A Bird\’s Nest

Decided to turn this

into this.

34 weeks, 5 days.

Yes, my tag was showing. No, Husband did not see fit to mention that when he was taking the photos. Yes, my belly is lower than it was – I’ve got ten pounds of baby in there! I’m surprised it’s not dangling around my knees by now. And speaking of stretching, don’t you love my racing stripes? Husband says I look like a classic hot rod.

For the sake of my paper-thin internet anonymity, I can’t show you the full-length shots, so you’ll have to trust me when I say I am all boobs and belly. Despite my diligent efforts to gain weight, I’m only up 35 pounds. My thighs and butt are slightly more padded than they were, but the rest of me has pretty much remained the same.

34 weeks, 4 days. I swear I’ll post photos soon, assuming Husband can stand far enough away to fit my ENTIRE BELLY in the picture. I am enormous. And very stripy.

Also! through the magic of acupuncture, chiropractic work, and stinky moxibustion, I managed to turn a baby!

Only it was the wrong baby, and I turned her the wrong way.

Little Girl (baby B, farther from cervix) has gone from being transverse to being frank breech, which required a full 180 degree turn and a slide downward. Little Boy (baby A, closer to cervix) is still settled cheerfully butt-down in my pelvis. What a pair.

I’m not scheduling a c-section yet, but unless Little Boy decides to help us out here, we may be looking at doing just that. The doctor has agreed that, as long as my cervix stays closed, we should be able to carry to 38 weeks or so.

In other news, I suck at going on maternity leave. I was technically done with work last Friday. And what do you know? I’ve only spent about 20 hours in the office this week.

But I can’t, because I’m too freakin’ busy. I wrote you a post earlier – it was brief, but caught you up on the essentials. Then I accidentally erased it.

I’ll try to re-write it later. In the meantime, have some photos.

These were all taken on Friday, at 31 weeks and 4 days along.

It’s hard for a lot of women who are pregnant after infertility to feel okay about whining. After all of the diligent temperature taking and the checking of cervical mucus and the tests and the medications and the doctors’ bills and everything, there’s a sense of guilt if you admit that you’re feeling less than wonderful at any given moment. But happy as I am to have wiggly babies in me, I will confess there are a few things I don’t love so much about pregnancy.

1) Stretch marks. It’s not an aesthetic problem; the damn things are uncomfortable! I’m using three different oils and creams four times a day, and still they itch. And they are tender. Which leads to our next whine . . .

2) Girth. Again, not an aesthetic problem. I just don’t have a very good sense of where my belly is anymore, and I keep bonking it into things. I have to use the large bathroom stall, because I have trouble closing the doors on the small ones without whacking one of my kids in the head. I get stabbed by the corners of my desk, and I occasionally get a little too intimate with people in the elevator. (Excuse me, madam! Is that a belly full of babies, or are you just happy to see me?)

3) The Crotchal Pain of Doom (CPoD). Because my misaligned pelvis is spreading about as gracefully as a giraffe on ice skates, I hurt a lot. I walk like a Weeble, tilting dramatically from side to side. I actually have to lift my legs with my hands in order to do challenging things like putting on pants or getting into the car.

4) Sleeping. Because of the CPoD, simply maneuvering my body into the bed requires a deftness and care to which I am unaccustomed. Husband came into the room last night to find me sitting in the middle of the bed looking, he said, like the world had ended. I told him that I was just trying to convince myself that the whole ‘lying down’ thing was really worth it.

Here is my (non) artist’s rendering of my nighttime positioning:

The colorful square things are pillows, in case you can’t tell. And once I’m wedged into them, getting back out of bed is both very difficult and very painful. Which makes the last item on today’s list particularly unfair.

4) Peeing. I’ve started keeping track of how often I go to the bathroom each night. On Sunday night, I fell asleep at 11:30, then got up to pee at 12:30, 1:30, 3, 3:30, 4:30, 5:45, 6:45, 7:45, and finally got up for good at 8:30. That was a record-setter, but most nights I get up 4-6 times. I’ve gone twice just while writing this post.

Edited to add: 5) Inability to count.

So that’s my life right now. Stripy, enormous, Weeblish, tired, and full of pee. Am I still thrilled to be pregnant? You bet! Am I ready to smack the next person who responds to my whines with, “Well, you asked for it?” Definitely!

You have been warned.