PREGNANT LADY TMI: INSTALLMENT #11. 39 WEEK UPDATE
By Min Jung. Filed in Pregnant Lady TMI |
Timeline: Week 39+ (The baby’s due date is officially May 21st)
Bump:
- Huge. And yet oddly not so huge. I feel huge. It’s a huge lumbering watermelon or thanksgiving turkey fit for a dinner party of 25. Jason refers to me as the Basketball Thief when he thinks I’m out of earshot. He’s wicked that way sometimes. Anyway, it is a big, heavy, still squirmy warm thing that is spidered with purply blue veins that you can see through my skin. Do I feel like I’m carrying an alien? Why yes I do. A very cute adorable alien child that should be saying hello to the world very very soon.
Giggle Activity:
- The dear little girl is still hiccuping loads though the timing for her hiccups is more in the evening than in the mornings.
- Additionally as she’s just standing on her head (turned and ready to go) she merely twists from side to side and provides on occasional punch or kick to my kidney.
- Mostly she’s just active delivering headbutts to my bladder.
- She responds when Jason or I are talking to her sometimes and when Jason’s given a kiss to my belly, she’s done a fine job of regularly kicking him in the face.
Way to do me proud.
Cravings:
- Lots of PreggerLady Cocktails (Pink grapefruit juice w/Sprite)
- Korean spicy foods! Lots of Kimchi & Ggakduki of late.
Digestion:
Funny. I don’t even notice myself farting anymore. But clearly this is more than my usual volume of flatulence since I’m a delicate flower of a gal that would barely squeek a macintosh apple in public otherwise. Right? Right.
Relatively mild and intermittent heartburn.
No problems with digestion. I attribute this to a most recent change in diet high in Korean fiber-rich foods eaten with rice.
- Kimchi (Loads of Fiber)
- Ghim or Nori (A superfood!)
- Kgennip - ?? – Seasoned Perilla or Sesame Leaf
Menus including 1, 2, 3 = easy going poop time for me. Yay.
Playtime:
- Hah. Right.
Sleep:
- In preparation for the baby’s impending arrival, she has already set me on a strict regimen of only an hour or two of sleep at a time. I have to get up very regularly to pee what appears to be a thimble-full of urine at a time that feels like an unbearable volume in my bladder at 3,5,6, 7, 9, 10, and 11 AM.
- Tossing and turning requires me to take care with cradling the belly as I turn from side to side.
- Getting up from bed is a interesting feat requiring me to rock myself over to my knees, put my hands up on the wall, and *will* myself upwards to stand to get to the bathroom.
Physical:
- I actually feel mostly ok.
- Feet are still swelling.
- The boobs and nipples are totally weird but I guess I’ve gotten used to that.
- Oh. The nipples. Odd crusty residue I noticed on the tips in the shower the other day. I guess that’s sorta new. And weird. And totally gross. But uh. Yeah. Feedbags.
- Lower back requires an occasional rubdown but nothing terribly new since the last few weeks.
- For the first time ever I had a migraine yesterday that had me so in pain that I was in tears for several hours. Jason finally relented in letting me have a tylenol (yes you can have tylenol up to 500mg when you’re pregnant) and it went away in about 20 minutes.
Mood/Psychology:
- Anxious. Really really anxious. I mean really really really anxious.
- I’ve been in nesting mode cleaning a few things, putting baby clothes away.
- Cranky. I’m insufferably intolerant of stupid people these days and probably a little too quick with dismissing folks who are behaving childishly than someone should who’s about to have.. uh.. a child.
- Hormonal high season. I had a terrible dream that had me in histrionics again. Almost passed out by hyperventilating while weeping.
- Nervous. I mean. Wouldn’t you be if you knew at any point 9 liters of liquid and a screaming kid were supposed to rip out of your vagina at any moment?
Funny:
- I think the weidest/hardest part of this stage of the pregnancy is how cumbersome I feel about my own body and how hard doing day to day things are that you otherwise take for granted. For instance, putting on your panties after hopping out of the shower. No big deal right? Now imagine yourself 39 weeks pregnant and trying this feat. You feel like a Hippo on stilts that are encased in Ballet Point shoes trying to balance and bend and tug up at the same time. Panties that barely fit anymore as it is. Graceful as Ginger Rogers, I am not.
- And then looking at your fingers and toes and desperately wanting a pedicure but not being able to reach your feet with any sort of regular ease is also weird. So you demand help with putting on your socks and shoes and feel like you’ve regressed into some sort of helpless whelp who can’t tie her own shoelaces because she can’t bend more than 40degrees over.
- Jason, bless his heart, has put on a little sympathy weight with me over the last 9 months. The other day he commented to me, in full earnestness “My god. I feel so bloated and like…this isn’t my body.I’m so uncomfortable.” To which I looked him squarely in the eyes and told him “Fuck. You.”
Overall Grade: B+
If you wanna contribute to my baby’s diaper fund, feel free.
Tuesday, May 19th 2009 at 6:12 am
My contribution to the diaper fund is informational, not financial:
M’s Diapering Tips
Tuesday, May 19th 2009 at 1:57 pm
i’m SO EXCITED for you. is that weird?
and i’d be so nervous too!! i’m really enjoying your honesty throughout this process. seriously, it’s making me look forward to when i get to go through this myself. which hopefully won’t be for a long while.