On Thursdays I post from the vault. This post is from February 2009.
I am 32 weeks today. It’s hard to believe I’m so close to meeting my baby girl. Then again, I feel like I have been pregnant forever and cannot believe it’s possible I could get any MORE pregnant. I am huge. Really, huge. I get the pleasure of random people telling me that on a daily basis. “Wow, you look ready to pop!” I may pop the next person who tells me that.
Today I had an ultrasound, for the sole purpose of determining why I am so HUGE. I am measuring big, but the ultrasound revealed there is really nothing remarkable about it. I’m just one of those women who carries large-and-in-charge, and gestates bigger-than-average babies. And uses too many hyphens in one sentence.
I was having a lot of anxiety about this ultrasound. Okay, who am I kidding, I have a lot of anxiety about every doctor’s appointments in regards to my pregnancy. I think I have a little pregnancy PTSD. I mean, I’ve had a lot of pregnancies, and a majority of them ended with a doctor’s appointment where I’m told that the pregnancy is over. So it’s sometimes hard to shake this fear of mine that at each appointment, a doctor will deliver some devastating bad news about my baby. I woke up this morning with a sense of dread, as I do pretty much any time I go to the doctor’s. That was also coupled with my daily “normal but annoying” pregnancy symptoms of heart palpitations, gastrointestinal issues, trouble catching my breath, and sinus pressure that fogs my entire head. I was kind of a mess by the time they called me back for my appointment. The doctor measured the baby, and then told me she was breach, but to calm my fears, decided to illustrate that the baby could be easily moved at this stage of pregnancy. So he pressed down on my giant uterus with the wand, which in fact does make the baby move positions. Then he proceeds to tell me that sometimes, when he does that, it causes women to pass out from lying on their back and something about blood circulation and pressure and . . .
Can you guess what happens now?
I can’t say I completely lost consciousness, but I did break out into that clammy, sweaty “I’m seeing stars” coma feeling. I had to ask for a puke bucket, and lay on my side for a few minutes, while Mark fanned me with a pregnancy magazine and India continually shouted “Mommy! Wake up! Wake UP, Mommy!” (This wasn’t in a concerned for mom, neti-pot way, mind you. More in a bossy, “your nap is annoying me” kind of tone). And then I started to finally feel better, and felt it was my duty to show my doctor how funny I found the whole thing, and how casual and not-a-freak I am about it, and that this incident was purely due to a funny physiological phenomenon and certainly NOT because of my irrational, crippling anxiety. I’m sure I convinced him.
Anyways, all that drama to determine, baby is fine, Mommy is a wee bit crazy.
Even though I am so ready to be “not pregnant”, I still go into shock a little bit realizing that the end result of all this discomfort and psychological paranoia is going to be an actual new baby. Getting to visit my new niece in the hospital, I kept thinking how I couldn’t believe that would be me in a matter of weeks. I also finally pulled out all of the newborn clothes I kept from India, and hanging them up made me a little emotional, thinking of a new little girl wearing all of those clothes and sleeping in the crib and being here to love.
I am excited, and nervous, and ready. Kind of.
