In the last week, I’ve really started feeling look a pregnant lady. After actually getting a little tearful last Thursday when I felt like I just couldn’t handle one more person telling me I looked too small or hardly pregnant at all, everything has changed. It is funny how everyone judges a pregnant lady. I don’t mean that I haven’t been treated with such incredible kindness and enthusiasm here at my school, but certainly everyone puts in their two cents about where you’re at. “When I was 18 weeks, I was three times your size.” “I can’t believe you’re able to wear your regular clothes still.” “You shouldn’t go near that lady with dyed hair, you know.” And then there are the other 2 pregnant ladies who, on their second babies, are receiving the other size of the critics. “My, even her arms look pregnant,” I’ve heard. A note to myself, as I encounter pregnant ladies for the rest of my life, never tell her she looks too thin, not pregnant or somehow abnormal. Anyway, for weeks I’d been longing to look as pregnant as I feel blessed in my heart, and finally it’s beginning… On Sunday, after two days of intense pain in my chest, I noticed the first crusty white remains of milk formed. Needless to say, it is the most remarkable thing. I told Steve, while it’s still so bizarre to me that a part of your body that had been closed for decades suddenly ruptures open (into multiple sprinklers, by the way, which I actually didn’t already know) it is truly amazing. Because the climate here varies at least 40 degrees in a day, from 30 when we wake up, to 70 or 75 around midday, the pains and dry skin around my developing ducts have been a little more severe, but it’s a wonderful thing. And then there’s my tummy… As I write this, just after lunch, my trousers are unzipped (and these are my big trousers) and you wouldn’t believe how hard my belly is to the touch. For weeks, and still around the sides, a lot of the growth is water and blood and rather flabby really, and while it’s still not totally consistent, it’s starting to seem more like there are actually bones in there. All of this means that sleeping is getting very disturbed. The dull pains I get make me want to sleep on my tummy, but that is about as comfortable as sleeping on a bowling ball, plus you feel awful about crushing your baby's nose or something. I can only tolerate so long on my back as the pressure becomes too much and apparently you're supposed to try and sleep only on your left side. Well, that too gets old pretty fast. So between this, the endless car alarms and Steve’s bad back, we have a long of twilight hours to chat. Only now, I feel the need for those extra hours so much and while it’s probably good practice for all that lies ahead, we’re going to have to figure something out! Steve has been listening to Junior’s beating heart in my tummy, the heart of the ocean, he calls it. Apparently we might have to buy one of those wave makers so that baby feels at home once out in the big world. It seems fair that there is something Steve gets to experience that I don’t, as sometimes, while I kidnap our baby each morning to spend the day with me out in the boonies of Gimnasio Fontana, I feel a little selfish. I do make him give me the thump by thump, splash by splash account of what he’s hearing, however.
I’m very excited, if a little nervous as always, for our appointment on Saturday morning with Fernie Green, and hoping I don’t have to give more blood. I’ll write again then and let you know the latest…Thank you for all of your prayers and encouragement.
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