshed, pointy headed, wrinkly baby, as long as that means he can come out of me without major surgery.

6. Gastric bypass surgery must suck. I’m convinced I am suffering some of the same side effects. I am starving. My body tells me to eat..EAT A LOT. I do. Then I regret it. It never seems to make it all the way down without wanting to choose the path of least resistance and come back up. I have woken up several times in the middle of the night gagging on dinner from hours before. Of course, I never throw up, which I think would make me feel a lot better most of the time. For some reason my body has this extreme aversion to throwing up and will rarely let me do it, even if I’m encouraging it. I also am experiencing a ton of acid reflux lately. I forgot to bring my Tums to work with me the other day and wanted so badly to ask the first pregnant lady I saw if I could have some of hers. Unfortunately, it was a slow business day and I had to sit in misery until I could run home at my lunch break. And do not worry…I can be trusted with Tums again. I respect their power and never exceed the maximum allowed dosage ; )

Well, that’s all the time I have for the pregnancy updates. My 3 1/2 year old niece is still living with us, and that’s enough for a whole other blog. She has settled in nicely and is looking forward to being the “cousin sister”. She came up with that all on her own. I told my husband we should have a shirt printed for her that says “I’m the Big Cousin Sister” for her to wear to the hospital. I can only imagine what the nurses will think of our family tree. Surely they will think we drove all the way in from West Virginia for the birth.

31 weeks 3 days

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Tums, sweet tums…Why have I doubted you?

by Jill
written by Jill

Mmmmph…I type this as I crunch on one of my first handfuls of Tums EVER…in my life.  They are delightful, a little chalky, but chalky is GOOOOOOD right now.  I can guarantee you this is a direct result of the alien baby.  If I were not pregnant, I would be totally disgusted by the thought of Tums. The look, the smell, the texture have never, ever appealed to me.  My husband has been popping them as long as I’ve known him for his terrible heartburn, but I could never understand his love for them.  That is until just a few minutes ago!

This comes at the end of a day full of morning sickness (which, by the way, lasts allllllllllll f-ing day long, and is more appropriately termed every five minutes for the rest of the foreseeable future sickness) with an intensity that I have not yet experienced.  I have gone so far as to avoid phone calls from friends today because the thought of having a conversation that required more than one word answers from me made me envision myself carrying on from the inside of the toilet bowl.  I’ve choked down more water than a human not trying to drown themselves should be allowed, munched on small bland meals that are supposed to help, but nothing has alleviated this horrible feeling of my stomach trying to take up permanent residence in my throat.

As I was washing my face to get ready for bed, I saw the Tums bottle out of the corner of my eye.  Now, my rational side would tell me that this image should make me wretch since I am generally disgusted by Tums, much like I am disgusted by the sight of used cat litter.  However, while I am still disgusted by the cat litter ….so far, who knows what the alien baby will want next (and that would be a JOKE for those of you who take me too seriously), seeing the Tums made me feel like God himself had sent the angels down to sing Hallelujah as I suddenly saw this plastic bottle full of multicolored tablets in a new light.  I was drawn to them, and cautiously put two in my mouth.  Holy mother of all things good in this world, they were amazing!!!  In fact, I have not stopped munching on them throughout this entire post.  The bottle, which was brand new to begin with, is only 2/3 full now.

I am soooo excited about my new love affair! Of course, I’m very aware that this love could be only a quick flash fire instead of a long burning flame.  If there is one thing I’ve learned in the last month it’s that pregnancy makes you feel different every single day, and you can never count on liking the same thing from one day to the next, but for tonight….I’m going to bed with my new lover, sweet Tums, and I’m very happy.

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